Inside DOGE, Post Elon Musk

Fresh Air

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4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

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Summary

Washington Post Reporter Hannah Natanson says DOGE's mass firings made the government more inefficient. She also explains the risks of DOGE creating a massive database for the Trump administration. "There's a great deal of concern over how basically the Trump administration has taken every tool at their disposal and weaponized a lot of the federal government," she tells Terry Gross.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Very Heart of It, by Thomas Mallon. It's a new collection of his diaries from 1983 to '94, which includes when he came out, and the years of the AIDS crisis and how it decimated the gay community.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Ira Glass of This American Life.
0:02.2	Each week on our show, we choose the theme, tell different stories on that theme.
0:07.3	All right, I'm just going to stop right there.
0:08.8	You're listening to an NPR podcast.
0:10.2	Chances are you know our show.
0:11.9	So instead, I'm going to tell you, we've just been on a run of really good shows lately.
0:17.4	Some big, epic emotional stories and some weird funny stuff too. Download us, this American
0:23.1	life. This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Elon Musk is gone from Doge, the so-called Department
0:29.6	of Government Efficiency, and he and President Trump are estranged. But Doge is continuing its work.
0:36.4	Some Doge staffers now have positions within several government agencies, and Doge is continuing its work. Some Doge staffers now have positions within several
0:39.1	government agencies, and Doge's goals are shared by the director of the Office of Management
0:44.1	and Budget, Russell Vott. My guest, Hannah Natanson, is a Washington Post reporter covering
0:49.7	Trump's reshaping of the federal government, and she's broken several stories. She's
0:54.8	investigated how Doge has created new inefficiencies and bureaucratic red tape, how the
1:00.4	Trump administration has been trying to fix Doge's mistake of firing too many federal
1:05.0	workers and contractors, what impact that's had on those who were fired, and what Doge is up to now.
1:11.9	She's currently investigating which data Doge has accessed from every federal agency.
1:18.3	Natanson won a Peabody in 2024 for a podcast series on school gun violence.
1:23.6	She was part of a team of Washington Post journalists awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol.
1:33.1	We recorded our interview yesterday morning.
1:36.3	Hannah Natinson, welcome back to fresh air.
1:39.1	What is left of Doge now that Musk is gone and so is his number two who handled the day-to-day, Stephen Davis.
	...

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