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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. You've probably heard by now that today is Elon Musk's last official day with the Trump administration. Don't be fooled about what that means or doesn't mean. Politico has an article called "Musk is gone, but DOGE staffers are still trying to cut through agencies," and it says, "DOGE is still hungry. Elon Musk's staff quietly burrows in with eyes on deeper cuts."

With us now is the author of that article, Danny Nguyen, a reporter at Politico covering national politics and policy. Besides debriefing Musk, I wonder if, without his personal fervor for breaking things, if attempts at government efficiency will be done now with less cruelty, or was that not just about Musk? We'll see. Danny, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Danny Nguyen: Yes, thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: First, on the circumstances of Musk's departure, here's a clip that CBS News released in advance of a Musk interview with David Pogue that will air on Sunday morning.

Elon Musk: I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.

David Pogue: I actually thought that when this big, beautiful bill came along, like everything he's done on DOGE gets wiped out in the first year.

Elon Musk: I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful, but I don't know if it could be both. My personal opinion.

Brian Lehrer: Musk on CBS. Danny, that's an intriguing bite because he's saying the Trump budget, what Trump calls his big, beautiful bill, works against the goals of DOGE. It can't be both beautiful and big, as he put it. How does that mean he saw the goals of DOGE?

Danny Nguyen: I think that that reflects in the attitude that we're seeing in Elon Musk during his last few days in the federal government. Where he's really going out with a whimper and clear frustration here. I think he's recognized and other colleagues that have partnered with me on this story see that he's recognized that to get what he wants done and to have it have staying power, it needs to go through Congress, it needs to go through Cabinet members, courts, other agency directors. He's really hitting a wall here.

Brian Lehrer: The whole CBS News interview isn't out yet. Do you know if Musk has previously gotten any more specific about maybe tax cuts that he doesn't approve of for the richest people like himself, or anything like that?

Danny Nguyen: I personally haven't reported on that, so I can't speak on that.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we're going to open up this segment to you as well. In particular, you can help us report this story if you have been personally touched by DOGE. Tell us your story to help us report the larger story. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Do you think whatever cut that you might have been a part of, maybe you even lost your job, lost your grant funding, somebody you know in some other country, lost their medical aid? Whatever it was, was it right or wrong? Was it done with cruelty or professionalism? Was it done out of ideology or out of financial reasons?

What else would you say from your own experience? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text on Elon Musk's last official day with the Trump administration. Here's a clip of Musk stating his numerical goal for DOGE at a Trump rally before the election. He's questioned here by Howard Lutnick, who has gone on to be Trump's commerce secretary.

Howard Lutnick: Give it up for the greatest capitalist in the history of the United States of America, Elon Musk.

Brian Lehrer: He said in that exchange that he was going to try to cut $2 to $3 trillion from the federal budget. He didn't come close to that number. Did he mean he was going to cut trillions just in these first four months?

Danny Nguyen: I don't think he did. If you look at current government spending, it's actually gone up so far during the first Trump administration compared to the same time last year. I think the case that Musk and the Trump administration have made as of late is, hey, you're going to see ballooning upfront costs to slash or to see bigger gains down the line.

Brian Lehrer: The scorecard is the actual savings to the taxpayer that have been modest as a percentage of the whole federal budget, a few hundred billion dollars. Right? Am I getting that right, or was it even-

Danny Nguyen: Right.

Brian Lehrer: -that? Which is not nothing, but it's not trillions. Yet we're seeing so much destruction, so much acting fast and breaking things, as they say, in specific areas, medical and other scientific research, so much research halted, so many scientists, government and private, with government grants out of work, so much foreign aid cut. Reports are coming from all over the world of the deadly effects on children's and grown-ups' health, not to mention all those people in jobs in the federal government that they could call DEI or climate-related. Was government efficiency just a cover for an ideological purge for Musk, or at least for Trump?

Danny Nguyen: If you ask federal workers who I've spoken closely with these past few months, they would say yes. That's because they-- especially people at the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, which has seen deep cuts just this past month or in April. They've watched their peers just be absolutely obliterated by reductions in force. Some of them have been reinstated abruptly because DOGE has essentially said, "Oops, sorry, we made a mistake, we broke things too fast, and now we want you back."

I think this DOGE ripping through the government illustrates this uncoordinated effort to, again, as you said, break things, move fast, and really make a lasting mark that can show that they are doing things and purportedly saving money. When you actually look through all the files with a microscope, it paints a little bit of a different portrait.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, here's the rest of that Musk clip. I think we clipped it a little early here. This is where he states the number at that Trump rally at Madison Square Garden.

Howard Lutnick: How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted $6.5 trillion Harris/Biden budget?

Elon Musk: I think we can do at least 2 trillion.

Howard Lutnick: Yes.

Elon Musk: Yes.

Howard Lutnick: 2 trillion.

Brian Lehrer: All right. With very excited Howard Lutnick, who is now Trump's commerce secretary. I'm just going to say it, what I'm calling the cruelty, Danny, the firings with no notice and accusations of bad performance that the federal workers weren't really guilty of. They had to withdraw some of those. The withdrawal of medical and other aid with no notice around the world. The simple fact of the apparent glee, you heard it in that clip, the apparent glee, then once it came to the specific acts, even with which mass layoffs of federal workers were announced and carried out. Was that glee Musk, or was that something more systemic, or do you not accept that characterization of it?

Danny Nguyen: It was, I think, clearly more systemic. Look, Russ Vought, who is the Director of the Office of Budget and Management, who is largely expected to carry on DOGE's cost cutting and staff cutting efforts post Elon Musk has said he wants to traumatize federal workers, and he said stuff along this line that he really wants to rattle up the federal workforce for years now. Now that he's really taking the reins here, people are really worried about what the future of DOGE will look like. Again, like post-Elon, this issue, this fear, goes beyond one man.

Brian Lehrer: Evelyn. Oh, Evelyn hung up. Let's try Charles in Brooklyn. Charles, you're on WNYC. Hello?

Charles: Hello? Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hello. Hello.

Charles: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hello.

Charles: Oh, there you are. Okay. My son was an attorney who was admitted to practice and was retained by the federal government through a program called the Presidential Management Fellowship. It was created by executive order by Jimmy Carter. It's an executive order program. What this program was designed to do was to bring the best and the brightest into the government, and people who wanted to work for the government. In the last year that the program existed, and my son was a part of it, approximately 11,000 people applied, 850 were accepted.

These were people who, all kinds of skill sets, attorneys, quants, teachers, people that wanted to be part of the federal government. He was laid off in the first wave of cuts by DOGE and then was rehired because of the various lawsuits, and then was fired again, and then was hired again, and finally accepted a buyout. All of these people who were in this program were committed to the government, wanted to do good, himself included. It just was decimated. Now, the only thing I will say, created by executive order, and clearly, Trump has the right to end it by executive order. These people were doing good work in the government, and it's a loss for all of us.

Brian Lehrer: Why do you think in your son's case that he was terminated or that program was cut?

Charles: No answer was given to him that made any sense. It was just the program was cut. That's it. There's no-- When you read the executive order cutting it, it's just terminated. I think it was just something that somebody saw on the list and said, "We don't need this." No reason has been given ever publicly, and the program's dead.

Brian Lehrer: Charles, thank you for your call. Danny, you have a quote. My guest is Danny Nguyen from Politico, who has an article, "Musk is gone, but DOGE staffers are still trying to cut through agencies." You have a quote of Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff, saying, "The work to eliminate the rot embedded in Washington has only just begun." The caller reminded me of that quote from your article. Miller, we know, is a very policy or ideology-driven guy. For him, the rot isn't mostly just a spreadsheet of financial savings, I don't think. What do you think he has his eyes on that he says has just begun, even as Elon Musk is leaving?

Danny Nguyen: At the National Institutes of Health, where I've really embedded myself, my reporting shows that the office and HHS in general, the Health and Human Services Department, is still plotting staff cuts, which have DOGE fingerprints all over them. It's clear that they see certain staff, particularly the Information Technology Department, which you would typically-- I would view as benign. They see that as waste. People in the over a dozen IT departments are being asked to come up with strategies to consolidate the workforce before July, when NIH officials are going to have to present a plan to the director.

That's just really taint morale because people are essentially being asked to fire their, or come up with plans to fire their co-workers at the behest of DOGE. This is occurring as the shadow of DOGE and Stephen Miller looms over them. My sources are saying that DOGE has really thrown around this idea of cutting IT staff by up to 40%, which employees say could imperil critical logistics support for scientists. This is the kind of stuff that DOGE, that Stephen Miller, that Russ Vought see as waste, and they want to get rid of it.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a call from somebody calling in anonymously, I will just say from somewhere in the Northeast to protect their privacy. Hello, anonymous caller. Tell us why you want to remain anonymous and tell us your story.

Anonymus Caller: Hi. Yes, I very much want to remain anonymous because I am afraid of retribution from this administration. I have worked full-time as a federal employee for the last three and a half years, and I was hired as a remote worker in another state. I have worked with the most dedicated, intelligent people with expertise as I have had for my entire career. Since this administration came in, I feel demeaned, demoralized. It was exactly as Mr. Vought of the OMB made his speech, saying we want federal employees to wake up and not want to come to work and be traumatized.

That is exactly how many of us feel, to the point where I did take the second deferred resignation package, which was really unfortunate because this is the icing on the cake of my career to work in public service. We were doing such good work. It present a totally--

Brian Lehrer: Were you tempted at all-- May I ask, were you tempted at all not to take the buyout just so you didn't succumb to that pressure that was supposed to make people hate coming to work and leave?

Anonymous Caller: Absolutely. The first time it came out in January, I didn't take it, and Ben, my colleagues did not want me to take it. There was no information. It was-- We all deleted the email forked in the road because we had never heard of this office in the government. I stayed on. Then they said, if you stay, you will have to commute. It would be about an hour and a half to another state, to an office that would not have any of my colleagues.

There was a second package offered in April. At that point, I said, this is ridiculous. This is torture. There's no point in it. I did succumb and take the package, unfortunately, because I'm a fighter and I truly believe in our mission. All I can say is the most experienced people were there, and we've lost so many now.

Brian Lehrer: You called anonymously because you're afraid that even after having left the government, they may try to retaliate against you by taking away your departure package?

Anonymous Caller: Absolutely. I stay off social media. I have gone to protest with a big hat on, I absolutely believe. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much for calling and taking what-

Anonymous Caller: You're very welcome.

Brian Lehrer: -you see as somewhat of a risk for sharing, even in this context. Danny, there's the fear that spreads through many sectors, not just federal employees, but the fear of retaliation for expressing opposition in this country right now.

Danny Nguyen: Yes. Every federal worker that I've spoken with does not want to be named. They are afraid that they could be targets of the Trump administration. They've seen people get dragged out of their rooms and just for posting stories on student newspapers. They don't want to set any red flags or give any red flags to the Trump administration, even if they, in reality, aren't. One thing I have seen just anecdotally is that younger people, the people in fellowship positions in these early career programs, for instance, are less likely to take the buyout from what I've seen, at least during the first wave around Valentine's Day.

That's some people have confided that they have less financial obligation. They don't have kids yet. They aren't necessarily looking to buy a home just yet. They are more likely to want to say, like, "Hey, I'm just going to stay here, see what the Trump administration does, but I don't want to capitulate."

Brian Lehrer: One more. Evelyn in Trenton is back. Evelyn, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Evelyn: Hi, how are you? I am calling from Trenton, where I worked for the local health department. A lot of people lost their jobs indirectly from the federal government due to the clawback of the funds that were given by President Biden. I'm no longer with that department. They're clawing them back. It's affecting almost every local health department in New Jersey. The group that I was in, we were using that money for infection prevention and control in nursing homes and in schools, and other settings, congregate settings, to help not just against COVID, but all sorts of infection prevention and control. It's very sad.

The deaths are still occurring, not as much as before, but they're still occurring. I'm lucky the end of my position wasn't cruel, the way I heard at the federal level, where it was, but still, our department was decimated.

Brian Lehrer: Evelyn, thank you for sharing your story. Another potentially heartbreaking story, Danny. We're running out of time, but if they can't do infection control inspections, if I got her terminology right, at nursing homes, because that's been cut back at the same time that they're considering prosecuting Andrew Cuomo because of how his actions were allegedly covered up after his actions allegedly led to deaths at nursing homes at the beginning of COVID. Do they even realize that that's what this is trickling down to? This will be my last question?

Danny Nguyen: I think that's a very fair question. I did a story last weekend about this Trump administration looking to review tens of thousands of consulting contracts. These aren't just contracts for flashy PowerPoint presentations, but these are contracts that help with relief efforts in Texas after Hurricane Beryl and health care support in the Department of Veterans Affairs. These are seemingly critical contracts here that DOGE has purportedly cut. It's really unclear what the future is of these services, especially amid a looming hurricane season.

Brian Lehrer: Danny Nguyen from Politico. His article on Musk's last day officially with the Trump administration is called, "Musk is gone, but DOGE staffers are still trying to cut through agencies." Thank you for sharing it with us.

Danny Nguyen: Yes, thank you for having me.

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