It's the Brian Lairn Show on WNYC. I'm Bridget Bergen, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist Newsroom.

Brian's going to be off for a few days for vacation, but there's lots of news.

President Trump has been back in the White House for, let's check the calendar a little over two weeks.

In that time, he or his deputies have fired or threatened to fire thousands of federal employees,

began investigating officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice who were involved in investigations into him and his administration has empowered Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency to basically shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

Just yesterday, President Trump suggested the U.S. would take over Gaza.

The legality of much of this is in question, and critics are calling all of this a sloppy, techie

coup. Later this hour, we'll talk to Andrew Procop, who spent years covering threats to our democracy,

and now the Musk and Trump-led

takeover of the government bureaucracy. Plus, later in the show for Black History Month,

we'll talk with the historian Martha S. Jones about how she and her family navigated their

biracial identity and what Frederick Douglass originally coined the color line.

We'll want to hear your family oral histories on this, too.

That'll be just after 11 today.

Plus, since it's Girl Scouts season, we'll wrap today's show by talking to the head of the Girl Scouts here in New York.

We'll talk about selling cookies, what it means to be a Girl Scout in 2025,

and she'll shout it a very special troop made up of girls living in temporary housing here in the city.

But first, we're kicking things off with two of my favorite colleagues from the WNYC and Gothamist politics team,

Elizabeth Kim, our lead city hall reporter, and John Campbell, our Albany reporter.

Both are joining me to talk largely about Mayor Adams, where he was last week, in case he hadn't heard, it was mostly at Gracie Mansion, and where he was yesterday, up in Albany,

shaking the proverbial Tim Cup for the city's budget priorities before state legislators.

His weekly off-topic press conference was actually rescheduled from yesterday to today,

...