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Personally, Toy Soldier tells the story of Alex Kersham, who faced a choice as a child.

Be killed or joined the killers.

His decision saved his life, but erased his identity.

Listen now.

Hi, it's Jen.

Just a quick heads up before we start the conversation.

The news is rapidly developing and things may have changed

by the time you hear this episode. For the very latest news, tune in to your public radio station

and follow updates at npr.org. If you can keep it is our weekly politics series where we cut through political noise to consider the state of our Democratic Republic and what matters to you.

Today we turn our attention to one of the richest people in the world, and now one of the most politically powerful.

I actually just put myself for a couple tech support here because this is actually, as crazy as it sounds, that that is almost a literal dispersion of the work that the NEOC team is doing, is helping fix the government computer systems.

Many of the systems are extremely old. They don't communicate. We are actually text old. It's ironic, but it's true.

That was Elon Musk, speaking about the Department of Government Efficiency or Doge, during President

Trump's first cabinet meeting last week. Now, Musk was standing over the cabinet,

describing what you just heard, but he's not a member of Donald Trump's cabinet. However,

he is much more than White House tech support. The entity dozed, which Musk effectively oversees

but doesn't legally run, has spearheaded the administration's campaign to slash the federal

workforce. At least 20,000 federal employees have been laid off since January, with more layoffs

expected.

The federal government is the largest employer in the country.

The New York Times reports nearly a dozen federal agencies affected by these changes also have more than 32 ongoing investigations or pending complaints into Elon Musk's

...