On this edition of Your Call, we continue our new series, The Authoritarian Playbook, by focusing on the Trump administration's attacks on federal workers.
The federal government employed roughly 2.3 million nonmilitary workers at the start of the year, according to the New York Times. More than 150,000 federal workers have decided to resign. That number does not include the thousands of people who were laid off or fired.
Trump's firings include the country's economic data collector, the director of the CDC and Prevention Director, and two Democratic members of the FTC. He also fired EPA employees who signed a letter of dissent.
CREW says these firings are an unprecedented attack on independent agencies and government accountability. Watchdogs say these firings are putting the country's health, safety, and economy at risk. How is civil society responding?
Guests:
Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, author of Everybody Wins Except for Most of Us: What Economics Really Teaches About Globalization, and co-author of The State of Working America, 12th Edition
Lawrence Gostin, Distinguished Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, faculty director at the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, director of the World Health Organization Center on Global Health Law, and author of Global Health Security: A Blueprint for the Future
Elaine Kamarck, senior fellow in Governance Studies and director of the Center for Effective Public Management at Brookings, co-author of Lies That Kill: A Citizen’s Guide to Disinformation, and author of four books, including The End of Government-As We Know It: Making Public Policy Work
Resources:
The New York Times: In Trump’s Federal Work Force Cuts, Black Women Are Among the Hardest Hit
Economic Policy Institute by Josh Bivens: Trump’s illegal attempt to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook will lead to higher costs for U.S. households
Economic Policy Institute by Josh Bivens: Trump wants to hide the consequences of his bad policies by manipulating BLS data—it won’t work
Economic Policy Institute by Josh Bivens: Destroying the Fed’s independence to make monetary policy decisions would be a disaster for working people
Brookings by Elaine Kamarck: How will we know if DOGE is succeeding?
Brookings by Elaine Kamarck: The fallout from DOGE’s approach to government reform
Brookings by Elaine Kamarck: DOGE is endangering Trump’s priorities
JAMA Forum by Lawrence Gostin: Threats to Vaccinations in the US
JAMA Forum by Lawrence Gostin: The 2024 Presidential Election—An Inflection Point for Science
