Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on What Democrats Should Do Next
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Washington Roundtable discusses the fallout of the White House releasing, and then rescinding, a memo intended to freeze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans. The incident, as well as this week’s Senate confirmation hearings for controversial Cabinet nominees such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Kash Patel, offers Democrats an opportunity to seize control of the narrative—if they can get organized, Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic senator from Rhode Island, says. “If what Democrats are doing is running around calling them chaotic and incompetent, that’s not going to win the day unless those charges are connected to actual harms happening to regular people.”
This week’s reading:
- “Donald Trump’s Cabinet of Revenge,” by Susan B. Glasser
- “Trump’s Orders Sow Chaos Inside the Nation’s Enforcer of Equal Opportunity,” by E. Tammy Kim
- “Kash Patel’s Political-Persecution Fantasies,” by Tess Owen
- “Behind the Chaotic Attempt to Freeze Federal Assistance,” by Atul Gawande
- “The Junk Science of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,” by Clare Malone
- “How Donald Trump Seizes the Primal Power of Naming,” by Jessica Winter
- “Trump’s Attempt to Redefine America,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells
Tune in wherever you get your podcasts.
To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the political scene, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. |
| 0:10.8 | I'm Jane Mayer, and I'm joined by my colleague Susan Glasser and Evan Osnos. |
| 0:15.9 | Hey, Susan. |
| 0:16.6 | Hey there. |
| 0:17.5 | Hi, Evan. |
| 0:18.3 | Good morning, guys. |
| 0:28.7 | Well, this week, an extraordinarily low-profile White House Agency, the Office of Management and Budget, took center stage. It sent out a memo announcing a |
| 0:35.3 | spending freeze on trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans. |
| 0:40.4 | Millions of people who receive aid from programs funded by the government from preschoolers in Head Start to seniors getting meals on wheels were thrown without warning into a state of mass confusion and chaos. |
| 0:52.8 | At least 20 states and a handful of nonprofits sued. |
| 0:56.9 | And then, as if this wasn't shocking enough, |
| 0:59.4 | something very surprising happened on Wednesday |
| 1:01.8 | while we were in our prep meeting for the podcast, right, Susan? |
| 1:05.2 | You looked down at your phone and you saw it. |
| 1:07.7 | You said, oh, by the way, never mind. |
| 1:09.9 | The administration walked back this incredibly disruptive memo, but then came a tweet from the |
| 1:18.4 | brand new White House press secretary who said, never mind the never mind. |
| 1:23.1 | We're rescinding the memo, but not the order. |
| 1:26.9 | The chaos and dysfunction, it's hitting hard and fast. |
| 1:30.0 | We've been told that this is the team that's been planning, this shrewd, sophisticated application of these ideas that they have about government. |
| 1:39.2 | And you know what? The first thing they did right out of the gate was a complete and total cock up. Yeah, I mean, |
| 1:45.6 | this was supposed to be the more experienced crew. They call themselves the disruptors, the president |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.