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- [00:00]
Susan Davis
This message comes from Carvana.
- [00:02]
Chris Arnold
Sell your car the convenient way, enter your license plate or vin, answer a few questions and get a real offer in seconds. Go to Carvana.com today. This is Steve from Rockwell Center, New York. I'm in my roomt on the Amtrak Silver Meteor heading from New York to Miami.
- [00:21]
Susan Davis
Oh, fancy. This podcast was recorded at 11:36am on Wednesday, February 26.
- [00:28]
Chris Arnold
Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will be cruising the Caribbean on the big nude boat. Enjoy the show.
- [00:40]
Susan Davis
That's gotta be a long train ride, New York to Florida.
- [00:42]
Shannon Bond
I do love like an overnight train, though it is more overnight train journeys.
- [00:46]
Susan Davis
If you can lay down on the train, then it's just like next level. That's almost luxury. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And today, the latest on the Trump administration's continuing efforts to remake the federal government. Doge, the entity that Elon Musk has been the face of, is just one asset of these changes and how Doge wants to reshape the federal workforce has been steeped in controversy and court battles. And NPR correspondents Shannon Bond and Chris Arnold have been focusing on all of this and join me now. Hello to you both.
- [01:17]
Shannon Bond
Hey, Sue.
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Chris Arnold
Hey, Sue.
- [01:18]
Susan Davis
Chris, let's start with you. There are more than 2 million federal employees doing all different kinds of jobs all over the country and even the world. And you talk to just a couple of them, people who work at national parks who have been impacted by what Doge is doing. Tell us about them.
- [01:33]
Chris Arnold
Yeah, right. A lot of these workers who've been fired are what are called probationary workers. And that can sound at first like, oh, well, maybe they got hired six months ago. So maybe it's not that big a deal. But in many cases it's not that you could have worked someplace for five, six, seven, ten years, and then you get a promotion and you're in a new job because you were doing a good job, you're a good worker, and now you're in a probationary period in that new job. So these folks were in that category. And I talked to Eileen and James Kramer, and they worked at a national park in Alaska. It's called Lake Clark National Park. These guys have both gotten promotions recently. Everything seemed good. And then they get these letters saying, you know what? You're doing a lousy job and so you're fired today. No details, no reason. And it just looked like a formally letter with their names filled in. And here's Eileen and James that was.
- [02:27]
Susan Davis
Really, I think, the hardest part about it was that they were saying we were underperforming, which isn't true.
- [02:34]
Shannon Bond
They obviously didn't look at our personnel.
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Chris Arnold
File because we have evidence showing that we're great performers and we've exceeded expectations and we've received performance awards.
- [02:44]
Susan Davis
I got a regional award specifically in efficiency last year. So it's a little bit ironic to me that I'm being terminated as part of this government efficiency initiative. Chris, I think this is really interesting for a couple of reasons. I'm glad you made that point that, like, not all probationary workers are, you know, first job out of college types. But also, personnel records are legal documents. If you have a record of strong performance, reviews of awards for excellence, and the excuse your boss gives you is for failure to perform, that seems like it might open up even more of a legal avenue that maybe you were fired under false pretenses.
- [03:24]
Chris Arnold
I mean, that's what's happening right now. I mean, there are lawyers just gathering these up, you know, and being like, here's the letter. It's same as the other thousand letters. And when you actually look at the personnel file, you know, this person got this commendation, and, you know, and also they're talking, and it turns out their own supervisor was like, I don't want to fire this person. I had no choice. You know, so.
- [03:43]
Susan Davis
And so, Chris, what exactly is happening with these lawsuits now?
- [03:46]
Chris Arnold
Well, there's one in federal court in San Francisco against the Office of Personnel Management, which apparently the lawsuit alleges, a lot of these letters just came from OPM and then kind of went through the agencies, but it wasn't even these agencies saying, we want to fire these people. So. But it also zooms in on this idea like you were talking about, like, well, you can't just lie and say these people did their jobs badly and use that as a justification to immediately terminate them. Or there was just another kind of related case. Things were resolved in the last couple of days involving the U.S. office of Special Counsel, and a few workers were put back to work or will be in a couple of days. So the courts really might come back and say, you know what? Guys like this just wasn't done right. Like, these federal workers have rights and you cannot fire them this way.
- [04:35]
Susan Davis
I think at this point, a lot of our listeners know what OPM is, but we should just note it's the Office of Personnel and Management, which essentially serves as, like, the HR for the federal government. And I think pushback is maybe thematically what we're seeing more of here, Shannon, especially when it comes to how Musk has been operating. And by that I mean there was this federal government wide email sent out at his directive asking all federal employees to do a five bulleted point list of what they had accomplished that week to sort of justify their existence. And it didn't end up that simple.
- [05:09]
Shannon Bond
So Musk posted about this on X on Saturday, said everyone's gonna receive this email. And by the way, if you don't respond, it's we're gonna take that as a resignation, which is sor of kind of a stunning thing to announce like by this person who he is a special government employee, but he's not the White House has said he's not running anything, right? He's not running any of these agencies. He's not running the Office of Personnel Management. He's not even running the Doge office that he has sort of established in the White House. Technically, technically we'll get into that. But then this government wide email comes out from the Office of Personnel Management asking people to respond to this. Well, no, it did not have the ultimatum about not responding. And immediately we just saw like utter confusion and chaos across federal agencies. You know, workers are being like, am I supposed to respond? Like some of them are like, I work on classified material or you know, and it said don't put any classified information in. But like a lot of people were quite nervous about like, what is going to be done with this, how do I respond? Agencies start in some cases saying, yes, this is fine, go ahead and respond. Other agencies, including the State Department, the Defense Department, Homeland Security, are like, absolutely not, do not send this in. And you know, that is some of the first sort of real backlash we've gotten against Musk by, you know, people in the Cabinet, right? Cabinet level secretaries saying, hold on, you know, we run these agencies, this is our workforce, we get to control and manage what they're doing. And you can't just sort of order people to do this. But it does raise all these questions. I mean, many of the workers I were talking to are saying like, who's in charge here? Like, is it the agency in some cases is telling me first to respond, then telling me not to respond. You know, supervisors are giving people conflicting information. You have Musk continuing to say on X if people don't respond, they're going to be fired. You have OPM first coming out and saying, actually this is voluntary, then putting out another memo, being like, well, it's up to the agencies to decide if it's Voluntary or not. Like, just, again, like, people are just like, who is in charge? Who is making the decisions here? And I think we're gonna see, like, to what degree do some of, you know, these. These political appointees, you know, who have been Senate confirmed right, to their positions, you know, how are they going to continue to assert their power over Musk?
- [07:07]
Susan Davis
And it seems to me that the timing of this is not coincidental because Musk started taking these actions as soon as Donald Trump was inaugurated into office. But these Cabinet secretaries are now being sworn in, the Cabinet's being fully actualized. And it shouldn't perhaps come as a surprise that the people that are supposed to have ownership over these agencies in its workforce are maybe looking to Musk and saying, like, not necessarily that they oppose the end goal, which is reducing spending, reducing the size of the workforce, but saying, like, I want to make these decisions, not this guy, right?
- [07:37]
Shannon Bond
And, like, also, maybe I know best, right? So, like, an example here is, like, the Department of Energy, right? Which, as we reported on, you know, when these sort of initial probationary layoffs or firings happened, you know, cut a bunch of workers at the National Nuclear Security Administration. You know, these are people who work with nuclear warheads and then had to rehire them, right? Because actually they were like, oh, no, we can't actually fire these people. Like, we need these people. They're very much in the position now. Right. I think there's a bit of, like, you know, the actual functionality of these agencies. They do have work to do, and they need to make sure that if they are going to trim down, they trim, you know, not trimming people who actually need to be doing some of this work. And I guess I think some of this is about, like, ego and sort of turf battles over, like, who ultimately is the decider here. Like, you know, these are all people. Many of them, you know, themselves have business backgrounds, right? They're coming in saying, like, I want to be in charge here. And, like, you know, I'm not going to just, like, let Elon Musk tell me what to do. But it's been quite interesting because I think a lot of people were sort of speculating, you know, is it Musk and Trump who are going to have a fallout, like, what's going to happen here? And actually, I think some of the first battles we were seeing is between Musk and these Cabinet secretaries.
- [08:35]
Susan Davis
Okay, we got to take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
- [08:38]
Shannon Bond
This message comes from Progressive Insurance.
- [08:41]
Susan Davis
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- [08:43]
Shannon Bond
You could save when you bundle your.
- [08:45]
Susan Davis
Home and auto policies, try it@progressive.com Progressive.
- [08:48]
Shannon Bond
Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary.
- [08:52]
Susan Davis
Not available in all states. And we're back. And Shannon, I want to talk about the process, the way this stuff has been happening, because I think it's important to understand because one of the inside the beltway conversations is that, you know, if every agency or department wanted to do a reduction in force or reduction in spending, there's a way to do it and that it's happened in the past. Republicans will note to the fact that Bill Clinton did this when he was president. But the way that this is happening is not the way that government typically functions, but it is in a lot of ways reminiscent of how Elon Musk has run his companies.
- [09:25]
Shannon Bond
Yeah, that's right. I mean, some of this is like literally the exact playbook, right. And we knew that with the fork in the road email, right, offering for government workers to resign. He sent an email with the same subject line to Twitter employees, again asking them to resign after he, he bought that company. Similarly, this idea of like reporting in five things you accomplished last week, you know, that is something he has implemented at his companies. Even the title of that email, what did you do last week? You know, that is something that he had famously text to the then CEO of Twitter, like when he was basically making the decision to buy the company and try to kick out current management. And we're seeing again, he's bringing this playbook in from his businesses that, you know, I think to his mind has been successful in the past. Right. And I think what that tells us very much is, and we've talked about this before, right? He, Musk sees the government, you know, as not really any different from a corporation. You know, he's talked about this, he's called it America Incorporated and it needs to have a corporate restructuring. And he's very much going about the way you would if you were the pretty independently powerful CEO of a large company where you can say, yeah, I'm going to fire wide swaths of people. This has also played out in the same way at Twitter where Twitter fired people and then had to rehire them because they actually found out some of them were doing jobs that the company needed. But part of the reason we're seeing kind of so much confusion and disruption and pushback is that the problem is fundamentally the government is not a corporation. And so, yes, if you were going to do large scale reductions in force, there are actual legal channels you need to follow. There are requirements over things like preference to people who have veteran status or people with disabilities. There are things that exist in the government world that may not exist in the corporate world. And I think that's where we're seeing so many of these clashes. But it is really kind of this very differing kind of view of what the purpose of government is, and really different value system I think, that we're seeing Musk bring in that I think is causing just so much of this confusion and drama and, honestly, heartache for a lot of the workers that we're talking to.
- [11:22]
Susan Davis
There's also this murkiness, too, where on the one hand, Elon Musk is very clearly in charge here, or at least making critical decisions, but the government and the administration at the same time this week is trying to say, no, technically, he's not the administrator of Doge.
- [11:38]
Chris Arnold
Well, and I think, like, that's a big difference between the private sector, too, right? I mean, if Musk buys Twitter, which became X, I mean, yeah, he's in charge. He can fire half the people. The parallel with the government, like, stops there, right? It makes me think. I used to cover Silicon Valley, and you'd see guys who made gajillions of dollars, and then they're like, I want to solve public education. And they would try to wade in, and then they'd realize, like, oh, my God, no, I'm dealing with the unions, and I don't have, like, a room full of really smart grads from Stanford, like, making this one thing. I'm dealing with a hundred things, and they're all way more complicated. And it's like, it kind of reminds me of that. You know, it's like, it's just turning into this absolute swamp of tangled intention where, you know, anything he tries to do the way he would do it, say, when he took over Twitter, is just going to spark lawsuits.
- [12:31]
Shannon Bond
I think that's all true. And I think what's also really important to think about is in the meantime, like, sue, as you said, I mean, he is clearly effectively running this, right? Like, he says this email is going to go out. The email goes out. He says people are going to get fired. You know, the agencies say, well, maybe not, but, like, I don't know. And then Trump also says if people don't respond, they're gonna get fired. So who are you trusting? And I think a lot of the folks that I've been speaking to, the federal workers who are at the receiving end of this are saying, I don't know, but I kind of can't risk my job. At this point, I mean, they're also all preparing to be laid off anyway. But they're saying at the end of the day, yes, there are all these kind of legal questions, and that will play out, but it will, as Chris says, take months. And in the meantime, it is effectively Musk calling the shots here.
- [13:13]
Susan Davis
Who is the person that the government is saying is in charge, and what do you know about her?
- [13:16]
Shannon Bond
Right. So this has come after, you know, actually quite a bit of mystery through a lawsuit where the court was asking the government over and over again because they said, well, you know, Musk is not in charge of the U.S. dOGE service, which is part of the Office of the President that has been renamed from the US Digital Service. And they were like, okay, great. Who is? And then the government lawyers were like, well, we don't know. We can't tell you. This dragged on for a couple of days, which kind of, you know, pretty unprecedented to just not be able to say who is actually running this.
- [13:40]
Susan Davis
I'm sure judges love that.
- [13:41]
Shannon Bond
Yeah. As you can imagine, the judge was not amused. So the White House has announced that Amy Gleason is, in fact, the acting administrator of the Doge Service. She is somebody who is a veteran of the U.S. digital Service. She's a former health care investment executive. You know, we don't know a lot about her. We don't really know a lot about what her actual kind of acting role is. You know, what does it mean, again, for her to be the acting administrator when clearly, effectively, you know, Musk is calling the shots here? But there is a name now, and I'm sure that that will, like, raise a whole new set of court challenges over, you know, what are the directives that Musk is issuing? You know, where does that maybe trample on her territory? But again, like, you know, at the end of the day, the office of the President and the White House, which is what the Doge Service is under, you know, is separate from these agencies. And, yes, the President can issue executive orders saying, you know, calling on agencies to prepare for reductions in force, which it has done. The White House itself, like, can't just go and fire people at agencies. OPM can't go and fire people at agencies, like the agencies themselves are doing this. And so that's, again, like, the kind of, what is the chain of command here, you know, I think is murky and is why this is being opened up to all of this questioning, you know, legally and just, you know, practically by the people having to carry out this mission.
- [14:53]
Susan Davis
This is not A short term story, this is a long term story. This might even be a story for the rest of the Trump administration. But I will ask you both this. Is there something specifically or what should people be watching or listening for the sort of where do we go from here question?
- [15:06]
Chris Arnold
I mean, I think seeing how this plays out with federal workers and whether the courts are willing to say you didn't follow the rules and you can't just summarily fire tens of thousands of people and send out all these letters that essentially lie about things like that's just not okay and you got to hire them all back and let's do this like grownups. And if that's able to work, I think that would be really interesting. And I don't know if that's what's going to happen.
- [15:34]
Susan Davis
Could you say the reverse is also true, Chris? If the courts say, you know what, but the president can do this, Elon Musk can do this, that's also. Would be a pretty profound impact.
- [15:41]
Chris Arnold
Well, yeah, I mean, absolutely. Either way that goes, I mean, there's just, there's a lot hanging on that for so many, so many federal workers, obviously.
- [15:50]
Shannon Bond
I think the thing I would say is, you know, what additional pushback is there sort of from inside the government and especially at the cabinet level. We know that Musk is going to be sitting in on Trump's Cabinet meeting today. You know, would love to be a fly on the wall in that room, like what the dynamic is like, because, you know, again, I think, you know, it's been really notable, particularly that some of the most powerful cabinet secretaries, you know, the head of agencies that are, you know, very critical to national security, are the ones who have kind of come out most aggressively in sort of marking their own territory here. And again, like you said, it's not that these folks are not on board with the idea of cutting spending and reducing the workforce. But, you know, I think Marco Rubio is going to have a very hard time if he is not the one as secretary of State who is like, deeply involved in setting U.S. foreign policy. And like, you know, Musk is trying to get involved there. So I think those sort of turf battles and then how those, like, resonate through the way the agencies are actually run is going to be the thing we're watching out for.
- [16:45]
Susan Davis
Shannon and Chris, thank you so much for bringing your expertise in reporting to the podcast today.
- [16:48]
Chris Arnold
Absolutely.
- [16:49]
Shannon Bond
Thanks, Sue.
- [16:50]
Susan Davis
All right, we're going to leave it there, but we'll be back in your feeds tomorrow. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics and thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.
- [17:06]
Shannon Bond
Scientist Kyra Akabach is obsessed with the cold.
- [17:09]
Susan Davis
I jumped in the freezing cold lake the other day twice.
- [17:12]
Shannon Bond
She spends a lot of time in subarctic Finland studying reindeer herders, and there's a deeper purpose to her fascination with frigid temperatures. I'm Kate the Chemist. Learn more on my podcast Seeking a Scientist from kcur, part of the NPR Network.
- [17:27]
Susan Davis
Public Media counts on your support to ensure that the reporting and programs you depend on thrive. Make a recurring donation today to get special access to more than 20 NPR podcasts. Perks like sponsor free listening, bonus episodes, early access, and more. So start supporting what you love today@plus.npr.org.
- [17:51]
Chris Arnold
Hey, it's hey Martinez. I work on a news show and yeah, the news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you just can't ignore la noticias when important world changing events are happening. So that is where the Upverse podcast comes in every single morning in under 15 minutes. We take the news and boil it down to three essential stories so you can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen to the upverse Podcast from NPR.