Andrew Prokop

I'm Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent, Vox, covering politics.

I'm Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent, Vox, covering politics.

Time flew. I didn't really realize that it was the year 2028.

Time flew. I didn't really realize that it was the year 2028.

I've been thinking about it as I tried to, you know, rise above the day-to-day headlines and focus on the recurring stories, things where big things have happened already that have made a difference. And I think there are really four stories of that nature so far. The first is the economy and tariffs.

I've been thinking about it as I tried to, you know, rise above the day-to-day headlines and focus on the recurring stories, things where big things have happened already that have made a difference. And I think there are really four stories of that nature so far. The first is the economy and tariffs.

The second, I would say, is immigration, as Trump attempts to impose his mass deportation agenda, as he is making the U.S. a less welcoming place for foreigners generally. All sorts of big, high-profile battles and showdowns, and we're probably just at the beginning of that.

The second, I would say, is immigration, as Trump attempts to impose his mass deportation agenda, as he is making the U.S. a less welcoming place for foreigners generally. All sorts of big, high-profile battles and showdowns, and we're probably just at the beginning of that.

The third, I would say, is Elon Musk and Doge and this general agenda of kind of dismantling government, cutting government spending.

The third, I would say, is Elon Musk and Doge and this general agenda of kind of dismantling government, cutting government spending.

firing federal workers. But the fourth, I think, and one in which in some ways is the most ominous, is what I view as Trump's agenda of retribution.

firing federal workers. But the fourth, I think, and one in which in some ways is the most ominous, is what I view as Trump's agenda of retribution.

He has been more willing than any other president in recent memory to use the power of the federal government against people who he views as his political enemies or people who are viewed as being on the left.

He has been more willing than any other president in recent memory to use the power of the federal government against people who he views as his political enemies or people who are viewed as being on the left.

Well, he said different things at different times. There were some moments. I remember one moment when he was on Fox News and the host was basically begging him to say, I'm not going to seek retribution against my political enemies. My question is a very serious one.

Well, he said different things at different times. There were some moments. I remember one moment when he was on Fox News and the host was basically begging him to say, I'm not going to seek retribution against my political enemies. My question is a very serious one.

And I think he has chosen pretty much a maximally aggressive course as compared to, you know, all of the possibilities that had been expected as to how far he could go on this.

And I think he has chosen pretty much a maximally aggressive course as compared to, you know, all of the possibilities that had been expected as to how far he could go on this.

Well, he's gone after a lot of people involved with the Biden administration, you know, Biden himself, several of his top officials.

Well, he's gone after a lot of people involved with the Biden administration, you know, Biden himself, several of his top officials.

He's gone after people who are involved in sort of the legal resistance against Trump or were involved in the cases that were about investigating or indicting Trump. But he's also gone after some of his own people or people who used to be some of his people.

He's gone after people who are involved in sort of the legal resistance against Trump or were involved in the cases that were about investigating or indicting Trump. But he's also gone after some of his own people or people who used to be some of his people.

Then there's the case of Mike Pompeo, who was Trump's secretary of state in his first term. He seemed to be in line for another top appointment as recently as perhaps October 2024. But somehow people behind the scenes convinced Trump that Pompeo was somehow against him.

Then there's the case of Mike Pompeo, who was Trump's secretary of state in his first term. He seemed to be in line for another top appointment as recently as perhaps October 2024. But somehow people behind the scenes convinced Trump that Pompeo was somehow against him.

And then suddenly during the transition and at the beginning of the administration, we see these personal public attacks on Pompeo and then yanking his security details. a top aide associated with Pompeo, Brian Hook, as well. Someone who was on Trump's State Department transition team before suddenly being kind of penalized by Trump's retaliation.

And then suddenly during the transition and at the beginning of the administration, we see these personal public attacks on Pompeo and then yanking his security details. a top aide associated with Pompeo, Brian Hook, as well. Someone who was on Trump's State Department transition team before suddenly being kind of penalized by Trump's retaliation.

So he's really sort of used it, you know, against Democrats, against his critics, but also people on his own side who he feels like stepped out of line in some way or demonstrated insufficient loyalty.

So he's really sort of used it, you know, against Democrats, against his critics, but also people on his own side who he feels like stepped out of line in some way or demonstrated insufficient loyalty.

oh, this is extremely unusual. It's unprecedented as far as I know. It's extremely petty. The justification that they give is, oh, this is expensive and we don't want to fund it. But I mean, that's just silly. It's a rounding error in expense. It's just like a personal form of payback that's like, hey, if you step one toe out of line, I'm not going to make sure that

oh, this is extremely unusual. It's unprecedented as far as I know. It's extremely petty. The justification that they give is, oh, this is expensive and we don't want to fund it. But I mean, that's just silly. It's a rounding error in expense. It's just like a personal form of payback that's like, hey, if you step one toe out of line, I'm not going to make sure that

a hostile foreign power doesn't assassinate you. I'm going to, you know, leave you open to that possibility. I'm not doing anything for you.

a hostile foreign power doesn't assassinate you. I'm going to, you know, leave you open to that possibility. I'm not doing anything for you.

Elite universities were kind of in right wing thinking, were basically deemed of certain of Trump's top donors, the center of wokeness. Like they were what unleashed wokeness on society. Right wing activists like Christopher Ruffo want to really kind of smash the universities.

Elite universities were kind of in right wing thinking, were basically deemed of certain of Trump's top donors, the center of wokeness. Like they were what unleashed wokeness on society. Right wing activists like Christopher Ruffo want to really kind of smash the universities.

But of course, the public universities under left-wing bureaucratic rule are hostile to open inquiry, hostile to civic debate. To really go after, as we've seen Harvard and this belief that the universities are the power centers of the left. And if you can...

But of course, the public universities under left-wing bureaucratic rule are hostile to open inquiry, hostile to civic debate. To really go after, as we've seen Harvard and this belief that the universities are the power centers of the left. And if you can...

take away their research funding, if you can threaten their tax-exempt status, if you can threaten all kinds of other consequences, you will force them to behave in ways that are more accommodating to the right.

take away their research funding, if you can threaten their tax-exempt status, if you can threaten all kinds of other consequences, you will force them to behave in ways that are more accommodating to the right.

So this is more related to kind of the prosecutions and investigations of Donald Trump, which often involved certain people who either used to be or are at these law firms. And so I think he has some resentment about that. And then there's also, again, there's this right-wing agenda, activist agenda as well, where they argue that, oh, these big law firms are kind of

So this is more related to kind of the prosecutions and investigations of Donald Trump, which often involved certain people who either used to be or are at these law firms. And so I think he has some resentment about that. And then there's also, again, there's this right-wing agenda, activist agenda as well, where they argue that, oh, these big law firms are kind of

in their own way, centers of progressive activism as well in what's known as the pro bono work that they offer to do for various causes. So, you know, you have this Trump effort to kind of punish these big law firms. And as we saw in universities as well, of kind of deals or agreements in which they say, oh, OK, we will do these things differently.

in their own way, centers of progressive activism as well in what's known as the pro bono work that they offer to do for various causes. So, you know, you have this Trump effort to kind of punish these big law firms. And as we saw in universities as well, of kind of deals or agreements in which they say, oh, OK, we will do these things differently.

We will pledge this amount of pro bono work or money to these causes that Trump likes and so on.

We will pledge this amount of pro bono work or money to these causes that Trump likes and so on.

The president can do a lot of things that with his authority that he perhaps due to older notions of decorum or fairness or ethics that seem out of date in this administration that he would not have previously done. But they're also just doing a lot of stuff that seems completely illegal. And so why not both?

The president can do a lot of things that with his authority that he perhaps due to older notions of decorum or fairness or ethics that seem out of date in this administration that he would not have previously done. But they're also just doing a lot of stuff that seems completely illegal. And so why not both?

They're they're pursuing both and they're going to see what sticks because they fundamentally view politics and the purpose of government as about punishing their enemies. And which in this case, they've defined so broadly as to define like as to encompass all sorts of liberal or left leaning institutions, as well as the specific people and issues.

They're they're pursuing both and they're going to see what sticks because they fundamentally view politics and the purpose of government as about punishing their enemies. And which in this case, they've defined so broadly as to define like as to encompass all sorts of liberal or left leaning institutions, as well as the specific people and issues.

groups that had that ever run afoul of Donald Trump personally.

groups that had that ever run afoul of Donald Trump personally.

Donald Trump said he'd end the war in Ukraine in his first 24 hours in office. He did not. He also said he'd immediately slash grocery prices. Yet my eggs keep costing more, Donald. But he has delivered on a bunch of other promises. If you heard yesterday's Today Explained, you know the pardons are flowing as are the deportations, and he's really shaking up the federal government.

Donald Trump said he'd end the war in Ukraine in his first 24 hours in office. He did not. He also said he'd immediately slash grocery prices. Yet my eggs keep costing more, Donald. But he has delivered on a bunch of other promises. If you heard yesterday's Today Explained, you know the pardons are flowing as are the deportations, and he's really shaking up the federal government.

So the USDS is the United States Digital Service. And unlike Doge, which a lot of people know because it's got a very famous guy in charge and also because it's a meme coin, I imagine most people haven't actually heard of the US Digital Service, which is maybe part of the problem. What were y'all doing and why didn't people know about it if they didn't?

So the USDS is the United States Digital Service. And unlike Doge, which a lot of people know because it's got a very famous guy in charge and also because it's a meme coin, I imagine most people haven't actually heard of the US Digital Service, which is maybe part of the problem. What were y'all doing and why didn't people know about it if they didn't?

So is Doge, which is this new effort, the Department of Government Efficiency, just like a USDS 2.0? Is it literally going to be some of the same people? Or is this an entirely new outfit trying to reach the same end, more or less?

So is Doge, which is this new effort, the Department of Government Efficiency, just like a USDS 2.0? Is it literally going to be some of the same people? Or is this an entirely new outfit trying to reach the same end, more or less?

The other thing we know, which we've covered on this show, is that Elon Musk, at least, and formerly Vivek Ramaswamy, said that they aimed to cut $2 trillion worth of federal agencies, federal workers. When you heard that number, as someone who's been in this work before, what did you make of it?

The other thing we know, which we've covered on this show, is that Elon Musk, at least, and formerly Vivek Ramaswamy, said that they aimed to cut $2 trillion worth of federal agencies, federal workers. When you heard that number, as someone who's been in this work before, what did you make of it?

Because our colleague Dylan Matthews, who helped us cover that news, said the betting money is they don't get anywhere close.

Because our colleague Dylan Matthews, who helped us cover that news, said the betting money is they don't get anywhere close.

Today Explained, Sean Ramos from here once again with Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent at Vox. Andrew, we've seen lots of pardons. We've seen deportation. How is Trump, too, doing so far on reshaping the federal government?

Today Explained, Sean Ramos from here once again with Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent at Vox. Andrew, we've seen lots of pardons. We've seen deportation. How is Trump, too, doing so far on reshaping the federal government?

Let's expedite the process for them. I don't know if Uncle Elon listens, but, I mean, if you could offer him any advice, maybe you already have. What would you tell him as he's embarking on this, his first major government venture?

Let's expedite the process for them. I don't know if Uncle Elon listens, but, I mean, if you could offer him any advice, maybe you already have. What would you tell him as he's embarking on this, his first major government venture?

Jennifer Palka, she helped found the United States Digital Service, which is somehow now called the United States Doge Service. What a time to be alive. Avishai Artsy and Travis Larchuk made our show today. They were edited by Miranda Kennedy. Fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Amanda Llewellyn. My voice is going. It was mixed by Andrea Christen's daughter and Rob Byers.

Jennifer Palka, she helped found the United States Digital Service, which is somehow now called the United States Doge Service. What a time to be alive. Avishai Artsy and Travis Larchuk made our show today. They were edited by Miranda Kennedy. Fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Amanda Llewellyn. My voice is going. It was mixed by Andrea Christen's daughter and Rob Byers.

I'm Sean Ramos for him, and this has been Today Explained. I'll stop talking now.

I'm Sean Ramos for him, and this has been Today Explained. I'll stop talking now.

When you talk about people from Silicon Valley, are you talking about Elon Musk, who, of course, is still in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, RIP Vivek Uncle, which, of course, pledged to cut two trillion from the federal workforce? Or are we talking about something else?

When you talk about people from Silicon Valley, are you talking about Elon Musk, who, of course, is still in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, RIP Vivek Uncle, which, of course, pledged to cut two trillion from the federal workforce? Or are we talking about something else?

He fired a dozen or maybe more inspectors general late Friday night with zero notice. That's not even legal. On Monday, he fired another dozen or so prosecutors who worked with Jack Smith, They can sue and their lawyers, so probably.

He fired a dozen or maybe more inspectors general late Friday night with zero notice. That's not even legal. On Monday, he fired another dozen or so prosecutors who worked with Jack Smith, They can sue and their lawyers, so probably.

And then he also just issued a pause in federal grants, loans, and financial assistance, apparently until his administration can make sure all that money is being doled out in line with their priorities. But he's also trying to deliver on that ancient promise of his to drain the swamp. And that is where we are going to focus our energy on the show today.

And then he also just issued a pause in federal grants, loans, and financial assistance, apparently until his administration can make sure all that money is being doled out in line with their priorities. But he's also trying to deliver on that ancient promise of his to drain the swamp. And that is where we are going to focus our energy on the show today.

OK, so we've got a really broad effort here to shake up federal agencies between returning employees to the office, removing these protections from various classifications, rolling back DEI, getting rid of people who've been around for less than a year. What is the greater goal here? Is it just to lay off a bunch of people?

OK, so we've got a really broad effort here to shake up federal agencies between returning employees to the office, removing these protections from various classifications, rolling back DEI, getting rid of people who've been around for less than a year. What is the greater goal here? Is it just to lay off a bunch of people?

Some of them are even shooting for Mars here. I do think it's important that we remember that While clearing out the federal government, you are affecting thousands upon thousands of families with mortgages and kids in schools and all the rest.

Some of them are even shooting for Mars here. I do think it's important that we remember that While clearing out the federal government, you are affecting thousands upon thousands of families with mortgages and kids in schools and all the rest.

Andrew Prokop, Vox.com. You also heard the voices of some federal employees. That tape came to us from our friends at 1A over at WAMU 88.5 Public Radio here in Washington, D.C. Mr. Musk goes to Washington when Today Explained returns.

Andrew Prokop, Vox.com. You also heard the voices of some federal employees. That tape came to us from our friends at 1A over at WAMU 88.5 Public Radio here in Washington, D.C. Mr. Musk goes to Washington when Today Explained returns.

This special series from The Verge is presented by Adobe Express.

This special series from The Verge is presented by Adobe Express.

What's that about?

What's that about?

So when you see what our new and former president's trying to do right now with Doge and all the rest, the Office of Personnel Management, all that stuff, are you kind of like, heck yeah, someone needs to do that? Or what's your reaction?

So when you see what our new and former president's trying to do right now with Doge and all the rest, the Office of Personnel Management, all that stuff, are you kind of like, heck yeah, someone needs to do that? Or what's your reaction?

So you're saying you wish Democrats had done more, and you were part of a Democratic effort to do more. Could you tell people about what that was called and how it went?

So you're saying you wish Democrats had done more, and you were part of a Democratic effort to do more. Could you tell people about what that was called and how it went?

We learned that Trump is really going for it. He's coming out of the gate with an extremely aggressive, dubiously legal agenda on many fronts, most notably immigration, but other issues as well. And then I think we also learned some other things, which is that on certain issues, he may not be exactly sure himself what he's going to do.

We learned that Trump is really going for it. He's coming out of the gate with an extremely aggressive, dubiously legal agenda on many fronts, most notably immigration, but other issues as well. And then I think we also learned some other things, which is that on certain issues, he may not be exactly sure himself what he's going to do.

So probably the big headline from the day was Trump's massive, wide ranging pardon of the January 6th rioters. And this is something, you know, everyone knew Trump was going to do something like this. It had been discussed at length. But only a few days before Trump's inauguration, Vice President J.D.

So probably the big headline from the day was Trump's massive, wide ranging pardon of the January 6th rioters. And this is something, you know, everyone knew Trump was going to do something like this. It had been discussed at length. But only a few days before Trump's inauguration, Vice President J.D.

Vance went on TV and said that if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn't be pardoned. And there's a little bit of a gray area. Trump does not share that opinion, evidently. And he went far more aggressive.

Vance went on TV and said that if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn't be pardoned. And there's a little bit of a gray area. Trump does not share that opinion, evidently. And he went far more aggressive.

What he did was that he just separated everyone into one of two groups. First, he singled out 14 people who had been members of far-right groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who were really actively plotting and were convicted of seditious conspiracy. For those guys, he didn't give them a full pardon, but he did commute their sentences and free them from prison if they were in prison.

What he did was that he just separated everyone into one of two groups. First, he singled out 14 people who had been members of far-right groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who were really actively plotting and were convicted of seditious conspiracy. For those guys, he didn't give them a full pardon, but he did commute their sentences and free them from prison if they were in prison.

Then the other group is everyone else who was involved in other crimes at the Capitol on that day. Trump said, you are fully pardoned. So this is really a full-blown Trump endorsement and defense of the violence at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. for that to happen. Now he's making it unmistakably clear.

Then the other group is everyone else who was involved in other crimes at the Capitol on that day. Trump said, you are fully pardoned. So this is really a full-blown Trump endorsement and defense of the violence at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. for that to happen. Now he's making it unmistakably clear.

He thought that was good and those people are good and he is going to protect them from any consequences.

He thought that was good and those people are good and he is going to protect them from any consequences.

Well, energy and climate and the environment was a very big theme. Trump really came out of the gate hot on energy as well.

Well, energy and climate and the environment was a very big theme. Trump really came out of the gate hot on energy as well.

He withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement.

He withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement.

issued a pretty sweeping executive order calling for the rollback of a bunch of Biden administration policies, including what Trump calls the electric vehicle mandate. It's not really a mandate, but, you know, certain fuel efficiency standards that would ease the transition to electric vehicles. Trump said, nope, that's going away.

issued a pretty sweeping executive order calling for the rollback of a bunch of Biden administration policies, including what Trump calls the electric vehicle mandate. It's not really a mandate, but, you know, certain fuel efficiency standards that would ease the transition to electric vehicles. Trump said, nope, that's going away.

Big ugly windmills. He also opened up lots of new areas of Alaska to new fossil fuel production and wants to go from there. So Trump wants to deprioritize climate change, boost fossil fuel production and make new projects of any kind really easier to build. OK. He also made a bunch of changes to how the government works, it seemed like. Yes.

Big ugly windmills. He also opened up lots of new areas of Alaska to new fossil fuel production and wants to go from there. So Trump wants to deprioritize climate change, boost fossil fuel production and make new projects of any kind really easier to build. OK. He also made a bunch of changes to how the government works, it seemed like. Yes.

So one of Trump and the people around him's long-running regrets, thoughts about how things went wrong in their first term is that they believe that the federal civil service bureaucracy was – Two, anti-Trump, was disobedient, insubordinate, did not want to implement his policies, and that's why they failed in a lot of what they tried to do last time around.

So one of Trump and the people around him's long-running regrets, thoughts about how things went wrong in their first term is that they believe that the federal civil service bureaucracy was – Two, anti-Trump, was disobedient, insubordinate, did not want to implement his policies, and that's why they failed in a lot of what they tried to do last time around.

So they have been cooking up ideas for years about how to get – in their view, better control of this bureaucracy, which mainly amounts to making more positions, political jobs that are easier to hire without going through the civil service projects and making it easier to fire existing civil servants, either by reclassifying them as political jobs or just taking their protections away.

So they have been cooking up ideas for years about how to get – in their view, better control of this bureaucracy, which mainly amounts to making more positions, political jobs that are easier to hire without going through the civil service projects and making it easier to fire existing civil servants, either by reclassifying them as political jobs or just taking their protections away.

So Trump issued a series of orders that get at different parts of this,

So Trump issued a series of orders that get at different parts of this,

We didn't really see, you know, mass firings yet. There were a few firings reported, heads of immigration court systems. But this is, I think, laying the groundwork. It's a signal that they're very serious about this idea and that they really do intend on kind of taking a wrecking ball to the federal civil service as we know it.

We didn't really see, you know, mass firings yet. There were a few firings reported, heads of immigration court systems. But this is, I think, laying the groundwork. It's a signal that they're very serious about this idea and that they really do intend on kind of taking a wrecking ball to the federal civil service as we know it.

Yes, RIP Vivek.

Yes, RIP Vivek.

I think the Trump team has the clearest idea of what they want to do on immigration than any other issue. This is one where Deputy White House Chief of Staff slash Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller is very clearly calling the shots and shooting for the moon.

I think the Trump team has the clearest idea of what they want to do on immigration than any other issue. This is one where Deputy White House Chief of Staff slash Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller is very clearly calling the shots and shooting for the moon.

He is, in addition to restoring various policies from the first Trump administration, such as suspending refugee admissions that remain in Mexico, policy which has migrants have to stay in Mexico while their claims are being adjudicated. He also went much further in really aggressive and sweeping assertions of federal authority.

He is, in addition to restoring various policies from the first Trump administration, such as suspending refugee admissions that remain in Mexico, policy which has migrants have to stay in Mexico while their claims are being adjudicated. He also went much further in really aggressive and sweeping assertions of federal authority.

He declared that there was still a public health emergency, even though the pandemic is long kind of over or accepted as a part of life, depending on who you ask. But basically using that as an excuse to start like totally ignoring U.S. asylum law.

He declared that there was still a public health emergency, even though the pandemic is long kind of over or accepted as a part of life, depending on who you ask. But basically using that as an excuse to start like totally ignoring U.S. asylum law.

He said he would now order the military to make defending the borders part of their main mission, something that has not been done before. And he also issued an order saying, which he claimed would suspend birthright citizenship, which is the constitutional protected right of any child born in America to be an American citizen.

He said he would now order the military to make defending the borders part of their main mission, something that has not been done before. And he also issued an order saying, which he claimed would suspend birthright citizenship, which is the constitutional protected right of any child born in America to be an American citizen.

His team said, actually, we are not going to respect this anymore if both of a child's parents are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. They will not be citizens anymore. And so that applies to undocumented immigrants, but it also applies to visa holders, H-1B visa holders or student visa holders who have a child while in America.

His team said, actually, we are not going to respect this anymore if both of a child's parents are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. They will not be citizens anymore. And so that applies to undocumented immigrants, but it also applies to visa holders, H-1B visa holders or student visa holders who have a child while in America.

Their children will not be American citizens unless one of the parents of the child is American. a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. This seems clearly unconstitutional. It's already been the subject of a lawsuit by the ACLU and many of Trump's other immigration orders and other orders will be the subject of lawsuits headed to the courts.

Their children will not be American citizens unless one of the parents of the child is American. a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. This seems clearly unconstitutional. It's already been the subject of a lawsuit by the ACLU and many of Trump's other immigration orders and other orders will be the subject of lawsuits headed to the courts.

And, you know, we'll see what happens with those, whether this conservative Supreme Court stands up to Donald Trump and tries to enforce the rule of law or whether they are not so inclined to rein him in.

And, you know, we'll see what happens with those, whether this conservative Supreme Court stands up to Donald Trump and tries to enforce the rule of law or whether they are not so inclined to rein him in.

He didn't really suggest anything. There is a border security bill under discussion in Congress, so he wants more money for the border, etc. But he did not make requests of Congress a main priority of this first day. It was all about executive power and trying to claim powers to make these vast changes through his own authority and no one else's.

He didn't really suggest anything. There is a border security bill under discussion in Congress, so he wants more money for the border, etc. But he did not make requests of Congress a main priority of this first day. It was all about executive power and trying to claim powers to make these vast changes through his own authority and no one else's.

USAID, run by radical lunatics, and we're getting them out, and then we'll make a decision.

USAID, run by radical lunatics, and we're getting them out, and then we'll make a decision.

For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending through what is known as impoundment.

For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending through what is known as impoundment.

In that process, we identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.

In that process, we identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.

Well, I'm appalled by all of this stuff because it's damaging the foreign... affairs apparatus of the US government and this just beginning, they're going after the CIA, the FBI. We have people all over the world that are very sympathetic because they know the American system because they used to work for us in high positions of power.

Well, I'm appalled by all of this stuff because it's damaging the foreign... affairs apparatus of the US government and this just beginning, they're going after the CIA, the FBI. We have people all over the world that are very sympathetic because they know the American system because they used to work for us in high positions of power.

The training ground for the developing world were our scholarship programs and the foreign service nationals who worked on the staff. All of that is being wiped out now. The Chinese, by the way, during the Cold War, we used to give 20,000 scholarships a year to people who get their master's degree and PhDs in the US.

The training ground for the developing world were our scholarship programs and the foreign service nationals who worked on the staff. All of that is being wiped out now. The Chinese, by the way, during the Cold War, we used to give 20,000 scholarships a year to people who get their master's degree and PhDs in the US.

A lot of countries like South Korea and Taiwan, those PhDs ran the country for 30 years. And they're all very pro-American. There's a reason for it, because they went to the United States to get their education. That was 20,000. They've cut the budget back, and now it's getting wiped out. Guess who does 40,000 scholarships a year? The Chinese government does to promising students.

A lot of countries like South Korea and Taiwan, those PhDs ran the country for 30 years. And they're all very pro-American. There's a reason for it, because they went to the United States to get their education. That was 20,000. They've cut the budget back, and now it's getting wiped out. Guess who does 40,000 scholarships a year? The Chinese government does to promising students.

So the Chinese now are taking over the world order, and there's no way of countering it because they're shutting down the agency that works on this.

So the Chinese now are taking over the world order, and there's no way of countering it because they're shutting down the agency that works on this.

We are 40, the international humanitarian response system and famine, civil wars, and natural disasters like earthquakes, 40% of it is USAID. And our response capacity is enormous. That's all collapsed completely. We used to send out DART teams. Whenever there's an emergency, DART team is Disaster Assistance Response Team. We can send them out in 48 hours. All gone.

We are 40, the international humanitarian response system and famine, civil wars, and natural disasters like earthquakes, 40% of it is USAID. And our response capacity is enormous. That's all collapsed completely. We used to send out DART teams. Whenever there's an emergency, DART team is Disaster Assistance Response Team. We can send them out in 48 hours. All gone.

All the infrastructure is gone. Now, some people are saying, oh, no, the State Department said they're merging all this in state. You cannot train someone in two months to do this stuff. Half the UN system will shut down in the emergency because we are the funders of it.

All the infrastructure is gone. Now, some people are saying, oh, no, the State Department said they're merging all this in state. You cannot train someone in two months to do this stuff. Half the UN system will shut down in the emergency because we are the funders of it.

So what's going to happen now is refugee camps and IDP, internally displaced camps, are already depopulating because there's no food, there's no services left. People are going to starve to death if they just sit there. And I'll tell you what's going to happen. There's going to be mass movements of population toward Europe and toward the United States.

So what's going to happen now is refugee camps and IDP, internally displaced camps, are already depopulating because there's no food, there's no services left. People are going to starve to death if they just sit there. And I'll tell you what's going to happen. There's going to be mass movements of population toward Europe and toward the United States.

They think they have a problem with border security now. They haven't seen anything yet. There is a mess at the border. There is absolutely no question. We need to deal with that. Fentanyl is coming across. That's a real issue. But you know, we cannot stop the movement into the United States without dealing with the rest of the world. It can't be done.

They think they have a problem with border security now. They haven't seen anything yet. There is a mess at the border. There is absolutely no question. We need to deal with that. Fentanyl is coming across. That's a real issue. But you know, we cannot stop the movement into the United States without dealing with the rest of the world. It can't be done.

And if you leave the rest of the world and think we can build a wall around the United States that's going to protect us from this chaos, you're living in a fantasy world.

And if you leave the rest of the world and think we can build a wall around the United States that's going to protect us from this chaos, you're living in a fantasy world.

Absolutely, indisputably, they are going to die. And it's not going to be a small number. Now, usually in a famine, I've been to famines in the Somali famine, which was horrendous in 1991-92. I watched children die right in front of me. So it is seared into my mind. I was in Rwanda just after the Rwandan genocide. The Americans, we've been a little insulated from this. We've never had a famine.

Absolutely, indisputably, they are going to die. And it's not going to be a small number. Now, usually in a famine, I've been to famines in the Somali famine, which was horrendous in 1991-92. I watched children die right in front of me. So it is seared into my mind. I was in Rwanda just after the Rwandan genocide. The Americans, we've been a little insulated from this. We've never had a famine.

in the United States. I mean, people said, oh, some of the pilgrims died of starvation in 1620 during that winter. That's not a famine. Famines are when thousands of people die in a certain geographic area, and it takes two or three years to stop it. Now, one of the things that's disturbing me, which shows what the, either ignorance or they're doing it deliberately.

in the United States. I mean, people said, oh, some of the pilgrims died of starvation in 1620 during that winter. That's not a famine. Famines are when thousands of people die in a certain geographic area, and it takes two or three years to stop it. Now, one of the things that's disturbing me, which shows what the, either ignorance or they're doing it deliberately.

I don't know, and I don't wanna judge. I think it's ignorance. The famine early warning system is the driver of a lot of what we do in the emergency area of food security. What is it? It is a predictive model. We take aerial photographs every day from satellites. All over the world, in the food insecure areas, we compare the color on the ground from one year to the next.

I don't know, and I don't wanna judge. I think it's ignorance. The famine early warning system is the driver of a lot of what we do in the emergency area of food security. What is it? It is a predictive model. We take aerial photographs every day from satellites. All over the world, in the food insecure areas, we compare the color on the ground from one year to the next.

So in the first week of June, if the ground is green one year and brown the next, we assume there's been a crop failure. That is not sufficient to tell what's happening on the ground. So we send teams in. There's a vast network of people who work with AID that actually don't work for us. They work with us.

So in the first week of June, if the ground is green one year and brown the next, we assume there's been a crop failure. That is not sufficient to tell what's happening on the ground. So we send teams in. There's a vast network of people who work with AID that actually don't work for us. They work with us.

These are local people and they're economists, they're food experts, and they go in and find out what's going on the ground. That system, now they shut down. Well, basically it's like driving a car with no steering wheel. The fuse system is the steering wheel. So you have a car full of food, it can't get where it's going because there's no steering wheel. And I've raised this repeatedly.

These are local people and they're economists, they're food experts, and they go in and find out what's going on the ground. That system, now they shut down. Well, basically it's like driving a car with no steering wheel. The fuse system is the steering wheel. So you have a car full of food, it can't get where it's going because there's no steering wheel. And I've raised this repeatedly.

They're not interested.

They're not interested.

Both parties support AID. But now with the president and the base, the base has changed. I'm from a working class family, so I'm not criticizing working people. My grandparents were poor mill workers, $9 a week. My grandfather was illiterate in Greek and in English. We did well. We did well over time. So these people are not into this. We've lost the upper middle class.

Both parties support AID. But now with the president and the base, the base has changed. I'm from a working class family, so I'm not criticizing working people. My grandparents were poor mill workers, $9 a week. My grandfather was illiterate in Greek and in English. We did well. We did well over time. So these people are not into this. We've lost the upper middle class.

The business community is not Republican anymore. And so the base of the party is not really into what's going on in the world. So they thought they could do this with no political consequences. They're making bizarre stuff up. They had to think that $50 million has been spent on condoms in Gaza. Well, number one, no money has been sent on condoms in Gaza.

The business community is not Republican anymore. And so the base of the party is not really into what's going on in the world. So they thought they could do this with no political consequences. They're making bizarre stuff up. They had to think that $50 million has been spent on condoms in Gaza. Well, number one, no money has been sent on condoms in Gaza.

Two, the president said it was $100 million. Nick Kristof said, well, we did the calculation, $100 million would buy 3 billion condoms for 1 million Palestinian men, which is obviously utterly ridiculous. You worked hard.

Two, the president said it was $100 million. Nick Kristof said, well, we did the calculation, $100 million would buy 3 billion condoms for 1 million Palestinian men, which is obviously utterly ridiculous. You worked hard.

It's low hanging fruit and the people who are going to be affected are in the developing world and they don't vote. They're poor people and they don't vote. And so it's easy to dismiss them. And they wanted to make an example of us. They wanted to make an example so they can go out now and go after other federal departments and agencies.

It's low hanging fruit and the people who are going to be affected are in the developing world and they don't vote. They're poor people and they don't vote. And so it's easy to dismiss them. And they wanted to make an example of us. They wanted to make an example so they can go out now and go after other federal departments and agencies.

Instead of dealing with the entitlement program, they're going after the infrastructure of the federal government. I think we're over-regulated in terms of regulations, all agencies and departments. But there's a thoughtful way of doing that. A giant sledgehammer to smash the government, you do incremental changes.

Instead of dealing with the entitlement program, they're going after the infrastructure of the federal government. I think we're over-regulated in terms of regulations, all agencies and departments. But there's a thoughtful way of doing that. A giant sledgehammer to smash the government, you do incremental changes.

You don't do with a sledgehammer and retire 10,000 people and shut down agencies and programs. The first thoughtful thing any administrator does, left or right, is what are the unintended consequences of any action we take? I always did that in any program. They are not only doing that, they don't care. And that's the thing that's extremely dangerous here.

You don't do with a sledgehammer and retire 10,000 people and shut down agencies and programs. The first thoughtful thing any administrator does, left or right, is what are the unintended consequences of any action we take? I always did that in any program. They are not only doing that, they don't care. And that's the thing that's extremely dangerous here.

There's going to be a catastrophe caused which we can't predict.

There's going to be a catastrophe caused which we can't predict.

We were paying them tremendous amounts of money and we're not paying them anymore because they haven't done a thing for us.

We were paying them tremendous amounts of money and we're not paying them anymore because they haven't done a thing for us.

For more than half a century, the U.S. had a rule that said anyone that does business with the federal government, from Boeing to FedEx and Pfizer to Johns Hopkins, had to take affirmative action toward hiring people regardless of race, color or creed. On day one of his presidency, Donald Trump ended that rule.

For more than half a century, the U.S. had a rule that said anyone that does business with the federal government, from Boeing to FedEx and Pfizer to Johns Hopkins, had to take affirmative action toward hiring people regardless of race, color or creed. On day one of his presidency, Donald Trump ended that rule.

By the summer of 2023, you had built a broad audience in both mainstream media and also on Twitter and Substack. What was the thrust of your main argument?

By the summer of 2023, you had built a broad audience in both mainstream media and also on Twitter and Substack. What was the thrust of your main argument?

When did it become clear to you that this argument that you were making was resonating?

When did it become clear to you that this argument that you were making was resonating?

What was the goal of ending 11246? What did you want to happen?

What was the goal of ending 11246? What did you want to happen?

Richard, was corporate America actually complaining? Because it seems like if you run a big American corporation, I don't know, I would look at the idea of diversity and I would say, oh, this is a good thing because I want to sell things to American people. And therefore, having people within the company at a very high level who understand how to sell things to American people is a great thing.

Richard, was corporate America actually complaining? Because it seems like if you run a big American corporation, I don't know, I would look at the idea of diversity and I would say, oh, this is a good thing because I want to sell things to American people. And therefore, having people within the company at a very high level who understand how to sell things to American people is a great thing.

I'm Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent, Vox, covering politics.

I'm Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent, Vox, covering politics.

Good if they come from all kinds of backgrounds. Like, I just wonder, whose part were you taking here?

Good if they come from all kinds of backgrounds. Like, I just wonder, whose part were you taking here?

So the day President Trump puts an end to DEI, the day he puts an end to the executive order, what was your reaction?

So the day President Trump puts an end to DEI, the day he puts an end to the executive order, what was your reaction?

You recently wrote for Vox that the Trump administration is making policy, making policy decisions based on ideas that took hold on Twitter. Say more about what you mean.

You recently wrote for Vox that the Trump administration is making policy, making policy decisions based on ideas that took hold on Twitter. Say more about what you mean.

The Trump administration did what you wanted. It eliminated DEI. And then it put Pete Hegseth in charge of the Pentagon and Kash Patel in charge of the FBI and Dan Bongino as the deputy director of the FBI. These gentlemen are not merit picks. And these are obvious examples. But this is why Americans... who are skeptical of your argument will say, look, you're never really going to get merit.

The Trump administration did what you wanted. It eliminated DEI. And then it put Pete Hegseth in charge of the Pentagon and Kash Patel in charge of the FBI and Dan Bongino as the deputy director of the FBI. These gentlemen are not merit picks. And these are obvious examples. But this is why Americans... who are skeptical of your argument will say, look, you're never really going to get merit.

If we eliminate DEI, we're going to go back to, you know, the president picks a guy who he thinks looks handsome on TV. Do you put any stock in that argument?

If we eliminate DEI, we're going to go back to, you know, the president picks a guy who he thinks looks handsome on TV. Do you put any stock in that argument?

You've clearly become disenchanted with MAGA. You wrote a piece this week that's making the rounds. It's called Liberals Only Censor Musk Seeks to Lobotomize. What happened, Richard?

You've clearly become disenchanted with MAGA. You wrote a piece this week that's making the rounds. It's called Liberals Only Censor Musk Seeks to Lobotomize. What happened, Richard?

So one thing that's become very clear in the new Trump administration that is different from the first one is that the people calling the shots are are very, very online. That includes, of course, Elon Musk. It includes Vice President J.D. Vance. It includes Stephen Miller.

So one thing that's become very clear in the new Trump administration that is different from the first one is that the people calling the shots are are very, very online. That includes, of course, Elon Musk. It includes Vice President J.D. Vance. It includes Stephen Miller.

How do you feel about this movement that you are a part of descending into what we have today?

How do you feel about this movement that you are a part of descending into what we have today?

Richard Hanania. The book is The Origins of Woke. He's also on Substack and he is still on Twitter. Dropping in our feed on Sunday, some of you called to ask whether DEI was ever anything more than performance. Our new weekend show is going to give you some answers. Miles Bryan produced today's episode with an assist from Carla Javier. Amina El-Sadi is our editor.

Richard Hanania. The book is The Origins of Woke. He's also on Substack and he is still on Twitter. Dropping in our feed on Sunday, some of you called to ask whether DEI was ever anything more than performance. Our new weekend show is going to give you some answers. Miles Bryan produced today's episode with an assist from Carla Javier. Amina El-Sadi is our editor.

It includes a whole host of officials whose names we don't even know, but whose onlineness is evident in the policies that are being rolled out by this administration.

It includes a whole host of officials whose names we don't even know, but whose onlineness is evident in the policies that are being rolled out by this administration.

What are those policies?

What are those policies?

There are all sorts of things, really kind of too many to name. A kind of silly one that just recently happened is that Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that she was going to unveil the Epstein files.

There are all sorts of things, really kind of too many to name. A kind of silly one that just recently happened is that Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that she was going to unveil the Epstein files.

This is something that had spread among the kind of conspiratorial online right that the government was sitting on all these files that will prove that Jeffrey Epstein, the sex trafficker who died in 2019, had blackmail material on prominent Democrats and celebrities. And she ended up trying to make a big splash out of this and handing material on Epstein to online right influencers.

This is something that had spread among the kind of conspiratorial online right that the government was sitting on all these files that will prove that Jeffrey Epstein, the sex trafficker who died in 2019, had blackmail material on prominent Democrats and celebrities. And she ended up trying to make a big splash out of this and handing material on Epstein to online right influencers.

And it turned out there was absolutely nothing new in those documents, and it ended up being a total embarrassment.

And it turned out there was absolutely nothing new in those documents, and it ended up being a total embarrassment.

But there's also many more serious policies and issues that reflect this influence. I'd say that one through line uniting a lot of what the new Trump administration has done is this unified effort to kind of attack what they see as the power centers of progressivism in an effort to roll back wokeness and what they see as progressive cultural dominance.

But there's also many more serious policies and issues that reflect this influence. I'd say that one through line uniting a lot of what the new Trump administration has done is this unified effort to kind of attack what they see as the power centers of progressivism in an effort to roll back wokeness and what they see as progressive cultural dominance.

So you see that in things like funding cutoffs to universities. universities' limits on their research dollars. And you see it in policies aimed at threatening investigations of nonprofits and corporations and colleges that use affirmative action or DEI policies that the administration doesn't like. It's basically a whole set of different issues.

So you see that in things like funding cutoffs to universities. universities' limits on their research dollars. And you see it in policies aimed at threatening investigations of nonprofits and corporations and colleges that use affirmative action or DEI policies that the administration doesn't like. It's basically a whole set of different issues.

These are folks who use the word woke and don't define it, which makes it tricky to pin down what they're attacking exactly. But you just ran through a list of things, including universities, including certain sectors of the government. And the attack aimed at these places is what exactly? These guys say... You're doing what wrong?

These are folks who use the word woke and don't define it, which makes it tricky to pin down what they're attacking exactly. But you just ran through a list of things, including universities, including certain sectors of the government. And the attack aimed at these places is what exactly? These guys say... You're doing what wrong?

So I view the online right as essentially an alliance of posters with varying different interests and policy priorities. But they were kind of united in what they saw as combat against the woke. This shared resentment of what these online right people saw as progressive cultural dominance. In Trump's first term, the online right was kind of disreputable. They were viewed as sort of weirdos.

So I view the online right as essentially an alliance of posters with varying different interests and policy priorities. But they were kind of united in what they saw as combat against the woke. This shared resentment of what these online right people saw as progressive cultural dominance. In Trump's first term, the online right was kind of disreputable. They were viewed as sort of weirdos.

They weren't in the halls of power in the Republican Party. But there was a real shift that happened after Trump lost the 2020 election and under the Biden administration. When more people who had... You know, some misgivings, some qualms about progressive cultural issues, about the Great Awokening, felt freed up to focus on that more and became more open about being resentful about this.

They weren't in the halls of power in the Republican Party. But there was a real shift that happened after Trump lost the 2020 election and under the Biden administration. When more people who had... You know, some misgivings, some qualms about progressive cultural issues, about the Great Awokening, felt freed up to focus on that more and became more open about being resentful about this.

As the U.S. exploded following the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, a loose coalition of highly online commentators, sub-stackers, and Twitter shitposters set their sights on eviscerating DEI policies. Then they won. Coming up on Today Explained, one of them speaks.

As the U.S. exploded following the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, a loose coalition of highly online commentators, sub-stackers, and Twitter shitposters set their sights on eviscerating DEI policies. Then they won. Coming up on Today Explained, one of them speaks.

This includes Elon Musk. He stayed out of politics for the most part in Trump's first term. But under Biden, he became increasingly radicalized and vocal online about wanting to stop what he called the— The worldwide virus. And lots of other prominent figures in Silicon Valley were also part of this trend. Even J.D.

This includes Elon Musk. He stayed out of politics for the most part in Trump's first term. But under Biden, he became increasingly radicalized and vocal online about wanting to stop what he called the— The worldwide virus. And lots of other prominent figures in Silicon Valley were also part of this trend. Even J.D.

Vance, he was kind of politically neutral in 2020 and fell more and more into this online world in the 2020s.

Vance, he was kind of politically neutral in 2020 and fell more and more into this online world in the 2020s.

Broadly, what are these beliefs of theirs that they're trying to protect or that they feel are under attack?

Broadly, what are these beliefs of theirs that they're trying to protect or that they feel are under attack?

Well, you know, it's different for different people. But, you know, there's a segment of the online right that is kind of just open racists. They want to stand up for white predominance in America. This is sort of, you know, the alt-right. They're very willing to say racist, offensive, politically incorrect things. This kind of blurs over to other people who

Well, you know, it's different for different people. But, you know, there's a segment of the online right that is kind of just open racists. They want to stand up for white predominance in America. This is sort of, you know, the alt-right. They're very willing to say racist, offensive, politically incorrect things. This kind of blurs over to other people who

say such things, but then they argue that they're just saying them ironically. This is kind of something that we saw in the new administration related to a young engineer on Elon Musk's team, Marco Elez. It turned out that just a few months before joining Doge, this guy had made various racist posts online under a pseudonym, including... I was racist before it was cool and normalize Indian hate.

say such things, but then they argue that they're just saying them ironically. This is kind of something that we saw in the new administration related to a young engineer on Elon Musk's team, Marco Elez. It turned out that just a few months before joining Doge, this guy had made various racist posts online under a pseudonym, including... I was racist before it was cool and normalize Indian hate.

You know, in the old Trump administration, that would probably have gotten him fired. And it did eventually at first in the new Trump administration. But then he became a kind of cause celebre among the online right. J.D.

You know, in the old Trump administration, that would probably have gotten him fired. And it did eventually at first in the new Trump administration. But then he became a kind of cause celebre among the online right. J.D.

The idea that people who make racist posts online are on your team, that's part of the online right culture. They want to be allowed to say offensive, racist things. They think that woke censoriousness and groupthink went so far. You used to be able to say all kinds of things and now you can't anymore. You got to watch what you say. You might get canceled. And who are the people that are...

The idea that people who make racist posts online are on your team, that's part of the online right culture. They want to be allowed to say offensive, racist things. They think that woke censoriousness and groupthink went so far. You used to be able to say all kinds of things and now you can't anymore. You got to watch what you say. You might get canceled. And who are the people that are...

imposing this oppressive censorship. It's the media. It's progressives. They are the enemy. They are the enemy. And as you can see in what Vance said, you know, siding with the media is worse than trying to fire a racist from your government.

imposing this oppressive censorship. It's the media. It's progressives. They are the enemy. They are the enemy. And as you can see in what Vance said, you know, siding with the media is worse than trying to fire a racist from your government.

You write that these ideas have led to policies, actual policy that governs how you and me and every other American lives our lives. What policies would you point to here, Andrew?

You write that these ideas have led to policies, actual policy that governs how you and me and every other American lives our lives. What policies would you point to here, Andrew?

I think probably one of the clearest examples of this influence of the online right was an executive order that Trump released in his first week which was anti-DEI and anti-affirmative action.

I think probably one of the clearest examples of this influence of the online right was an executive order that Trump released in his first week which was anti-DEI and anti-affirmative action.

And the specifics of this order are noteworthy because it rolled back an executive order from all the way back in 1965 issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson that has stood since then, that what it essentially did was it required that federal contractors make efforts to employ more women and people of color, that they practice affirmative action. And

And the specifics of this order are noteworthy because it rolled back an executive order from all the way back in 1965 issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson that has stood since then, that what it essentially did was it required that federal contractors make efforts to employ more women and people of color, that they practice affirmative action. And

You know, every previous Republican president has let this stand. But in recent years, as the online right has been exploring various theories about wokeness, about how they could fight back against it, one of their theories was about this specific executive order on affirmative action. They said this needs to be reversed.

You know, every previous Republican president has let this stand. But in recent years, as the online right has been exploring various theories about wokeness, about how they could fight back against it, one of their theories was about this specific executive order on affirmative action. They said this needs to be reversed.

That has been the obsession of one particular writer on the online right for several years now. He's been hammering this drum again and again. His name is Richard Hanania. He argued that the roots of wokeness were in federal civil rights law and specifically in this affirmative action executive order and that –

That has been the obsession of one particular writer on the online right for several years now. He's been hammering this drum again and again. His name is Richard Hanania. He argued that the roots of wokeness were in federal civil rights law and specifically in this affirmative action executive order and that –

Instead of just rolling it back, it should be replaced with a new government policy saying that basically you can't have an affirmative action program. That such programs were illegal because they discriminated based on race, that they violated the Civil Rights Act. So, you know, when that executive order came out from Trump, I immediately thought this

Instead of just rolling it back, it should be replaced with a new government policy saying that basically you can't have an affirmative action program. That such programs were illegal because they discriminated based on race, that they violated the Civil Rights Act. So, you know, when that executive order came out from Trump, I immediately thought this

These are people who have been reading the Richard Hananias, the online right posters who have had their own obsessions and who have been driving these ideas. And the people in power are really listening to them and trying to impose their ideas to reshape this country.

These are people who have been reading the Richard Hananias, the online right posters who have had their own obsessions and who have been driving these ideas. And the people in power are really listening to them and trying to impose their ideas to reshape this country.

That was Vox's Andrew Prokop. Coming up next. But it sounds like based on what you're saying that you are able to take credit for killing DEI. Is that how you see it?

That was Vox's Andrew Prokop. Coming up next. But it sounds like based on what you're saying that you are able to take credit for killing DEI. Is that how you see it?

Richard Hanania is a substacker and author of the book The Origins of Woke, Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics. All right, so Richard, in the summer of 2023, you were a public intellectual. You'd been writing op-eds for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic.

Richard Hanania is a substacker and author of the book The Origins of Woke, Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics. All right, so Richard, in the summer of 2023, you were a public intellectual. You'd been writing op-eds for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic.

And then that August, The Huffington Post reported that years earlier, you'd written racist, misogynist posts on right-wing websites. I'm going to read a couple of those here. For the white gene pool to be created, millions had to die. Race mixing is like destroying a unique species or a piece of art. It's shameful.

And then that August, The Huffington Post reported that years earlier, you'd written racist, misogynist posts on right-wing websites. I'm going to read a couple of those here. For the white gene pool to be created, millions had to die. Race mixing is like destroying a unique species or a piece of art. It's shameful.

Hispanic people don't have the requisite IQ to be a productive part of a first world nation. You said Muslims can't assimilate because of genetic and IQ differences between them and native Europeans. And you suggested that people with low IQs might be sterilized. Were those sincere beliefs that you held?

Hispanic people don't have the requisite IQ to be a productive part of a first world nation. You said Muslims can't assimilate because of genetic and IQ differences between them and native Europeans. And you suggested that people with low IQs might be sterilized. Were those sincere beliefs that you held?

What led to you holding those views?

What led to you holding those views?

In November of 2023, so this is after the Huffington Post exposed you, you tweeted, people complain about Jews running America. Do they actually believe it should be run by the voters of Baltimore or Appalachia? Doesn't seem that anti-Semites have thought this through. So that was years after, you know, that's years after you were young.

In November of 2023, so this is after the Huffington Post exposed you, you tweeted, people complain about Jews running America. Do they actually believe it should be run by the voters of Baltimore or Appalachia? Doesn't seem that anti-Semites have thought this through. So that was years after, you know, that's years after you were young.

It's after the Huffington Post has drawn attention to the really disgusting stuff that you tweeted.

It's after the Huffington Post has drawn attention to the really disgusting stuff that you tweeted.

A decades-old study that said vaccines cause autism is now being called an elaborate fraud.

A decades-old study that said vaccines cause autism is now being called an elaborate fraud.

A decades-old study that said vaccines cause autism is now being called an elaborate fraud.

I'm Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent, Vox, covering politics.

Time flew. I didn't really realize that it was the year 2028.

I've been thinking about it as I tried to, you know, rise above the day-to-day headlines and focus on the recurring stories, things where big things have happened already that have made a difference. And I think there are really four stories of that nature so far. The first is the economy and tariffs.

The second, I would say, is immigration, as Trump attempts to impose his mass deportation agenda, as he is making the U.S. a less welcoming place for foreigners generally. All sorts of big, high-profile battles and showdowns, and we're probably just at the beginning of that.

The third, I would say, is Elon Musk and Doge and this general agenda of kind of dismantling government, cutting government spending.

firing federal workers. But the fourth, I think, and one in which in some ways is the most ominous, is what I view as Trump's agenda of retribution.

He has been more willing than any other president in recent memory to use the power of the federal government against people who he views as his political enemies or people who are viewed as being on the left.

Well, he said different things at different times. There were some moments. I remember one moment when he was on Fox News and the host was basically begging him to say, I'm not going to seek retribution against my political enemies. My question is a very serious one.

And I think he has chosen pretty much a maximally aggressive course as compared to, you know, all of the possibilities that had been expected as to how far he could go on this.

Well, he's gone after a lot of people involved with the Biden administration, you know, Biden himself, several of his top officials.

He's gone after people who are involved in sort of the legal resistance against Trump or were involved in the cases that were about investigating or indicting Trump. But he's also gone after some of his own people or people who used to be some of his people.

Then there's the case of Mike Pompeo, who was Trump's secretary of state in his first term. He seemed to be in line for another top appointment as recently as perhaps October 2024. But somehow people behind the scenes convinced Trump that Pompeo was somehow against him.

And then suddenly during the transition and at the beginning of the administration, we see these personal public attacks on Pompeo and then yanking his security details. a top aide associated with Pompeo, Brian Hook, as well. Someone who was on Trump's State Department transition team before suddenly being kind of penalized by Trump's retaliation.

So he's really sort of used it, you know, against Democrats, against his critics, but also people on his own side who he feels like stepped out of line in some way or demonstrated insufficient loyalty.

oh, this is extremely unusual. It's unprecedented as far as I know. It's extremely petty. The justification that they give is, oh, this is expensive and we don't want to fund it. But I mean, that's just silly. It's a rounding error in expense. It's just like a personal form of payback that's like, hey, if you step one toe out of line, I'm not going to make sure that

a hostile foreign power doesn't assassinate you. I'm going to, you know, leave you open to that possibility. I'm not doing anything for you.

Elite universities were kind of in right wing thinking, were basically deemed of certain of Trump's top donors, the center of wokeness. Like they were what unleashed wokeness on society. Right wing activists like Christopher Ruffo want to really kind of smash the universities.

But of course, the public universities under left-wing bureaucratic rule are hostile to open inquiry, hostile to civic debate. To really go after, as we've seen Harvard and this belief that the universities are the power centers of the left. And if you can...

take away their research funding, if you can threaten their tax-exempt status, if you can threaten all kinds of other consequences, you will force them to behave in ways that are more accommodating to the right.

So this is more related to kind of the prosecutions and investigations of Donald Trump, which often involved certain people who either used to be or are at these law firms. And so I think he has some resentment about that. And then there's also, again, there's this right-wing agenda, activist agenda as well, where they argue that, oh, these big law firms are kind of

in their own way, centers of progressive activism as well in what's known as the pro bono work that they offer to do for various causes. So, you know, you have this Trump effort to kind of punish these big law firms. And as we saw in universities as well, of kind of deals or agreements in which they say, oh, OK, we will do these things differently.

We will pledge this amount of pro bono work or money to these causes that Trump likes and so on.

The president can do a lot of things that with his authority that he perhaps due to older notions of decorum or fairness or ethics that seem out of date in this administration that he would not have previously done. But they're also just doing a lot of stuff that seems completely illegal. And so why not both?

They're they're pursuing both and they're going to see what sticks because they fundamentally view politics and the purpose of government as about punishing their enemies. And which in this case, they've defined so broadly as to define like as to encompass all sorts of liberal or left leaning institutions, as well as the specific people and issues.

groups that had that ever run afoul of Donald Trump personally.

For more than half a century, the U.S. had a rule that said anyone that does business with the federal government, from Boeing to FedEx and Pfizer to Johns Hopkins, had to take affirmative action toward hiring people regardless of race, color or creed. On day one of his presidency, Donald Trump ended that rule.

By the summer of 2023, you had built a broad audience in both mainstream media and also on Twitter and Substack. What was the thrust of your main argument?

When did it become clear to you that this argument that you were making was resonating?

What was the goal of ending 11246? What did you want to happen?

Richard, was corporate America actually complaining? Because it seems like if you run a big American corporation, I don't know, I would look at the idea of diversity and I would say, oh, this is a good thing because I want to sell things to American people. And therefore, having people within the company at a very high level who understand how to sell things to American people is a great thing.

I'm Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent, Vox, covering politics.

Good if they come from all kinds of backgrounds. Like, I just wonder, whose part were you taking here?

So the day President Trump puts an end to DEI, the day he puts an end to the executive order, what was your reaction?

You recently wrote for Vox that the Trump administration is making policy, making policy decisions based on ideas that took hold on Twitter. Say more about what you mean.

The Trump administration did what you wanted. It eliminated DEI. And then it put Pete Hegseth in charge of the Pentagon and Kash Patel in charge of the FBI and Dan Bongino as the deputy director of the FBI. These gentlemen are not merit picks. And these are obvious examples. But this is why Americans... who are skeptical of your argument will say, look, you're never really going to get merit.

If we eliminate DEI, we're going to go back to, you know, the president picks a guy who he thinks looks handsome on TV. Do you put any stock in that argument?

You've clearly become disenchanted with MAGA. You wrote a piece this week that's making the rounds. It's called Liberals Only Censor Musk Seeks to Lobotomize. What happened, Richard?

So one thing that's become very clear in the new Trump administration that is different from the first one is that the people calling the shots are are very, very online. That includes, of course, Elon Musk. It includes Vice President J.D. Vance. It includes Stephen Miller.

How do you feel about this movement that you are a part of descending into what we have today?

Richard Hanania. The book is The Origins of Woke. He's also on Substack and he is still on Twitter. Dropping in our feed on Sunday, some of you called to ask whether DEI was ever anything more than performance. Our new weekend show is going to give you some answers. Miles Bryan produced today's episode with an assist from Carla Javier. Amina El-Sadi is our editor.

It includes a whole host of officials whose names we don't even know, but whose onlineness is evident in the policies that are being rolled out by this administration.

What are those policies?

There are all sorts of things, really kind of too many to name. A kind of silly one that just recently happened is that Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that she was going to unveil the Epstein files.

This is something that had spread among the kind of conspiratorial online right that the government was sitting on all these files that will prove that Jeffrey Epstein, the sex trafficker who died in 2019, had blackmail material on prominent Democrats and celebrities. And she ended up trying to make a big splash out of this and handing material on Epstein to online right influencers.

And it turned out there was absolutely nothing new in those documents, and it ended up being a total embarrassment.

But there's also many more serious policies and issues that reflect this influence. I'd say that one through line uniting a lot of what the new Trump administration has done is this unified effort to kind of attack what they see as the power centers of progressivism in an effort to roll back wokeness and what they see as progressive cultural dominance.

So you see that in things like funding cutoffs to universities. universities' limits on their research dollars. And you see it in policies aimed at threatening investigations of nonprofits and corporations and colleges that use affirmative action or DEI policies that the administration doesn't like. It's basically a whole set of different issues.

These are folks who use the word woke and don't define it, which makes it tricky to pin down what they're attacking exactly. But you just ran through a list of things, including universities, including certain sectors of the government. And the attack aimed at these places is what exactly? These guys say... You're doing what wrong?

So I view the online right as essentially an alliance of posters with varying different interests and policy priorities. But they were kind of united in what they saw as combat against the woke. This shared resentment of what these online right people saw as progressive cultural dominance. In Trump's first term, the online right was kind of disreputable. They were viewed as sort of weirdos.

They weren't in the halls of power in the Republican Party. But there was a real shift that happened after Trump lost the 2020 election and under the Biden administration. When more people who had... You know, some misgivings, some qualms about progressive cultural issues, about the Great Awokening, felt freed up to focus on that more and became more open about being resentful about this.

As the U.S. exploded following the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, a loose coalition of highly online commentators, sub-stackers, and Twitter shitposters set their sights on eviscerating DEI policies. Then they won. Coming up on Today Explained, one of them speaks.

This includes Elon Musk. He stayed out of politics for the most part in Trump's first term. But under Biden, he became increasingly radicalized and vocal online about wanting to stop what he called the— The worldwide virus. And lots of other prominent figures in Silicon Valley were also part of this trend. Even J.D.

Vance, he was kind of politically neutral in 2020 and fell more and more into this online world in the 2020s.

Broadly, what are these beliefs of theirs that they're trying to protect or that they feel are under attack?

Well, you know, it's different for different people. But, you know, there's a segment of the online right that is kind of just open racists. They want to stand up for white predominance in America. This is sort of, you know, the alt-right. They're very willing to say racist, offensive, politically incorrect things. This kind of blurs over to other people who

say such things, but then they argue that they're just saying them ironically. This is kind of something that we saw in the new administration related to a young engineer on Elon Musk's team, Marco Elez. It turned out that just a few months before joining Doge, this guy had made various racist posts online under a pseudonym, including... I was racist before it was cool and normalize Indian hate.

You know, in the old Trump administration, that would probably have gotten him fired. And it did eventually at first in the new Trump administration. But then he became a kind of cause celebre among the online right. J.D.

The idea that people who make racist posts online are on your team, that's part of the online right culture. They want to be allowed to say offensive, racist things. They think that woke censoriousness and groupthink went so far. You used to be able to say all kinds of things and now you can't anymore. You got to watch what you say. You might get canceled. And who are the people that are...

imposing this oppressive censorship. It's the media. It's progressives. They are the enemy. They are the enemy. And as you can see in what Vance said, you know, siding with the media is worse than trying to fire a racist from your government.

You write that these ideas have led to policies, actual policy that governs how you and me and every other American lives our lives. What policies would you point to here, Andrew?

I think probably one of the clearest examples of this influence of the online right was an executive order that Trump released in his first week which was anti-DEI and anti-affirmative action.

And the specifics of this order are noteworthy because it rolled back an executive order from all the way back in 1965 issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson that has stood since then, that what it essentially did was it required that federal contractors make efforts to employ more women and people of color, that they practice affirmative action. And

You know, every previous Republican president has let this stand. But in recent years, as the online right has been exploring various theories about wokeness, about how they could fight back against it, one of their theories was about this specific executive order on affirmative action. They said this needs to be reversed.

That has been the obsession of one particular writer on the online right for several years now. He's been hammering this drum again and again. His name is Richard Hanania. He argued that the roots of wokeness were in federal civil rights law and specifically in this affirmative action executive order and that –

Instead of just rolling it back, it should be replaced with a new government policy saying that basically you can't have an affirmative action program. That such programs were illegal because they discriminated based on race, that they violated the Civil Rights Act. So, you know, when that executive order came out from Trump, I immediately thought this

These are people who have been reading the Richard Hananias, the online right posters who have had their own obsessions and who have been driving these ideas. And the people in power are really listening to them and trying to impose their ideas to reshape this country.

That was Vox's Andrew Prokop. Coming up next. But it sounds like based on what you're saying that you are able to take credit for killing DEI. Is that how you see it?

Richard Hanania is a substacker and author of the book The Origins of Woke, Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics. All right, so Richard, in the summer of 2023, you were a public intellectual. You'd been writing op-eds for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic.

And then that August, The Huffington Post reported that years earlier, you'd written racist, misogynist posts on right-wing websites. I'm going to read a couple of those here. For the white gene pool to be created, millions had to die. Race mixing is like destroying a unique species or a piece of art. It's shameful.

Hispanic people don't have the requisite IQ to be a productive part of a first world nation. You said Muslims can't assimilate because of genetic and IQ differences between them and native Europeans. And you suggested that people with low IQs might be sterilized. Were those sincere beliefs that you held?

What led to you holding those views?

In November of 2023, so this is after the Huffington Post exposed you, you tweeted, people complain about Jews running America. Do they actually believe it should be run by the voters of Baltimore or Appalachia? Doesn't seem that anti-Semites have thought this through. So that was years after, you know, that's years after you were young.

It's after the Huffington Post has drawn attention to the really disgusting stuff that you tweeted.

USAID, run by radical lunatics, and we're getting them out, and then we'll make a decision.

For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending through what is known as impoundment.

In that process, we identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.

Well, I'm appalled by all of this stuff because it's damaging the foreign... affairs apparatus of the US government and this just beginning, they're going after the CIA, the FBI. We have people all over the world that are very sympathetic because they know the American system because they used to work for us in high positions of power.

The training ground for the developing world were our scholarship programs and the foreign service nationals who worked on the staff. All of that is being wiped out now. The Chinese, by the way, during the Cold War, we used to give 20,000 scholarships a year to people who get their master's degree and PhDs in the US.

A lot of countries like South Korea and Taiwan, those PhDs ran the country for 30 years. And they're all very pro-American. There's a reason for it, because they went to the United States to get their education. That was 20,000. They've cut the budget back, and now it's getting wiped out. Guess who does 40,000 scholarships a year? The Chinese government does to promising students.

So the Chinese now are taking over the world order, and there's no way of countering it because they're shutting down the agency that works on this.

We are 40, the international humanitarian response system and famine, civil wars, and natural disasters like earthquakes, 40% of it is USAID. And our response capacity is enormous. That's all collapsed completely. We used to send out DART teams. Whenever there's an emergency, DART team is Disaster Assistance Response Team. We can send them out in 48 hours. All gone.

All the infrastructure is gone. Now, some people are saying, oh, no, the State Department said they're merging all this in state. You cannot train someone in two months to do this stuff. Half the UN system will shut down in the emergency because we are the funders of it.

So what's going to happen now is refugee camps and IDP, internally displaced camps, are already depopulating because there's no food, there's no services left. People are going to starve to death if they just sit there. And I'll tell you what's going to happen. There's going to be mass movements of population toward Europe and toward the United States.

They think they have a problem with border security now. They haven't seen anything yet. There is a mess at the border. There is absolutely no question. We need to deal with that. Fentanyl is coming across. That's a real issue. But you know, we cannot stop the movement into the United States without dealing with the rest of the world. It can't be done.

And if you leave the rest of the world and think we can build a wall around the United States that's going to protect us from this chaos, you're living in a fantasy world.

Absolutely, indisputably, they are going to die. And it's not going to be a small number. Now, usually in a famine, I've been to famines in the Somali famine, which was horrendous in 1991-92. I watched children die right in front of me. So it is seared into my mind. I was in Rwanda just after the Rwandan genocide. The Americans, we've been a little insulated from this. We've never had a famine.

in the United States. I mean, people said, oh, some of the pilgrims died of starvation in 1620 during that winter. That's not a famine. Famines are when thousands of people die in a certain geographic area, and it takes two or three years to stop it. Now, one of the things that's disturbing me, which shows what the, either ignorance or they're doing it deliberately.

I don't know, and I don't wanna judge. I think it's ignorance. The famine early warning system is the driver of a lot of what we do in the emergency area of food security. What is it? It is a predictive model. We take aerial photographs every day from satellites. All over the world, in the food insecure areas, we compare the color on the ground from one year to the next.

So in the first week of June, if the ground is green one year and brown the next, we assume there's been a crop failure. That is not sufficient to tell what's happening on the ground. So we send teams in. There's a vast network of people who work with AID that actually don't work for us. They work with us.

These are local people and they're economists, they're food experts, and they go in and find out what's going on the ground. That system, now they shut down. Well, basically it's like driving a car with no steering wheel. The fuse system is the steering wheel. So you have a car full of food, it can't get where it's going because there's no steering wheel. And I've raised this repeatedly.

They're not interested.

Both parties support AID. But now with the president and the base, the base has changed. I'm from a working class family, so I'm not criticizing working people. My grandparents were poor mill workers, $9 a week. My grandfather was illiterate in Greek and in English. We did well. We did well over time. So these people are not into this. We've lost the upper middle class.

The business community is not Republican anymore. And so the base of the party is not really into what's going on in the world. So they thought they could do this with no political consequences. They're making bizarre stuff up. They had to think that $50 million has been spent on condoms in Gaza. Well, number one, no money has been sent on condoms in Gaza.

Two, the president said it was $100 million. Nick Kristof said, well, we did the calculation, $100 million would buy 3 billion condoms for 1 million Palestinian men, which is obviously utterly ridiculous. You worked hard.

It's low hanging fruit and the people who are going to be affected are in the developing world and they don't vote. They're poor people and they don't vote. And so it's easy to dismiss them. And they wanted to make an example of us. They wanted to make an example so they can go out now and go after other federal departments and agencies.

Instead of dealing with the entitlement program, they're going after the infrastructure of the federal government. I think we're over-regulated in terms of regulations, all agencies and departments. But there's a thoughtful way of doing that. A giant sledgehammer to smash the government, you do incremental changes.

You don't do with a sledgehammer and retire 10,000 people and shut down agencies and programs. The first thoughtful thing any administrator does, left or right, is what are the unintended consequences of any action we take? I always did that in any program. They are not only doing that, they don't care. And that's the thing that's extremely dangerous here.

There's going to be a catastrophe caused which we can't predict.

We were paying them tremendous amounts of money and we're not paying them anymore because they haven't done a thing for us.

Donald Trump said he'd end the war in Ukraine in his first 24 hours in office. He did not. He also said he'd immediately slash grocery prices. Yet my eggs keep costing more, Donald. But he has delivered on a bunch of other promises. If you heard yesterday's Today Explained, you know the pardons are flowing as are the deportations, and he's really shaking up the federal government.

So the USDS is the United States Digital Service. And unlike Doge, which a lot of people know because it's got a very famous guy in charge and also because it's a meme coin, I imagine most people haven't actually heard of the US Digital Service, which is maybe part of the problem. What were y'all doing and why didn't people know about it if they didn't?

So is Doge, which is this new effort, the Department of Government Efficiency, just like a USDS 2.0? Is it literally going to be some of the same people? Or is this an entirely new outfit trying to reach the same end, more or less?

The other thing we know, which we've covered on this show, is that Elon Musk, at least, and formerly Vivek Ramaswamy, said that they aimed to cut $2 trillion worth of federal agencies, federal workers. When you heard that number, as someone who's been in this work before, what did you make of it?

Because our colleague Dylan Matthews, who helped us cover that news, said the betting money is they don't get anywhere close.

Today Explained, Sean Ramos from here once again with Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent at Vox. Andrew, we've seen lots of pardons. We've seen deportation. How is Trump, too, doing so far on reshaping the federal government?

Let's expedite the process for them. I don't know if Uncle Elon listens, but, I mean, if you could offer him any advice, maybe you already have. What would you tell him as he's embarking on this, his first major government venture?

Jennifer Palka, she helped found the United States Digital Service, which is somehow now called the United States Doge Service. What a time to be alive. Avishai Artsy and Travis Larchuk made our show today. They were edited by Miranda Kennedy. Fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Amanda Llewellyn. My voice is going. It was mixed by Andrea Christen's daughter and Rob Byers.

I'm Sean Ramos for him, and this has been Today Explained. I'll stop talking now.

When you talk about people from Silicon Valley, are you talking about Elon Musk, who, of course, is still in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, RIP Vivek Uncle, which, of course, pledged to cut two trillion from the federal workforce? Or are we talking about something else?

He fired a dozen or maybe more inspectors general late Friday night with zero notice. That's not even legal. On Monday, he fired another dozen or so prosecutors who worked with Jack Smith, They can sue and their lawyers, so probably.

And then he also just issued a pause in federal grants, loans, and financial assistance, apparently until his administration can make sure all that money is being doled out in line with their priorities. But he's also trying to deliver on that ancient promise of his to drain the swamp. And that is where we are going to focus our energy on the show today.

OK, so we've got a really broad effort here to shake up federal agencies between returning employees to the office, removing these protections from various classifications, rolling back DEI, getting rid of people who've been around for less than a year. What is the greater goal here? Is it just to lay off a bunch of people?

Some of them are even shooting for Mars here. I do think it's important that we remember that While clearing out the federal government, you are affecting thousands upon thousands of families with mortgages and kids in schools and all the rest.

Andrew Prokop, Vox.com. You also heard the voices of some federal employees. That tape came to us from our friends at 1A over at WAMU 88.5 Public Radio here in Washington, D.C. Mr. Musk goes to Washington when Today Explained returns.

This special series from The Verge is presented by Adobe Express.

What's that about?

So when you see what our new and former president's trying to do right now with Doge and all the rest, the Office of Personnel Management, all that stuff, are you kind of like, heck yeah, someone needs to do that? Or what's your reaction?

So you're saying you wish Democrats had done more, and you were part of a Democratic effort to do more. Could you tell people about what that was called and how it went?

We learned that Trump is really going for it. He's coming out of the gate with an extremely aggressive, dubiously legal agenda on many fronts, most notably immigration, but other issues as well. And then I think we also learned some other things, which is that on certain issues, he may not be exactly sure himself what he's going to do.

So probably the big headline from the day was Trump's massive, wide ranging pardon of the January 6th rioters. And this is something, you know, everyone knew Trump was going to do something like this. It had been discussed at length. But only a few days before Trump's inauguration, Vice President J.D.

Vance went on TV and said that if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn't be pardoned. And there's a little bit of a gray area. Trump does not share that opinion, evidently. And he went far more aggressive.

What he did was that he just separated everyone into one of two groups. First, he singled out 14 people who had been members of far-right groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who were really actively plotting and were convicted of seditious conspiracy. For those guys, he didn't give them a full pardon, but he did commute their sentences and free them from prison if they were in prison.

Then the other group is everyone else who was involved in other crimes at the Capitol on that day. Trump said, you are fully pardoned. So this is really a full-blown Trump endorsement and defense of the violence at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. for that to happen. Now he's making it unmistakably clear.

He thought that was good and those people are good and he is going to protect them from any consequences.

Well, energy and climate and the environment was a very big theme. Trump really came out of the gate hot on energy as well.

He withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement.

issued a pretty sweeping executive order calling for the rollback of a bunch of Biden administration policies, including what Trump calls the electric vehicle mandate. It's not really a mandate, but, you know, certain fuel efficiency standards that would ease the transition to electric vehicles. Trump said, nope, that's going away.

Big ugly windmills. He also opened up lots of new areas of Alaska to new fossil fuel production and wants to go from there. So Trump wants to deprioritize climate change, boost fossil fuel production and make new projects of any kind really easier to build. OK. He also made a bunch of changes to how the government works, it seemed like. Yes.

So one of Trump and the people around him's long-running regrets, thoughts about how things went wrong in their first term is that they believe that the federal civil service bureaucracy was – Two, anti-Trump, was disobedient, insubordinate, did not want to implement his policies, and that's why they failed in a lot of what they tried to do last time around.

So they have been cooking up ideas for years about how to get – in their view, better control of this bureaucracy, which mainly amounts to making more positions, political jobs that are easier to hire without going through the civil service projects and making it easier to fire existing civil servants, either by reclassifying them as political jobs or just taking their protections away.

So Trump issued a series of orders that get at different parts of this,

We didn't really see, you know, mass firings yet. There were a few firings reported, heads of immigration court systems. But this is, I think, laying the groundwork. It's a signal that they're very serious about this idea and that they really do intend on kind of taking a wrecking ball to the federal civil service as we know it.

Yes, RIP Vivek.

I think the Trump team has the clearest idea of what they want to do on immigration than any other issue. This is one where Deputy White House Chief of Staff slash Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller is very clearly calling the shots and shooting for the moon.

He is, in addition to restoring various policies from the first Trump administration, such as suspending refugee admissions that remain in Mexico, policy which has migrants have to stay in Mexico while their claims are being adjudicated. He also went much further in really aggressive and sweeping assertions of federal authority.

He declared that there was still a public health emergency, even though the pandemic is long kind of over or accepted as a part of life, depending on who you ask. But basically using that as an excuse to start like totally ignoring U.S. asylum law.

He said he would now order the military to make defending the borders part of their main mission, something that has not been done before. And he also issued an order saying, which he claimed would suspend birthright citizenship, which is the constitutional protected right of any child born in America to be an American citizen.

His team said, actually, we are not going to respect this anymore if both of a child's parents are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. They will not be citizens anymore. And so that applies to undocumented immigrants, but it also applies to visa holders, H-1B visa holders or student visa holders who have a child while in America.

Their children will not be American citizens unless one of the parents of the child is American. a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. This seems clearly unconstitutional. It's already been the subject of a lawsuit by the ACLU and many of Trump's other immigration orders and other orders will be the subject of lawsuits headed to the courts.

And, you know, we'll see what happens with those, whether this conservative Supreme Court stands up to Donald Trump and tries to enforce the rule of law or whether they are not so inclined to rein him in.

He didn't really suggest anything. There is a border security bill under discussion in Congress, so he wants more money for the border, etc. But he did not make requests of Congress a main priority of this first day. It was all about executive power and trying to claim powers to make these vast changes through his own authority and no one else's.