Male Speaker 1: Musk bragged about feeding USAID into the wood chipper.

Brooke Gladstone: In week 3, the big story was Elon Musk's rewiring of the federal government. From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Micah Loewinger: I'm Micah Loewinger. While the mantra of move fast and break things might work in Silicon Valley, it is not compatible with the inner workings of government.

Vittoria Elliott: They are indeed moving fast and we are concerned they may break things.

Micah Loewinger: What have they broken recently?

Vittoria Elliott: Seemingly, possibly a lot of laws.

Brooke Gladstone: Plus, the Dems have been in disarray, but maybe that's changing.

Ezra Levin: I just saw Lisa Murkowski, the Senator of Alaska, say the call volume right now incoming to her office is 40 times what it was. 40 times. They are feeling it.

Micah Loewinger: It's all coming up after this.

Brooke Gladstone: From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Micah Loewinger: I'm Micah Loewinger. What even happened this week?

Trump: What I'd like to see Canada become our 51st state.

Female Speaker 1: Trump says he was levying a 25% tariff on goods from America's closest neighbors. At the last minute, he backed down from those executive orders.

Trump: The US Will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We will not allow men to beat up, injure and cheat our women and our girls. From now on, women's sports will be only for women.

Micah Loewinger: Perhaps the biggest story this week was Elon Musk's rampage through the federal government.

Male Speaker 2: Musk has been given access to the treasury Department's payment system, including the personal information of millions of American workers.

Male Speaker 3: Backlash after Elon Musk seized control of USAID, the agency that provides US humanitarian assistance around the world.

Male Speaker 1: Musk bragged about feeding USAID into the wood chipper.

Female Speaker 2: The DOGE team has visited the Centers for Disease Control and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. They also have sought access to payment and contracting systems across the Department of Health and Human Services.

Micah Loewinger: Musk and his DOGE task force have also targeted the Office of Personnel Management, the beating heart of the federal workforce.

Vittoria Elliott: In that way, I would say DOGE is meddling with all of the government.

Micah Loewinger: Vittoria Elliott is a reporter for WIRED, covering platforms and power. She and her colleagues have done some of the best reporting on Musk's activity this week, shining a light on what DOGE is doing and who's doing it.

Vittoria Elliott: The engineers that we've identified, they range from around 19 years old to 25 years old. That's not to say that's the majority of DOGE, but certainly the people we identified who seem to be the foot soldiers who are actually going into systems with administrator access, possibly changing around code or gathering data, those seem to be young people who are former interns, former workers for one of Musk's companies or in many cases also connected to Peter Thiel, the billionaire chairman of Palantir, which is a large data analytics company that has several contracts with the US military.

Micah Loewinger: Vittoria was the first to identify 25-year-old DOGE engineer Marko Elez, who was reportedly given access to the code behind the Treasury Department's $6 trillion payment system. Government sources told WIRED that this guy had also been granted the ability to add or change code if he wanted to. Something Fox News Peter Doocy asked about at a White House press briefing.

Peter Doocy: Can you clarify? Do the DOGE engineers have read only access in these systems?

Female Speaker 3: Yes.

Peter Doocy: So they are not allowed to write new code?

Female Speaker 3: No.

Peter Doocy: They are not. Okay.

Vittoria Elliott: Our sources indicate that is not true.

Micah Loewinger: WIRED stuck its neck out to say the government wasn't telling the truth. Then late Thursday-

Male Speaker 4: Wall Street Journal reported that Marko Elez is a 25-year-old DOGE staffer resigned after he was connected to racist posts from a now deleted social media account.

Micah Loewinger: Then on Friday, Musk posted on X that he plans to rehire Marko Elez. Also on Friday, WIRED was first to report that DOGE has been given access to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau data. They scooped DOGE's push to develop GSAi, a custom generative AI chatbot for the US General Services Administration.

Vittoria Elliott: Anything that I feel like I say about DOGE is going to already be out of date because they're moving really, really quickly and we're out here trying to keep up with them. I will say that they are certainly holding with the Silicon Valley mantra of move fast and break things. They are indeed moving fast and we are concerned they may break things.

Micah Loewinger: What have they broken recently?

Vittoria Elliott: Seemingly, possibly a lot of laws, and if not laws, certainly protocols. There are, for instance, substantial rules around data privacy, particularly like accessing the personal information of federal government employees, which it seems that Musk's DOGE operatives at the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, may have done. We reported that one of DOGE's operatives in the treasury seemed to have been accessing basically all of the Treasury's payment data. Then my colleagues actually reported that one of the young people who was part of the DOGE effort has a pretty sketchy background with hacking groups and distributed denial of service attack, DDoS attack.

Micah Loewinger: You're talking about Edward Coristine, a DOGE staffer who goes by Big Balls on the Internet. He apparently passed a background check and now has access to sensitive government systems.

Vittoria Elliott: Well, unclear at what level he was vetted. The biggest thing about DOGE is that despite Musk's claims that the Trump administration was going to be the most transparent of any administration, I think the real answer here is that it has actually been deeply opaque. The public doesn't know who's doing this work, at what agencies, to what level. Even federal employees working at these agencies sometimes have not known who these people are. They have only known them, at best on a first name basis. These people, at times, have been working with non-government email addresses. That is also of particular concern.

Micah Loewinger: Do we have any way of knowing if they're scraping these databases, putting them on hard drives, bringing them back to Silicon Valley?

Vittoria Elliott: We don't know yet, but the fact that we're even asking that question is scary. What we do know is that there does seem to have been some kind of external server set up within OPM in some capacity. We know that if someone is, for instance, logging into a meeting with government employees with a Gmail address, there's questions about what tools or systems they're using. It's not even maybe that they're putting it in a hard drive, but it's just, are you using your personal computer? What kind of vulnerabilities does that introduce?

Micah Loewinger: I want to ask you about your reporting process. WIRED has been really ahead of the game on some of these scoops surrounding the personnel Musk is bringing in. In recent days, he's taken to X to threaten people who have doxxed these DOGE lackeys. Because there are people who have, from your reporting, have tracked down these people, have tried to share addresses and phone numbers and other personal information. But in recent years, many people online have come to see journalism that names people of public importance as a form of doxxing, which it isn't. It's not doxxing for you to name a young engineer who has all this power. Have you been getting heat for the work that you did in naming these people?

Vittoria Elliott: Yes. It's hard, because we can't necessarily control what people do with the information we put out there. I don't think that it is appropriate to take those names and find their family's homes. What is appropriate is for members of Congress to ask for information about these people. What is appropriate is for people who are concerned about this to call their legislators and encourage them to do something about it. I think the reality is that people can't take action for more transparency without this knowledge. If it turned out that they were not people with substantial power, our calculus might have been different.

Micah Loewinger: You guys are beating the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, big newsrooms, Washington bureaus with deep sourcing throughout Capitol Hill. How is your team so far ahead of the competition?

Vittoria Elliott: I think we're in the right place at the right time. WIRED is fundamentally a tech publication. These are people we have been covering for many years. We understand how they like to run their companies, what they value. We have been listening to their thoughts about government, about regulation for years and years and years. Now they are in a position to make the world run that way. Because we have done that work, we're able to see, in the words of Wayne Gretzky, where the puck is moving next. Also, we know how to report inside tech companies. There is a level with political reporting that there's going to parties and cozying up to people and building relationships and things like that. I will say that the tech industry, particularly since they've received more criticism post 2016, has not been friendly to that type of stuff.

For me personally, I covered Musk's purchase of Twitter in 2022 for WIRED. That was all I did, basically, from October, November of 2022 into 2023. I spoke to people on his trusted safety staff who he fired. I spoke to people who had to convince him to keep some of their programs on the rails, to stay within the legal bounds of other countries during their elections. Even the Fork in the Road email, which is the same title of the email that he sent out to Twitter employees. There's so many parallels there. Having done that work has made our team really ready for this moment. I think we just have really brave leadership. There was never a doubt in how we would meet this moment.

Micah Loewinger: As someone who has been reporting on and following Elon Musk and his political ideology, his approach to business, where do you think the puck is headed?

Vittoria Elliott: I think that what we can say from the public statements of people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen and many large figures in Silicon Valley is that their goal is the dismantling of the administrative state, dismantling of bureaucracy. Which sounds really sexy when you say, like, yes, get rid of bureaucracy, get rid of red tape. The reality is, the reason that America feels stable to so many people is because we know that whether or not there's a Republican or Democrat in the Oval Office, your Social Security check is still going to come on time. There's still a process for how court cases work. There's still a process for how applying for government funding for research works.

That remains stable because so many of these places where DOGE is inserting itself are fundamentally considered apolitical. They keep the wheels turning, no matter who's in the political office, and that engenders trust. Now, is every expenditure they make perfect and correct? Absolutely not. Is there room for improvement? 1,000%. Could they all be more efficient? Probably, for sure. The reality is those criticisms, those valid criticisms, are not the same as what Musk and his allies have very publicly said for a long time now, which is they don't want those systems to exist at all.

Micah Loewinger: Vittoria, keep going. Thank you very much.

Vittoria Elliott: Thank you.

Micah Loewinger: Vittoria Elliott is a reporter for WIRED, where she covers platforms and power.

Brooke Gladstone: Coming up, the Justice Department is paying a steep price for prosecuting criminals who sowed violence in the president's name.

Micah Loewinger: This is On the Media

Brooke Gladstone: This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Micah Loewinger: I'm Micah Loewinger. Move fast and break things may be the Silicon Valley mantra, but it could also be used to describe the flood of executive orders and other actions taken over the last couple of weeks by the Trump administration. For instance, hours after her confirmation, in the span of just 20 minutes, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent out 14 memos to the Department of Justice, including a call for greater use of the death penalty, another banning funds for sanctuary cities, and another threatening investigations into DEI initiatives at companies that received federal grants. Trump also announced that Bondi would head a task force with a broad and, frankly, bizarre mandate.

Trump: The mission of this task force will be to immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI terrible, and other agencies.

Micah Loewinger: Meanwhile, the 2021 Capitol riot is slowly being scrubbed from the public record.

Female Speaker 4: The January 6th investigation and the hundreds of criminal cases connected to it, effectively erased. All traces of it have been deleted from the FBI website.

Micah Loewinger: It turns out that the blanket clemency to more than 1,500 people charged with crimes relating to the events of January 6th was the prelude to a campaign of retribution against those who Trump feels unfairly targeted him and his followers. All of this has understandably led to chaos at the Department of Justice.

Ryan Reilly: It was rough.

Micah Loewinger: Ryan Reilly covers the Justice Department and federal law enforcement for NBC News. He described the scene during the Mass firing of some senior FBI officials and federal prosecutors at the DOJ who handled January 6th cases.

Ryan Reilly: Especially I think, for a lot of the Assistant US attorneys, the federal prosecutors who had to work these cases and then abandoned individuals who they were seeking justice on behalf of, including a lot of those officers who were really brutally assaulted that day, that was really tough for them to do. One of them described having a guttural reaction when they had to file something, dismissing a case that they knew was justified, that they knew the evidence and the facts supported. There's been a ton of fallout within DOJ, and that still continues.

Micah Loewinger: Then there were the prosecutors who had assisted Special Counsel Jack Smith into his investigation.

Ryan Reilly: That's right, yes. We haven't yet seen any court action over that, but it's a fair assumption to make that a few years from now, taxpayers are probably going to be on the hook for some sort of payout to those individuals. Now, of course, that will come years later, maybe not even during this administration, but that's how we've seen these cases handled in the past.

Micah Loewinger: When asked by a reporter about these removals, Donald Trump said that he wasn't aware of them.

Trump: No, I wasn't involved in it. I'll have to see what is exactly going on after this is finished. If they fired some people over there, that's a good thing because they were very bad. They were very corrupt people.

Micah Loewinger: We've also learned that Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll was asked to turn over the names of every FBI employee involved in investigating January 6th rioters. Driscoll refused to participate, and now two different lawsuits were filed on behalf of FBI agents trying to block that list. I know this is a very fast-moving story, but what is going on with the FBI right now?

Ryan Reilly: A lot. This is chaotic. I had someone describe this to me saying essentially that this was the most intense seven days that they've had since January 6th itself. What's interesting to me is I don't know if it's really broken through with the American people more broadly, because we're talking about Watergate level type of things happening within the FBI. You're talking about the explicit targeting of prosecutors over the individuals that they pursued because they are either friends with or affiliated with or supportive of the President in some capacity.

I think that the chilling effect that this is going to have within the bureau, which is, I should say, a conservative leaning law enforcement organization, no matter what sort of talking points we've heard elsewhere, is going to last for a while. I just don't think it's likely, based on the conversations that I've had with folks that you're going to see individuals who are very enthusiastic about taking up any cases that have anything to do with Donald Trump or even one of Donald Trump's relatives or someone he's affiliated with or a friend or somebody who has the right connections. That's really the worry within the FBI is that there's just going to be a growth of public corruption.

Micah Loewinger: You said this is several times the size of Watergate, and yet you don't think people are paying enough attention. Why isn't this getting through if it's as severe as you say it is?

Ryan Reilly: Donald Trump has told this story for a while now. He's created this narrative about what the FBI did to him, about the cases against him, and he's undermined public confidence in the bureau. Now what you're seeing is individuals who may have just worked one case against one January 6th defendant, and perhaps that person is extremely violent. Perhaps most Americans would have supported that case against someone who went after a cop or dragged them a cop down the stairs, or, for example, drove a stun gun into an officer's neck or used a baseball bat against a line of police officers.

Those are generally cases that you'd see a lot of support from, but because this all happened at once, because those pardons happened so swiftly, I think it's just overwhelmed the system. Because there are so many other news stories happening, it is a question of how much of this is really breaking through to the general public.

Micah Loewinger: You've done a fair amount of reporting on a guy who's helping bring Donald Trump's vision to the Department of Justice. Interim US attorney for Washington, DC, Ed Martin. He's the former host of a right wing talk show.

Male Speaker 5: It's time for the Pro America Report with Ed Martin on The ANSWER San Diego.

Ed Martin: Welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's Ed Martin here.

Ryan Reilly: Ed Martin is this longtime right wing advocate who, like you said, has hosted that show and also was on the board of an organization that supported January 6th defendants directly. He attended a fundraiser with Donald Trump at the Bedminster estate in New Jersey in support of these January 6th defendants. Ed Martin also worked a few cases for January 6th defendants, was named as a lawyer on record for, I believe, three of them at least. He had involvement, and now what you have is him being on both sides of the docket in these cases. It's really sent, I think, a chilling effect within the Justice Department to have him at the head of the US attorney's office.

Micah Loewinger: Just to spell out how bonkers the appointment of Ed Martin is. This week, we learned that he had dismissed a case against a January 6th defendant while Ed Martin was listed as one of the defendant's attorneys. That doesn't usually happen, right?

Ryan Reilly: It's very odd. Normally, that's something that the ethics office would have warned against or that someone would have sought advice about. That was a very extreme example, I think, of just the oddity of this altogether. He's someone who spoke, I should say, at the US Capitol on January 5th about the need to stop the steal and gave a very passionate speech.

Ed Martin: But remember, what they're stealing is not just an election, it's our future, and it's our republic. That's why we'll never stop. We'll never stop fighting because we will stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal.

Ryan Reilly: He was also on the grounds of the US Capitol on January 6th, although there's no evidence that he crossed any police lines or anything of that nature. He was on the grounds of the Capitol on January 6th and talked about how he thought it was like Mardi Gras. That tweet that he sent out at the time on the other side of the Capitol was when some of the absolute worst violence was taking place. That tweet was sent out right around the time that Ashli Babbitt was shot inside, but that's what he was representing, that this was Bourbon street.

Micah Loewinger: Then, after January 6th, he helped promote a bizarre conspiracy theory supporting the idea that the FBI had played some role in staging the insurrection.

Ryan Reilly: The person he identified as someone who apparently, according to surveillance video, appears to have helped construct this gallows.

Micah Loewinger: You're talking about the famous gallows that were photographed out front of the Capitol on January 6th.

Ryan Reilly: Correct, but then you have this idea that he floats out there, that because this guy he nicknamed Mr. Coffee, walked in the vague general direction of the FBI Washington Field Office, that in his mind that suggests that there's something nefarious going on.

Ed Martin: It's 6:45 or so in the morning. There are very few, if any, coffee spots open at that time of day. Luckily, the trench coated man I called, Mr. Coffee, he knows just where to go. He walks straight across the road and down the way to a little spot that he obviously knew directly across from the FBI building.

Micah Loewinger: Ed Martin, who again is now effectively overseeing what remains of the January 6th cases was a couple of years ago subpoenaed by the House January 6th Committee, which said that it had evidence that he was "involved in the logistical planning of the Stop the Steal rally on January 6th," and that he had also "paid costs associated with vendors hired for that event." He pled the fifth, right? He just ducked the whole thing.

Ryan Reilly: Yes. There was never really an interview with him. That was the case for a lot of people who ended up blowing these off. Now that you think about it, had there been some sort of motion or something to come out of that, that would have been something that theoretically would have been prosecuted by the office that he now heads.

Micah Loewinger: I'm curious to know what you think this means for the future of enforcement against domestic extremist groups.

Ryan Reilly: I don't think anyone really is going to want to touch them. I say that because I've spoken to people within law enforcement who say that's the case. I think that this could have a very huge impact on cases and whether or not they're pursued. If they're someone who is generally politically affiliated with Donald Trump. In terms of preventing incidents from taking place, I think the FBI is going to be off the playing field for the foreseeable future on this.

Micah Loewinger: Enrique Tarrio, the former head of the Proud Boys, who was sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy for his role on January 6th, was, of course, pardoned by Donald Trump on his first day back in office. He recently told Alex Jones that "trump literally gave me my life back," and he called for revenge.

Enrique Tarrio: The people who did this they need to feel the heat. They need to be put behind bars and they need to be prosecuted. They need to pay for what they did.

Micah Loewinger: Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, who was also convicted of seditious conspiracy and also set free by Donald Trump, has also been calling for retribution. These guys are out, they're emboldened. It feels hard to imagine these anti-government groups getting much of any scrutiny from the FBI or federal prosecutors over the next four years.

Ryan Reilly: It does. I just don't see that world existing because there's been a pretty clear message that's been sent. I think that those groups know that too. They know that there's sort of this protection over them now. I think that they know that they can flip the table a little bit on some of these agents who went after them. They've been very explicit about how they're going to pursue these individuals.

Micah Loewinger: Pursue individuals as in try to take them to court or what?

Ryan Reilly: Yes, or just like make their lives hell. I think that that's kind of part of it is the harassment mechanisms.

Micah Loewinger: There's so much happening at the federal government right now. There's so much news. It's frankly too much for anyone to follow. As somebody who covers the federal courts and these law enforcement agencies, why do you think listeners should be paying attention to what's happening here?

Ryan Reilly: It's not every day that Americans are typically interacting with the Justice Department, but it's something that deserves a tremendous amount of scrutiny because it just is different from a lot of institutions in government in that it has the power to cage people. It's where the rubber hits the road in terms of government power over individuals. There has been this widespread agreement that there's not supposed to be this direct political hand in prosecutions. We could be seeing a fundamental reshaping of what the Justice Department has looked like since the post-Watergate era.

Micah Loewinger: Ryan, thank you very much.

Ryan Reilly: Yes, thanks so much for taking the time.

Micah Loewinger: Ryan Reilly covers the Justice Department and federal law enforcement for NBC News and is author of the book Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice System.

[music]

Brooke Gladstone: Coming up, wither the Democrats.

Micah Loewinger: This is On the Media. This is On the Media. I'm Micah Loewinger.

Brooke Gladstone: I'm Brooke Gladstone. Teddy Roosevelt contained multitudes, some splendid, some dreadful, but he clearly understood one irrefutable American truth, that "no man is above the law and no man is below it. Nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it." Of course, since the supreme court ruled on July 1 last year that the president, when acting as president, actually was above the law, there's been some confusion over just how far that immunity goes.

What if President Donald Trump, say, fires fleets of legally protected federal workers or shutters independent agencies created by Congress or unlawfully creates a new agency to run a roughshod over the mall? What if he abrogates the right of birthright citizenship enshrined in the 14th Amendment? What if he freezes all federal funding he thinks he may have a problem with, thereby repudiating Congress's power of the purse, established by the founders as perhaps the most potent check on executive power we have? I guess we'll see. Some of these actions have been blocked by the courts, at least for now, and many more are being litigated. That last one, though, about congressional authority now that's a sticky wicket because as the violations mount, the Republican majority in Congress seems unruffled, even buoyant, while the other party, well--

Female Speaker 5: Democrats appear to be lost. The so-called resistance seems to lack any direction, any leader. The polls confirm that Americans agree. Quinnipiac shows record low approvals for the party at 31%.

Female Speaker 6: One party strategist told them Trump is eating us for lunch and, for the most part, we're letting him.

Female Speaker 7: It seems from the outside at least that the Democrats are still kind of licking their wounds from this last election.

Brooke Gladstone: CNBC on Tuesday.

Female Speaker 7: It's been difficult for us at times to get Democrats to come on the program to talk about it. Yesterday, we were turned down by several senators to respond to any of these things.

Brooke Gladstone: Now, in their defense, the president unleashed part of his so-called blitzkrieg of executive orders while the representatives were away in their districts. The mood has since changed.

Jamie Raskin: Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payment systems of the United States Department of Treasury, but you don't control the money of the American people. The United States Congress does that. I want to apologize. I want to say I'm sorry that you have to put up with this offensive [beep] coming out of this White House. This is a brazen attempt by a billionaire who nobody voted for to illegally and unconstitutionally steal from taxpayers so he can give himself a tax break.

Brian Schatz: Hey, I'm on my way to the Senate floor. We're going to have more than 35 United States senators on the Democratic side. Opposing Russ Vought's nomination. We're going to take the floor for 30 hours.

Brooke Gladstone: Russ Vought, who wrote the plan for dismantling much of the government known as Project 2025, said last year that they were already "writing the actual executive orders since signed by Trump." He said he wanted federal workers so villainized that they would be "put in trauma and not want to go to work." Senate Democrats spoke against his appointment from Wednesday afternoon well into Thursday to be on record and to delay his confirmation as director of the powerful Office of Management and Budget. They knew they would lose, but the symbolism seemed crucial for the folks at home.

It was pretty strong stuff for a party seemingly always in search of common ground, that mythical place, and hoarding their no votes on nominees like precious jewels to bestow only on the most dangerous, and not even then. But it was long past clear that reaching across the aisle would never yield a win. That within the majority party, there were some who, sensing even the faintest wisp of bipartisanship within its ranks, would cross themselves and shout unclean. So that being the case--

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: No Democrat should be voting to advance Trump's nominees while all of this stuff is going on.

Brooke Gladstone: New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: There has to be a political price to pay and we have a responsibility as a party to block everything that is happening while they're setting a literal match to the federal government.

Don Beyer: Yes. It's so upsetting, Brooke.

Brooke Gladstone: Don Beyer is a representative for Virginia. I spoke to him Thursday morning.

Don Beyer: In the first term, my sense was, even though he did some outrageous things when the courts said he couldn't, he obeyed them. If he doesn't obey them in this term, we come to a real constitutional crisis.

Brooke Gladstone: Tell me about the Democrats' current plan.

Don Beyer: I know in the House side that Hakeem Jeffries and his leadership team have done a very good job of articulating what our response is on a day-to-day basis.

Brooke Gladstone: His comments did not suggest that the Democrats were ready to go full on obstruction.

Don Beyer: That's true in terms of trying to shut down the House at every move, calling for adjournment votes, things like that.

Brooke Gladstone: That was exactly the plan that the Republicans had to obstruct the Affordable Care Act. If there had been as slim margins between the majority and the minority as there is now, they might have succeeded.

Don Beyer: I watched them do it all through the first two years of the Biden administration. I personally cast 5,000 proxy votes because we had to vote on every single little issue. It didn't stop us at all. We got the Inflation Reduction Act. We got the Chips and Science Act. We got the infrastructure bill. Got the American Rescue plan. It just wasted an enormous amount of time without doing anything to advance their agenda.

Brooke Gladstone: But it's not the same administration, it's not the same conference. If they see one side as the enemy and won't play according to the rules and the Democrats do, they're bringing, what do they say, a water pistol to a gunfight.

Don Beyer: Yes. At the same time, we don't want to be them. I can't speak for the whole caucus, I can't speak for Hakeem, but I do not want to be the kind of anti-public servant that an Elon Musk or Donald Trump is. I'm still here to be a good American citizen, to follow the law. If it comes to gumming up the works with motions to adjourn and the like, that's not where our leadership has taken us yet. I'm with them because I don't think it does anything. I want to do things that actually move the needle. The press conferences, the marches, the movements flooding blue sky and all social media, getting out there and carrying the word. Frankly, I don't think there are many people on C Span saying, "Oh, look, they've had another motion to adjourn." I think that's empty.

Brooke Gladstone: There's not an election for two years. The people can be out there, but ultimately their only recourse is to pressure you guys to slow down what appears to many people to be a fast moving coup where the courts are ignored, where the law is broken many times every day.

Don Beyer: Well, gumming up Congress, at least so far, isn't going to do anything.

Brooke Gladstone: Is it helpful to vote in extremely disquieting nominees?

Don Beyer: I'm in the House. I would have voted no on every single one of them. I'm very disappointed in the Republicans who had huge qualms and gave them up, anyway.

Brooke Gladstone: Some of the Democrats voted too.

Don Beyer: Which will be remembered.

Brooke Gladstone: What do you think is the tool that is going to be used most often that's in your toolkit?

Don Beyer: Reaching out to the public and telling the story? Do we pick our battles one thing at a time? That seemed to be in Vogue 10 days ago. Right now I think it's much more like we need to flood the zone the other way, calling out with anger and passion and eloquence all the bad stuff in every forum that we have. I've been out speaking every single night to the biggest groups I've seen in a long time. By the way, we haven't funded the government. The money runs out on March 14th. We're already over the debt ceiling limit. They need us on the House floor. We are going to be very, very strong in terms of making sure that whatever government Donald Trump wants to have, he can't have without our support.

Brooke Gladstone: There's been some commentary that this is an opportunity to alter the trajectory of the Democratic Party, which seems to be at a very low ebb in the public eye. Clearly there was a conflict between the old guard and the new that I think gummed up the campaign of Kamala Harris. That's my view. Do you think this is a moment to alter that trajectory to bring the Democratic party into the 21st century finally?

Don Beyer: I disagree with the perception. I think we've been very much in the 21st century. Don't forget we had eight wonderful years of Barack Obama and four years of Joe Biden that re-accomplished remarkable things.

Brooke Gladstone: All right, I will withdraw that, but the polls suggest that the Democrats are at the lowest ebb that it's been in a very, very long while.

Don Beyer: The biggest single reason is the cost of living, that the pandemic, inflation, made everything much more expensive for people. Couple that with no housing building for the last 10 or 12 years, I don't know whose fault that is. As with any trajectory change, it's going to be a million little changes on the part of Democratic parties, people who run for office, who focus on the working men and women and what it takes to get by. We still live in a world of enormous flux. People are feeling scared in many, many different ways, and we have to be the adults in the room who point out that the American dream can be real again, but it's not going to be real if we're doing the kinds of things that Donald Trump wants to do.

Brooke Gladstone: I hear what you're saying, and everyone is saying housing and inflation are the drivers, and that's what the polls say. I know that's all true. I just feel that there's a fundamental attention that was missing and that maybe it isn't entirely about cost of living, but maybe that's just the view from Brooklyn.

Don Beyer: Our income inequality is the worst it's been in the history of the nation. I think that is at the heart of so much unhappiness that American people feel. We have a top 10% that's wealthier than most of the history of mankind put together. We have to undo the oligarchy that we have right now. I think that is a compelling and true Democratic message.

Brooke Gladstone: So you're urging your fellow Democrats to use every legislative tool at your disposal? Just give me an idea of what those legislative tools are.

Don Beyer: Fighting back on keeping the government funded. By the way, we want the government to be funded, but we want it done with a recognition that they can't be breaking these laws all over the place and keeping the ability to pay our bills. If we can't pay our bills, the stock market goes to hell, our interest rates go through the ceiling.

Brooke Gladstone: And we can't pay our bills because of the freeze.

Don Beyer: For the freeze and for the debt ceiling, we've yet to dive into legislative issues committee by committee. There may be many ways there that in order for Republicans to get anything done, they're going to need our support. That's not so much a matter of gumming up the thing as it is demanding realistic concessions from the overreach that Donald Trump and Musk are doing right now.

Brooke Gladstone: Debating every amendment, she says hopefully.

Don Beyer: Yes, absolutely, of course.

Brooke Gladstone: Don Beyer, thank you very much.

Don Beyer: Brooke, thank you so much for having me on your show.

Brooke Gladstone: Don Beyer represents Virginia's 8th congressional district. This week, over a thousand people gathered outside the treasury in DC to protest Elon Musk's takeover of the federal government.

Chris Murphy: I don't know about you, but I think the United States Senate should vote for a single nominee that's going to participate in this fraud.

Brooke Gladstone: Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut was one of about a dozen lawmakers present.

Chris Murphy: When we open up the Senate every single morning, we don't pledge allegiance to the billionaires, we don't pledge allegiance to Elon Musk. We don't pledge allegiance to the creepy 22-year-olds working for Elon Musk.

Ezra Levin: When you're going and talking to your Democratic senator, you say, hey, imagine you are Mitch McConnell in the minority, and then do what that [beep] would do. That's what you're going to do.

Brooke Gladstone: Ezra Levin is the cofounder and coexecutive director of the nonprofit Indivisible.

Ezra Levin: Are we going to unify this Democratic opposition?

Crowd: Yes.

Ezra Levin: Are we going to stop what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing to our country?

Crowd: Yes.

Ezra Levin: Is Trump a king?

Crowd: No.

Ezra Levin: Oh, that's news to me.

Brooke Gladstone: Indivisible was one of the groups behind that rally and many others happening across the country this week. Levin says political change happens in three distinct stages.

Ezra Levin: There's an old saying, and it's kind of adapted from this, is first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. When it comes to pushing Democratic members of Congress to actually fight back, what I've seen is first they do ignore you. They say, "We're the adults in the room. We'll figure this out." They don't take action. The next step is public relations BS. Actions that look good to the casual observer, but it doesn't actually involve doing anything, somewhat uncomfortable, somewhat new, pushing the boundaries of what they're used to.

Brooke Gladstone: Last week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told Democratic governors that he couldn't force every senator in his party to oppose every Trump nominee. That his strategy would be to focus on key appointments. This week, he urged Democrats to vote against all of President Trump's nominees. A notable about face, although he also engaged in some empty PR.

Ezra Levin: On Tuesday, in the hours leading up to our rally, Leader Schumer and Leader Jeffries held a joint press conference in which they introduced a bill.

Chuck Schumer: We are going to do everything we can to sound the alarm and fight with everything we've got to stop this horrible, horrible act by this DOGE group. We call our legislation Stop the Steal.

Ezra Levin: Here's the thing about the Stop the Steal bill. Nobody with even a passing understanding or familiarity with how Congress works believes this bill is ever going to get a vote. Nobody believes if this bill got a vote, that it would pass. Nobody believes that if it passed that Donald Trump would sign it. Nobody believes that if he vetoed it, that Congress would override it. Nobody believes if Congress even succeeded in overriding it, that Trump would agree to implement it. What this bill does is say, "I'm Chuck Schumer. I'm Hakeem Jeffries. I care." I don't care that you care. I care that you're using the power available to you.

Brooke Gladstone: You launched Indivisible with your spouse, Leah Greenberg, in 2016, spurred in part by the actions of the new president, Donald Trump. You say that you were equally driven by the Democrats' reaction to the win.

Ezra Levin: There was, vividly, remember this, a interview with a future Trump appointee sometime in November of 2016, in which he was talking positively about the Japanese internment camps during World War II as an example for what they might do with Muslims, immigrants, and refugees. Obviously, we were shocked by that. Then the next day in the New York Times, we read an interview with incoming Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and his interview was just as shocking. He said, "Well, we lost elections. I guess we're going to have to find ways to make deals with Trump. I think we can work on infrastructure together."

There was this point where it looked like America's future would be one where the roads to its new internment camps were well paved with bipartisan dollars. That's what led us to write the Indivisible Guide. Part of it, yes, was focusing on just how unpopular and unjust the Trump agenda was, but half of it was focusing on how we can help Democrats find their spines to actually be the opposition party and fight back.

Brooke Gladstone: As Musk mounted his takeover of the federal government, you recall the memo circulated by the GOP, the minority party, back in 2009. It was a detailed plan to use whatever tools they had as the minority party to block the passing of the Affordable Care Act. Now, obviously, they didn't have the numbers to ultimately defeat it, but they really gave it the college try. What did the memo say?

Ezra Levin: This memo detailed the procedural tools. The minority has to slow down everything as much as possible so that the majority has fewer legislative days to use up. Maybe, just maybe, we can build up enough pressure to stop some of what they want to get done. The memo does not say there's a magic button to somehow win everything. What it says is there are procedural tools that the minority can use. It's things like the Senate depends on having a quorum. When you see a speech on the Senate floor, you might get a sense that that senator is talking to this full body of people. Nobody is in that chamber. But you know what the minority can do to be a real pain in the butt? They can say, "Hey, there's not a quorum here. You got to go get a quorum." Then all of those senators have to waltz over to the Senate chamber and be counted.

Brooke Gladstone: Talk about some of the other ways Democrats on the Hill can throw sand in the gas tank.

Ezra Levin: So unanimous consent, it's a feature of the Senate that says we are going to call for a unanimous agreement of every single one of the hundred senators, and if everybody's okay, we're going to move forward. If any senator declines to give that unanimous consent, then if the Senate wants to move forward on that, it's a huge pain in the butt.

Brooke Gladstone: Does it work that way for confirming nominees?

Ezra Levin: Nominees only require 50 votes. There are 53 Republican senators. The vice president can break a tie. That means if they muster 50 votes for a nominee, the vice president can come in and break the tie, and then that nominee gets confirmed. That's exactly what happened, for instance, for Defense Secretary Hegseth. Everything around that nomination, whether we're going into a session to consider votes at all, whether we are going to move forward and consider legislation in the future, whether we're going to consider amendments, all of those things do require unanimous consent.

Brooke Gladstone: You suggest, having worked on the Hill, that there's a different mindset for many people in the Democratic Party right now, a sense that handshake deals are how to get the job done, that being collegial is part of the culture of the Senate and was, but is no longer, and somehow they're still living in the Reagan era world.

Ezra Levin: As a Congressional House staffer, what I saw was some assumption on the Democratic side of the aisle that the Republicans were bargaining in good faith, that they weren't simply trying to obstruct. Now that we are in the minority, what I often see from Senate Democrats is some assumption that at some point Senate Republicans will listen to their better angels, that their buddies on the other side of the aisle will come to their senses and call into question what Trump or what Elon Musk are doing.

I think there's a really unhealthy mentality that is fed into the culture of the Senate. It looks something like this. We have to demonstrate that we're reasonable, that we're willing to cut deals. On one level, that's admirable, but the impact of that is to give cover to the very people who are trying to undermine our democracy. Take, for example, all of the Democratic votes for Rubio to be Secretary of State. It is Rubio who is overseeing the unconstitutional dismantling of USAID. What did Democrats get out of voting for Rubio to become Secretary of State? Did it win any voters over to our side? No. What it did was provide bipartisan cover to a Trump lackey who is currently engaged in heinous behavior and is empowered in part by the Democrats to do it.

The thing that frustrates me most of all is when I see senators give speeches, saying a coup is ongoing or we're living through a constitutional crisis. I agree with them. Why do their actions then not match up with what they're saying? 22 Senate Democrats voted for the Secretary of Veteran affairs that Trump nominated. This guy, Doug Collins. He's a MAGA Republican, and 22 Democrats voted for him. If you've got a Democratic senator, why aren't they doing what Brian Schatz is doing? Why aren't they doing what Lisa Blunt Rochester is doing? Why aren't they doing what Chris Murphy is doing?

Brooke Gladstone: Indivisible has a playbook for regular citizens that offers specific ways they can act on the state, the local and the national level to pressure their representatives. You wrote in that playbook that they need to remember Democrats are a skittish bunch and there's nothing like losing an election to plunge them into an extended depression that somehow ends with everybody forming reading groups to discuss Hillbilly Elegy. Your job is to interrupt this cycle as quickly as possible and push them back into fighting form.

Ezra Levin: I would love to take credit for that line. I co-wrote that with my spouse and coexecutive director Lee Greenberg. I believe Leah wrote that line and I approve. The how comes down to something we've talked about already, which is this idea of constituent power, this idea of what makes our democratic republic run and it is built on people power. It might not seem like that at times. It might seem so complex or big that us individually can't actually affect anything.

Let me tell you, I'm getting frantic calls from senators, representatives and their staff saying why are we getting so much incoming from our constituents now? Make it stop, please. What do you want us to do? I just saw Lisa Murkowski, the senator of Alaska, say the call volume right now, incoming to her office is 40 times what it was, 40 times. They are feeling it. I know it can feel impossible to move the United States Congress. How can anybody do that? The answer is no individual person can do that, but we together organizing locally, focused on our own elected officials, you're damn right we can do it. The reason why I know we can is because we already have.

Brooke Gladstone: Thank you so much.

Ezra Levin: Brooke, it's great talking to you. Let's talk again soon.

Brooke Gladstone: Ezra Levin is the cofounder and co executive director of Indivisible, a nonprofit that is working to elect progressive leaders and promote democracy.

Micah Loewinger: That's it for this week's show. On the Media is produced by Molly Rosen, Rebecca Clark-Callender, Candice Wong and Katerina Barton.

Brooke Gladstone: Our technical director is Jennifer Munson. Our engineer is Brendan Dalton. Eloise Blondiau is our senior producer and our executive producer is Katya Rogers. On the Media is a production of WNYC Studios. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Micah Loewinger: I'm Micah Loewinger.

 

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