The New Yorker Radio Hour - We the Builders: Federal Employees Stand Up to DOGE; Plus, Celebrating 100 Years: Michael Cunningham on “Brokeback Mountain”

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Across the federal government, the number of federal workers fired under Donald Trump and DOGE currently stands at over a hundred thousand. Some of those workers have turned to a website called We the Builders. It was created by federal workers associated with the U.S. Digital Service as a resource for employees who have lost their jobs, who are afraid of losing their jobs, or who have a whistleblower complaint.  The Radio Hour’s Adam Howard spoke with two of the site’s creators: Kate Green, who recently left the federal government for a job in the private sector, and a web developer who identifies himself as Milo – using a pseudonym, since he is still employed in the government.  “Both the beauty and the tragedy is that the work the government does is largely invisible,” as Milo put it. “You don't always know that it is USDA inspectors who are working in the slaughterhouses, who are making sure that work is being done in a safe and sanitary fashion … But they give a damn about making sure that food is safe. If that goes away, that's not immediately visible to people. And they don't necessarily know that these people have lost their jobs or that food is going to be less safe until people get hurt or worse. And so, we want to make sure that people start to understand what the cuts in these programs actually mean.”Plus, this year, The New Yorker’s centennial, we’re revisiting some classics from the magazine’s past with a series called Takes. The novelist Michael Cunningham was already in his forties when Annie Proulx’s short story “Brokeback Mountain”—about two young men working as shepherds who unexpectedly fall in love—was published. “The New Yorker was not the first big-deal magazine to run a story about gay people. It wasn’t, like, ‘Oh, my God, a story, finally!,’ ” Cunningham recalls. But it made a huge impression nevertheless. “It was a story in The New Yorker about two gay men that was first and foremost a love story. . . . I didn't want to just read it; I wanted to absorb this story in a more lasting way.”  Excerpts of Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” were read by Monica Wyche. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We heard in our last episode from Attul Gawande, who was a senior figure at USCID until days before the Trump administration began dismantling it and throwing it into a wood chipper. Across the federal government, the number of federal workers fired under Trump, this is reported by CNN, stands at over 100. thousand. Some of those workers have turned to a website called We the Builders. It's a resource for federal employees who've lost their jobs or who are afraid of losing them or who have a whistleblower complain or who don't know how to follow conflicting instructions about Musk's email demands. We The Builders was created by federal workers associated with the U.S. Digital Service, which has now

been absorbed into Doge. Two of the site's creators are Kate Green, who recently left for a job in the private sector, and the man will call Milo, who's still employed in the government. He asked us to use an alias. They spoke with our producer, Adam Howard. So, Kate, let me start with you. If you could explain what We the Builders is and how it came into fruition. So We The Builders is a way for people who are federal workers to get their message out, to explain what's happening to people who have less access.

like this is why this matters this is why this is dangerous and that idea coalesced along with another idea that we were floating which was to tell stories directly of federal workers like humans of New York but for federal workers and I was like wait

could we do a platform to explain these things to share it with the public share with reporters share with activists to help them to figure out their messaging what the next steps are. I love the idea of explaining technical concepts to everybody so that it's demystified. You both worked at USDS or the US Digital Service, and this has now been co-opted into Doge.

I wondered if you could both speak a little bit about what the mandate of that department was when it was originally founded, and in what ways has Doge sort of departed from that? So I think initially the mandate was to just go in and fix health care.gov because that was when it was created. And there was this kind of notion that USDS was digital firefighters, or you'll sometimes hear people say like digital SWAT team. The idea being that if a project was in trouble, if there was some kind of thing that needed immediate attention from people with a lot of experience, in Silicon Valley or in the world of IT outside of government. They could parachute in, work on solving those immediate problems, getting the project back on track.

And so, like, VA, for example, is one of my favorites. When USDA kind of initially started working with them, there was some real challenges with veterans getting the benefits that they're entitled to. And USDA did a really good job of documenting the chance. challenges that veterans were experiencing and getting some real change to happen within the VA itself. So I think that that was the direction that USDS was heading when Doge arrived. When you're in the private sector and you're rolling a social media app, you can just keep shipping code every five minutes, every 10 minutes.

I specialize in helping people do that. But when you're in government, you can't just keep shipping and experimenting directly on people without taking great care. And making that a piece of how the work gets done makes it look slower. But in the end, it gives us a product that people love, that people, okay, I'll take it back. They may not love it. Nobody likes filling out a government form. But it's something that's usable.

It's understandable. And it's about capacity building and culture shifting. And it usually looks slower than what we're saying. seeing right now. Now, the public and I think a lot of Congress doesn't have a lot of transparency into what Doge is up to. But, Milo, you are aware of some face-to-face confrontations that people have had with Doge teens, I guess. I'm curious if you could share some of the experiences that people have been having. The folks who are working for the Doge side of USDS, they called all of the

original or existing USDSers into meetings. And they were supposed to be like 15 minute long meetings. And they felt a little bit like an interrogation for the USDS folks, where they were being asked

to talk about what work they were doing. Why was it important? Was it mission critical? But the real challenge was that the Doge folks who came in did not identify themselves. They didn't explain who they were. They often were wearing, if the meetings were even in person, and some of them were not,

the Doge folks were wearing White House visitor badges, but were saying things and acting as if they were the supervisors for USDA folks. and it felt very confrontational, and it felt very kind of ugly. And the people who work at USDS take great pride in the work that they've done. But it's also really hard to kind of condense something that you've done into 15 minutes

or into a few sound bites. And the Doge folks weren't interested in learning about that complexity. They weren't interested in getting into the details. They just wanted to have some kind of, like, snappy two or five bullet explanation of this is what I've done in the last couple of weeks. And that's not how USDS has ever operated. We've often said the most good for the most people who need it the most. And when you have that mentality, that sometimes means that you're

navigating through multiple different ways to accomplish things. But it doesn't sound good as a bullet point. This kind of treatment that Milo's describing, is that dissuading people from getting involved in this kind of work going forward? I don't think want is in the equation. It's whether they feel safe to, whether they feel they'll be able to. I've heard more than once lately. I'm waiting until it's time to go back in. You know, I'm biding my time and finding other ways to help. state governments, local governments right now are asking for us to come over. Not us like the two of us, but us were at large. We're seeing a lot of my state, Maryland, we want you. Please come work for us. But I also need to call out some of my colleagues who are still there and intend to stay. Like,

what respect I have for them. I'm sure you've seen there reports that Trump may be starting to reign Elon Musk in. or at least allowing the cabinet members to make more of the decisions. Is there any sense that this whole spree of firings might be winding down? I don't think it's done. I think that it's going to come in waves. There is still talk of a reduction in force, which is sometimes referred to as a RIF. So there was talk about executing a RIF at GSA and firing 90% of the people who work there. There's talk about doing the same thing at SSA and firing 50% of the people who work.

So I think that... That's the Social Security Administration. Yes. Yes. I think that people at these agencies still believe there's a strong chance that they are going to be fired. And so to kind of go back to the question of, should people stay put? I don't know. I think that people really are afraid.

I think that people are fearful that any day that they log in, there's going to be an email that says, like, today is the day that your agency, your office, your small team has been swept up in a reduction in force, and you no longer have a job here. And I have heard it happen firsthand to people at agencies. Sometimes they come in overnight, sometimes they come in first thing in the morning, there's no rhyme or reason, and in many cases managers don't even know that it's going to happen.

They're just learning at the same time as their employees that their whole entire team is being shuttered. And what do you make of the assertion that's been made by the former Social Security Administrator, Martin O'Malley that there may actually be an interruption in service, like people not getting their checks and that sort of thing. Is that plausible to you? Sure. At this point, I think anything is plausible. There are many systems within not just Social Security, but Medicaid, Medicare, and they are designed and maintained by dedicated, serious, thoughtful professionals. But if you are going in and you're just turning things off or you're changing code or even changing data without understanding what is going to happen in the system, then you could very well disrupt the ability for those systems to operate and function. Medicare and Medicaid, which we refer to as CMS.

If you look at the CMS systems, if those systems go down. for a day, you're already talking about the chance for a recession. So we don't take this kind of stuff lately, and we never have. I described it earlier today to somebody as like playing Jenga, the game where you stack up the blocks. And if you just start pulling things out without being cautious, you don't know what's going to happen. And unplugging stuff, plugging stuff in to these systems introduces a lot of risk. This is people's livelihoods. They're access to disaster recovery, health care, payments for their children.

There are true consequences that are life or death. We talked about Social Security benefits. I have two young children. I'm very worried about food safety. Do you think when more Americans start to feel the impact of these cuts that might galvanize people to be more sort of proactive? Yeah. I think it's three prongs, judicial Congress. And the third is the people. We saw it in 2020 with George Floyd and that's starting a movement that stopped too soon. And we've seen it across the world over and over again. I can't say I know when that will happen and what will be the tipping point. But that's part of how we fight back. I think that that's probably going to happen, but I think in a lot of cases, both the beauty and the tragedy is that the work the government does is largely invisible. You don't always know that it is USDA inspectors who are working in the slaughterhouses, who are making sure that work is being done in a safe and sanitary fashion.

These people are oftentimes highly educated. They have doctorates and veterinary medicine. If they went into the private sector, they could probably be earning two or three times what they get working for USDA, for example. But they give a damn about making sure that food is safe. And so if that goes away, that's not immediately visible to people. And they don't necessarily know that these people have lost their jobs

or that food is going to be less safe until people get hurt or worse. And so we want to make sure that people start to understand what the cuts in these programs actually means. Can I add one thing? Sure. One of the things that we're starting to see is Doge talking about building new things. And let me be clear, if they're going to build things that are going to increase access to services that Americans have paid taxes for are entitled to. I'm all for that. But we need to be

paying attention to where they're focusing and what they're doing and making sure that we are speaking up and holding them accountable. Thank you guys so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Kate Green is a software engineer in the private sector, and Milo, he's using an alias to protect his identity, currently works in the federal government. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. There's more to come today, so please stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Ang Lee's film of Brokeback Mountain came out 20 years ago, and it starred Heath Ledger and Jake Gillenall. It spurred any number of controversies, particularly whether homophobia had robbed the film of the Best Picture Oscar that year. Many moviegoers didn't know that Brokeback Mountain had originally appeared in The New Yorker as a short story by Annie Prue,

in 1997. This year, which is the New Yorker's centennial year, we're revisiting some classics from the magazine's past. The novelist Michael Cunningham was already in his 40s when Brokeback Mountain was published, but it made a huge impression on him. What I remember about the first time I read Brokeback Mountain was reading Brokeback Mountain in the New Yorker.

Now, even the New Yorker was not the first. first sort of big deal magazine to run a story about gay people. It wasn't like, oh my God, a story finally. But it was a story in The New Yorker about two gay men that was first and foremost a love story. What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand. Was the time that distant Summeran broke back, when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger? I didn't want to just read it. I want to absorb this story in a more lasting way.

I don't think I literally thought of having it tattooed under my body, but the idea of loving a story so much that you want to actually physically incorporate it. What happens in the story is these two young, I don't even know if you want to call them cowboys. And we say cowboys in love. They wish they were cowboys. They're not even. They're barely 20. They're just itinerants.

They have no money, very little education, no luck. They are just headed nowhere. They're not even headed nowhere fast. They're headed nowhere slowly. And they get, oh, I'm sure there are worse jobs. But one of the worst jobs in the world, which is essentially being stranded on a mountain called Brokeback Mountain where their only job is to stand there, sit there, stand up, sit down again,

and make sure no coyotes eat the flocks of sheep. That's their job. And they fall violently in love with each other. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis' breath came slow and quiet. He hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight. And Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity.

And standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep, but something else drowsy and trance. until Ennis, dredging up a rusty but still usable phrase from the childhood time before his mother died, said, Time to hit the hay cowboy. I got to go. Come on. You're sleeping on your feet like a horse. And gave Jack a shake, a push, and went off into the darkness. Those sort of farewell lines, time to hit the hay cowboy. are taken from, and as a barely adequate mother, who would just say them off the top of her head

because you have to say something to your kid to get him to go to bed. And the idea that they transformed into something genuinely comforting and connecting, the idea that that which we say off, handedly might live on for decades, and our grown-up gay son might actually be able to use it to be some kind of comfort to his sluffer wharf. There's a great story that I believe to be true.

Brokeback Mountain, the story in The New Yorker, was made into a, movie, which turned out to be a huge movie, and everyone's bet for the Oscar, with Jake Gillinghall and Heath Ledger. And, you know, Annie wasn't involved at all in the shooting. She didn't go to the set. It was finally time for her to actually see the finished movie and saw it, and was pleased with it. But she said, those boys are too pretty.

She said, I get it, of course. This is how these movies get made. But Jack and Ennis, in my mind, are just regular guys. And part of, she didn't say this, I'm saying this, but part of what is so remarkable about the story that they could not put in the movie or not would have made the movie at all is these guys aren't beauties.

These guys aren't heroes. They're only heroes because they are able to fall in love. Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it.

Even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face, because he did not want to see or feel that it was Jack, he held. And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that. Let be. Let be. Michael Cunningham, speaking about Annie Prue's story, Brokeback Mountain, which appeared in The New Yorker. Excerpts were read for us by Monica Weich. Michael Cunningham's novels include The Hours,

and most recently, day. We're celebrating the New Yorker's centennial this year with a series called Takes, and you can find it at new yorker.com slash 100, the numeral 100. And you can also subscribe to the New Yorker at New Yorker.com as well. Recently, we published a story in The New Yorker

about birth rates plummeting around the world. It's a fascinating and troubling piece by staff writer Gideon Lewis Krauss. Gideon talks about his reporting on the new episode of Radio Lab. which is about growth and how we shouldn't take it for granted. It's definitely worth checking out.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Toon Yards with additional music by Louis Mitchell.

This episode was produced by Max Bolton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul and Ursula Summer with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barrage, Victor Gwan and Alejandra Deccat.

And we had help this week from Jonathan Mitchell. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.