Consider This from NPR - Connecting the dots on DOGE

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

It's been six months since President Trump first announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency initiative, which has dramatically shrunk parts of the federal government. And with so many individual stories about federal workers losing their jobs around the country, the big picture can sometimes look blurry.A team of NPR reporters has been looking at agencies — from food inspectors to nuclear scientists to firefighters and more — and today, we'll connect some of the dots on how DOGE cuts have impacted workers, and hear how Americans far beyond Washington may feel the effects of these cuts. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This week marks six months since President Trump introduced Americans to the four words that have helped define his second term, Department of Government Efficiency. They're working on efficiency among other things, and they're going to be saving a lot of money and making our country stronger and better. And they'll be coming out with individual reports, but a big one toward the end. It turned out to be a lot more than reports. With Elon Musk at the helm, Doge has dramatically shrunk huge parts of the federal government. It effectively shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provided food and medicine to some of the most vulnerable people around the world. Musk explained that move in a live stream on X. It became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we

have actually just a ball of worms. Then there was the deferred resignation program through the Office of Personnel Management. That offered some 2 million employees paid leave in exchange for quitting. The offer mirrored one Musk sent when he took over Twitter, down to the email subject line fork in the road. Some who didn't take the offer have since been fired. Exactly how many is unclear. In fact, there's a lot we still don't know about Doge's work.

Musk promised transparency. All of our actions are maximally transparent. In fact, I don't think there's been, I don't know of a case where an organization's been more transparent than the Doge organization. But Doge has offered little evidence to back up its claims of waste and fraud. Many of the savings it posted on its website have been misleading or just wrong.

And the Trump administration has fired some people whose job it was to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. Musk announced on an earnings call last month that he'll be spending less time on Doge to focus on running Tesla. The large slug of work necessary to get the Doge team in place and working in the government to get the financial house in order is mostly done. But the consequences of his chainsaw approach to the federal government are just beginning. Consider this.

Doge has cut parts of the government that reach far beyond Washington, D.C. to services that many Americans count on. We'll talk to three NPR reporters covering different pieces of that puzzle. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Consider This from NPR. There are so many individual stories about federal workers losing their jobs around the country that the big picture can sometimes look blurry.

Here at NPR, a team of reporters has been looking at agencies from food inspectors to nuclear scientists to firefighters and more. To connect the dots, we've invited three of our correspondents who've been out covering Doge. Kirk Ziegler was in New Mexico talking to Forest Service workers. Andrea Shue has talked to people at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Doge. Kirk Ziegler was in New Mexico talking to Forest Service workers. Andrea Shu has talked to people at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Jeff Brumfield has been reporting on government scientists and technical experts, including people responsible for nuclear weapons.

Good to have you all here. Hi, Ari. Good to be here. Hey, Ari. So to help us understand the big picture, will you each start by sharing a specific anecdote that you think captures the overall narrative of the last few months? Jeff, you want to go first? Sure.

So in the early days of all this, I was speaking to people at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is a sub department of the Department of Energy. They're the civilian agency that maintains and stores all the nuclear weapons when they're not on bombers and submarines and things. And they told me managers were given just 200 characters, not words, characters to justify why employees at the agency should not be fired. And these people have very technically complex jobs that are essential to national security.

And yet they tweet used to be 140 characters. The bosses had 200 characters, just a little more than what a tweet used to be to explain why somebody handling nuclear weapons should keep their job. Exactly. Exactly. And they just felt it was an impossible task. Kirk Andrea. Yeah, Ari, I've been talking to people at the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. These are the people who make sure invasive pests and diseases, plants don't enter the country, and they help out when a farmer calls and says, you know, my cattle are sick, what's going on? And they also help with trade, making sure that livestock going out of the

country has all the health inspections it needs and making sure food, mangoes, produce coming into the country, into supermarkets, is free of disease. So this agency has seen about 1,300 some people since January take this deferred resignation program or this fork in the road. This was the offer to resign your job

and get your pay and benefits through September, but you're basically being paid not to work, to leave the government. And now we're learning that the USDA is trying to rehire people to do some of these jobs. The Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, was asked about this on the Hill last week. Here's an exchange that she had

with Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington. We are actively looking and recruiting to fill those positions that are integral to the efforts and the key front lines. So you let people go and you're looking for new people to fill the positions that they had experienced yet? We're having those discussions right now. We are working with all of you. And you know, that's a question that a lot of these workers who took the deferred resignation offer are asking too. I mean, including some, many of them who didn't want to leave their jobs.

They felt forced to leave because they were being bombarded with these messages saying, you know, there's this offer, we're making this available to you. And if you don't take it, you may lose your job anyway. You know, there's going to be downsizing at the USDA, we're reducing the size of the workforce, we're trying to consolidate functions. And so a lot of people told me that they decided to take this offer because they felt there was no good option. They couldn't get any kind of assurance

that their jobs, many of you know, who felt were mission critical that their jobs would be secure. I mean, Trump's director of Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vogt, has said that traumatizing bureaucrats is part of the goal, that he wants them to feel targeted so that they're more likely to leave. Kirk, does what Andrea and Jeff are describing ring true to the people you've spoken with and the reporting you've done?

It does, and to zero in a little bit on what Andrea is saying, in the USDA, it's a massive federal agency and underneath the USDA is the US Forest Service, which is often dubbed the Fire Service. They're the lead agency for firefighting and there's a lot of uncertainty about restructuring there. It's unclear exactly how many people were riffed or reduction in forest. Back in February.

Officially the agency is telling us 2,000 or so forest service employees. The union is telling us it's higher than that. And the Trump administration is maintaining that no wildland firefighting positions were cut. But that's not really the whole picture because many people may have switched positions and then were technically on probation status and they're actually veterans of the agency, but they hold these red cards which allow them to more or less drop their day job and respond to major wildland fires.

And it is really not clear coming into the summer fire season how much these agencies are staffed and how much these crews are staffed. How much are you seeing the backtracking that Andrea described of people getting fired and rehired or taking the buyout and then those positions being filled again? Well in New Mexico I spoke with the wildlife biologist Kayla whose full name we aren't using because she fears retaliation. She is still employed by the agency but in February initially lost her job and then a court case put her back in and she is still employed by the agency. But in February, initially lost her job. And then a court case put her back in.

And she says it's just very much been an emotional roller coaster and very hard to work and keep focused on the job when you're kind of walking around, not knowing what's going to happen next. And just a lot of work isn't getting done, she says. And then it's hard to proceed with a lot of the things we're doing because a lot of funds isn't getting done, she says. And then it's hard to proceed with a lot of the things we're doing because a lot of funds are still frozen.

So it's kind of, we're in limbo right now and it's just a difficult time. And I should say Ari, this is Jeff at the nuclear agency, there was a quick reversal without any court cases. They realized very quickly that they needed these workers and it was pretty embarrassing. They had to rehire them almost as quickly as they fired them. They were calling them on a weekends, managers were looking for personal cell phone numbers and it was a real mess and it left them very, very demoralized, although many of those workers are now back at the job. It's been nearly impossible to get a comprehensive view

of how many people in the federal government have lost their jobs in part because of all of the back and forth roller coaster that you're describing. But can you say broadly how all of this is likely to affect the services that Americans rely on from the government, whether it's mental health care for veterans or air traffic control? Yeah, Ari, I'll jump in here.

This is Andrea again. You know, I think that what I'm hearing from workers is that Americans may not be thinking about, you know, the person checking to make sure the produce they're buying in the supermarket is, you know, free of disease, but these are services that Americans, you know, have come to rely on. And they, you know, free of disease, but these are services that Americans, you know, have come to rely on.

And they, you know, describe a situation in which some of these services are going to be delayed or disrupted. I mean, Secretary Rollin said that people in key positions, you know, were not being allowed to leave the government. I mean, people dispute that. But still, when you have, as Kirk mentioned, like a lot of support people leaving, you know, example I was given is if there's a, you know, a technician who goes and responds when there's, you know, some kind of sickness seen on a farm, well, the person that books that person's travel, who makes sure they have everything they need to go do that job, that person may have left. And so there's just a delay in getting people out there and getting people to respond and provide the services that farmers and consumers and just Americans in general have come to

expect. Ari, I would just include, this is Kirk again, the headlines are often about the big fires in the West, but remember the West in particular is full of public lands and national parks. And I think it's going to become a little bit more clear in the weeks ahead as the summer season approaches. This will start hitting home and affecting everyday Americans and others when they visit national parks or national forests and see the work that hasn't been going on. The people who were cut from river permits, trail crews, hours at national park visitor centers, when there's a lot of confusion about who's supposed to be doing what and having multiple people maybe fill the roles of other people who

were laid off, you're gonna see that in the services that these public lands offer Americans. It's a big part of the economy, particularly in the West. As you all know DOGE stands for Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk, who runs the effort, along with his boss, President Trump, has said this is eliminating waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars. Can you say to what extent that's true? Yeah, Ari, I heard a lot of questions about this from the people at the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, including from one person who took the fork in the road,

took the deferred resignation offer. And then, you know, on their very first day on administrative leave, their colleagues started calling them and saying, you know, your job is on this list of open positions that, you know, people are being asked to apply for internally because it needs to be filled. And so they said, why, you know,

I'm now being paid to not work while they're trying to fill my job. They said, you know, where's the efficiency in that? And on top of that- They're paying two people for one person's job. Yes, exactly. And salary and benefits. But on top of that, you know, the people I've spoken with at this Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service

really take issue with this because their salaries are mostly paid for through fees. So these are fees that importers pay, people, you know, who are exporting things out of the country, they're paying the government for these services. And this is true at a lot of different agencies too, like the Patent and Trademark Office, people who are applying for patents pay fees, and that pays for a lot of the work. And so they're wondering, you know, why are we experiencing these deep cuts when the savings really are not going to the taxpayers?

Soterios Johnson And of course, just a reminder that the federal workforce, the civilian federal workforce is actually a very small percentage of the overall federal budget. You know, most of the money that goes out the door each year goes to defense, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. So how much you can save with all these cuts is questionable. This is all on hold for the moment. Judge in San Francisco pressed pause on the government restructuring. And so does that mean the end of Doge?

Where does that leave things? Yeah, Ari, I've been covering that case. And I mean, like with all of these court cases, you know, this is gonna take some time. So you're right. A coalition of groups sued basically saying President Trump doesn't have the authority to direct, you know, this kind of wholesale restructuring of the federal government, all these mass layoffs that, you know, he can't do this without authority

from Congress. And the judge essentially agreed and pressed pause on this. Now the government is appealing that decision. In the meantime, you know, these plans have been drawn up and it's left a lot of people in just a state of great uncertainty. You know, I know there are people who thought they were being laid off, went out, looked for new jobs, maybe had a couple interviews, maybe even found a job. And now they're being told, well, maybe you won't be fired after all. So it's just left people in a real state of uncertainty right now. Andrea Hsu, Kirk Ziegler and Jeff Brumfield are three of the NPR reporters who've been covering the reduction of the federal workforce

across the United States. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ari. You're welcome, Ari. This episode was produced by Alejandro Marquez-Hanse and Connor Donovan with audio engineering by Simon Laszlo Jansen. It was edited by Ashley Brown. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan.

And thanks to our Consider This Plus listeners who support the work of NPR journalists and help keep public radio strong. Supporters also hear every episode without messages from sponsors. Learn more at plus.npr.org. from sponsors. Learn more at plus.npr.org. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.