Trump’s purge of federal workers and its historical parallels
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
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Summary
President Donald Trump’s recent steps to remove federal employees is drawing comparisons to government purges during the Red Scare of the 1950s. What’s at stake when government workers are pushed out? We’ll break it down. Plus, we’ll explain why a ruling in one of the lawsuits over Trump’s funding freeze is a biggie. Finally, tell us something good that happened to you lately!
Here’s everything we talked about today:
- “Judge Rules That Trump Administration Defied Order to Unfreeze Billions in Federal Grants” from The New York Times
- “CBS News poll — Trump has positive approval amid ‘energetic’ opening weeks; seen as doing what he promised” by CBS News
- “Second pig kidney transplant successfully completed at Massachusetts General Hospital” from WCVB Channel 5
- “A campus sign said ‘Tell us something good.’ Students delivered.” by The Washington Post
Tell us something good that happened to you recently! Email us at makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Let's start on a laugh, shall we? Come on. |
| 0:03.1 | Why not? |
| 0:08.3 | Hey, everybody. I'm Kyle. Rizdahl. Welcome back to Make Me Smart. Where we make today makes sense. |
| 0:14.0 | And I'm Kimberly Adams. Thank you for joining us on this Monday, February the 10th. |
| 0:18.0 | We've got some news and some smiles on deck today, starting with the news. |
| 0:23.2 | Mr. Rizal, what caught your attention today, the weekend, et cetera. Okay, so this one is today. |
| 0:28.3 | It's earlier this morning, L.A. time. It comes to us out of Rhode Island where a federal judge, |
| 0:34.2 | in one of the cases, about the Trump freeze on spending and grant making and all of |
| 0:39.6 | that jazz, a federal judge has for the first time ruled that the Trump administration |
| 0:44.8 | is disobeying a judicial order, which is obviously a big deal on the merits because |
| 0:50.9 | you don't really see administrations doing that much. But this is the |
| 0:57.3 | biggie. And here's why. And this is not my original thought, right? This is from George Conway. |
| 1:01.9 | I heard do this. Kelly and Conway's former husband heard him talk about this on a podcast. Other people |
| 1:07.2 | are making arguments along these lines, and it goes like this. |
| 1:12.2 | When somebody disobeys a federal court order, the recourse in the final analysis is for the United States Marshal Service to go grab that person or the person representing the agency and haul them before the judge in question |
| 1:27.6 | so that the judge can hold them in contempt of court. |
| 1:30.5 | Here's the problem. |
| 1:32.2 | The United States Marshal Service works for the executive branch, |
| 1:35.5 | the Department of Justice specifically. |
| 1:37.6 | And the question is, what's going to happen |
| 1:40.8 | when there's a judicial order that says, |
| 1:43.6 | you, Marshal Service, go get this |
... |
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