OMB Director and Project 2025 Architect Russell Vought Halts CFPB Funding
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From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, this is Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We take a closer look this hour at efforts to shutter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the person behind the move, Russell Vogt,

Even before a vote was confirmed last week to lead the powerful budget office, his influence and aims could be found in the effort to freeze federal funds and purge the federal workforce. Here's Vogt in 2023. We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.

because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. Over the weekend, Vote ordered CFPB staff to stop all work and closed its headquarters. We get the latest. Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, has transformed home loans, forced banks to compensate fraud victims and slash overdraft fees, and more recently removed medical debt from credit histories. According to its website, the agency has returned $270 million to California consumers alone.

It's the CFPB that became the latest target of Elon Musk's doge and acting director Russell Vogt over the weekend. And this hour, we take a closer look at what's happening and at Vogt, the self-described Christian nationalist who co-authored Project 2025. He was just confirmed by the Senate last week as director of the powerful Office of Management and Budget.

Megan Meserly, White House reporter at Politico, joins me now. Megan, welcome to Forum. Thank you so much. So talk about how all of this unfolded with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Right. So this really all began on Friday when Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency actually started going into CFPB, trying to access records. It was later that evening that we found out that Russ Vo, Trump's new budget chief,

um, had taken the agency over as acting director. Um, and then the following day on Saturday, he actually announced that, you know, the agency didn't need any additional funding and he would be, um, you know, turning off what he called the spigot of, of funding to the agency. So this all unfolded over the weekend, but, um,

not wholly unexpected in that this is what we have been seeing over the first few weeks of the administration, these efforts by so-called DOJ, Department of Government Efficiency, to go in and to start axing parts of the federal bureaucracy. And why go after CFPB? I understand that it was not a popular agency with many Republicans.

Right. So CFPB, you know, has long come under fire, you know, by Republicans, especially for being, you know, anti-business is an argument you would frequently hear. You know, it's sort of the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren. So that in of itself sort of has a knee jerk reaction for a lot of conservatives. So

for a lot of folks, it wasn't super surprising for this to be, um, you know, one of the early targets, um, you know, in this sort of top to bottom review of the federal government and all of its agencies and, and what they do. Um, but still we're hearing from folks, you know, pushing back saying, Hey, this is a really important agency. You know, it was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Um, you know, you may have problems with, uh,

with some of the actions it's taken, or, you know, some folks raise concerns about its funding mechanism, because it sort of has an unusual funding mechanism. But they're saying, hey, like, if you have problems with those, we should we should address them. This isn't the way to go about it. Is this move, or how much is this move in coordination with Elon Musk's Doge votes recent moves to shutter CFPB?

So speaking to people close to the Trump administration, they really say that Vote and Musk have really been working, you know, on parallel tracks, really, to make a lot of these changes. You know, someone described Elon Musk as sort of the sledgehammer and Russell Votes, really the one who, you know, is known for like poring over budget documents online.

on the weekends. He's known as sort of the conservative technocratic wonk behind all of this. And so they really see them sort of, you know, occupying different spaces, but really working toward this shared goal. You know, as we know, that doesn't always mean that it's going to continue on that trajectory, but for now they do seem to be...

working at least side by side toward this shared mission. I want to invite listeners to join the conversation. Listeners, how have the Trump administration's latest moves on federal agencies, the federal workforce, on halting federal funds or attempts to, how have they affected you? And what do you want to know about Russell Vogt?

You can tell us by emailing forum at kqed.org, finding us on our social channels at KQED Forum by calling 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786. We're talking with Megan Meserly, White House reporter for Politico. And Megan, so...

Tell me more about votes core belief, some of the key things he's wanted to set in motion ever since he last served briefly as director of the Office of Management and Budget in Trump's first term.

So this is something that Vogt has really been thinking about for years and years, right? He started implementing some of this when he served as Trump's budget chief during his first administration, taking over for Mick Mulvaney when he went to go on to be Trump's

chief of staff. But he really just, you know, has had years, you know, when Trump left office in 2020, Vote has had years to really think about all of this and think about sort of the best way to upend the bureaucracy. Like, he really does share this belief that,

you know, with Trump that, you know, that the federal bureaucracy has grown too big. You know, we've seen President Trump express a lot of concerns about what he calls the deep state, this idea that there are these federal career employees who are sort of working against him and his administration's agenda and who he blames for stymieing his agenda during the first administration. You know, we see that echoed in how, you know, Russ Vogt talks about, he doesn't call it the deep state, but he

calls it the regime, but sort of this, you know, bloated bureaucracy he believes has too much power in Washington. He refers to sort of the career federal government employees as the fourth branch of government, this administrative state. And so this is something that he, you know, has really thought about deeply and really wants to dismantle. And it really does overlap with the shared goal of President Trump's toward, you know, dismantling the federal bureaucracy as it exists today. Yeah.

Yeah. His approach may, because the views that you outlined earlier,

are not necessarily, I think, super radical in conservative circles, but his approach with regards to, you know, wanting to shrink the government by inflicting trauma on federal workers, for example, we played a cut of that in the billboard. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, and also how votes influence was seen in the early attempt to freeze federal funds.

Yeah. I mean, I talked to a lot of folks close to to vote about those trauma comments. And I say, you know, how do you how do you read this? You know, he's someone who describes himself, you know, as a dedicated Christian, you know, and saying, like, why does he want to inflict trauma on the federal workforce?

You know, they've told me that it's some combination of they think it's sort of, you know, blustering rhetoric, but it really does get at this, you know, innate like sort of anger and drive that he has believing that, you know, the federal bureaucracy is who's to blame for, you know, a lot of the things that have happened.

happened in government, you know, that they, you know, blame the bureaucracy for what they would call, you know, woke policies and things like that. And so it's sort of this like, it comes from this very existential place of, you know, believing that these, you know, federal workers are a threat and are actively working against, you know, some of these things that they want to achieve. And so I think that's why you see, you know, language like, you know, trauma really, you know, be used here.

And does he really want to expand the powers of the executive branch dramatically?

Yeah, he really does. And this is sort of his classic argument is he wants to press this theory he has on impoundments, which is basically the idea that, you know, the president can ignore congressional spending edicts. And so this is something that, you know, folks have long expected that will eventually, you know, make its way through a court challenge, make its way all the way up to the Supreme Court. And that's what we see.

saw starting to come out in that memo that was issued by the Office of Management and Budget.

You know, that sort of temporarily froze spending or appeared to free spending across the federal government, caused a lot of confusion, made its way to the courts, who said, no, you can't do that. You know, that memo in and of itself, you know, even among allies of votes and the president said, like, this was poorly worded. This is not how we meant for all of this to go down. But it does speak to this sort of like core goal of wanting to test this theory that,

sure, Congress can say, you know, here's all this money to spend, but the executive branch believes that it doesn't have to spend those dollars. And that's something that we expect to see, you know, pressed in the courts. We expect to see vote, you know, lay some of the groundwork for that and take a more, you know, careful, clean version of that case through the court system.

Listener Paul writes,

Megan, can you talk about what unions have done to stop what's happening, their lawsuits?

We've seen so many lawsuits from unions, you know, sort of across this broad swath of federal actions. But, you know, one of them, and specific to what we're talking about, you know, the union that represents, you know, employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, you know, filed a couple lawsuits on Sunday, you know, seeking to block some of those actions and aimed at, you know, preventing people

you know, Musk and Doge from, you know, getting to employee records and information. We really have seen in all of this, you know, as the executive branch sort of tries to press its authority and sort of see, you know, where, you know, how blurry the lines of separation of powers might be. You know, we've seen a lot of this go to the court system

system, especially as Congress, at least at this point, Republicans in Congress are not really pushing back on most of these actions that we've seen in the federal government. And so it really has been up to the courts to weigh in here. And we're sort of seeing unions emerge, you know, clearly as sort of one of the key defenders of the federal workforce here.

Yeah, seeing where executive branch authority ends and Congress's authority begins, especially with regard to agencies and funds and so on. And now Vote leads the Office of Management and Budget again. Can you just give us a quick sense of just how powerful this office is, despite the fact that I would say prior to even Trump's first term, it kind of flew under the radar? Yeah.

Exactly. I mean, this is sort of a little known, little paid attention to office that really does wield immense power over the federal government's purse strings, over some of its regulatory authority. You know, it's not one of the

you know, to the extent that the average person is sort of thinking about federal government agencies, like it's probably not at the top of the list. And yet because of sort of this like bureaucratic administrative function that it has, it really touches so many different areas of government, you know, overseeing the budget, right? That touches a broad swath of government. And so that's where we really see vote having this, you know, broad theory for how to use this office to affect significant change across the government.

Stephen writes, Trump is supposedly a populist and yet installs someone like Vote, who is giving the green light for financial firms to exploit and rip off regular people. And Trump supporters seem to have no clue. We're talking about the effort to stop the work of CFPB, led by Russell Vote, and learning more about who Russell Vote is. We'll have more with you and Megan Messerly of Politico after the break. Stay with us. I'm Mina Kim.

Turing with Tia is the quirky YouTube talk show where Tia Creighton is the host and all her guests are talking AI chatbots. Whether it's health and beauty, science and technology, pop culture, or current events, Turing with Tia delivers answers about everything. That's T-U-R-I-N-G, Turing with Tia, a funny and fascinating way to experience artificial intelligence. Only on YouTube at Turing with Tia.

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You're listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. It is the president's most important tool to dealing with the bureaucracy and administrative state. And, you know, the nice thing about President Trump is he knows that and he knows how to use it effectively. That's Russell Boat speaking to Tucker Carlson on Carlson's podcast about the power of the Office of Management and Budget, an office he was just confirmed by the Senate to lead last week.

We're talking about Russell Vote with Megan Meserly, White House reporter of Politico. And with you, our listeners, what do you want to know about Russell Vote? What questions do you have about the Office of Management and Budget?

and how Russell Vote is operating it and plans to. How have the Trump administration's latest moves on federal funds, on federal agencies, the federal workforce affected you? You can email forum at kqed.org, call us at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786, or find us on Blue Sky Facebook, Instagram, Threads, at kqedforum.org.

I want to bring into the conversation James C. Capretta, former associate director at the White House Office of Management and Budget. James Capretta, really glad to have you on.

Thank you. Glad to be with you. You're currently senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, but you served as this former associate director under President George W. Bush. And I'm wondering, after taking over from a Democratic administration, as the Bush administration did in 2001, how did the Office of Management and Budget handle funding that had been approved by the previous administration for agencies and other things?

even if you didn't necessarily agree with it all? Well, generally, you know, when a new administration comes in, they have discretion on prospective decisions. It's very difficult to go back and undo something that's already gone out the door, so to speak. But, you know, when a new administration comes in, it's very typical to try to put a halt to new decision making so that no new obligations are made that might bind the flexibility of the incoming group of people.

So, you know, I'm pretty sure during the time when I was there, there was probably and I'm sure it occurred in the Biden administration, the Obama administration, too.

You know, some kind of memo going out saying, you know, no new decisions. Let's put a halt on new decisions going forward so that people coming in can review what's going on and make adjustments as they would like to based on the new priorities of the new administration. So that's not atypical. I think it's probably done by both sides. Yeah.

Right. And that's on things going forward, right? So what was your reaction when you heard about the budget office's memo freezing federal funding that had already been approved or appropriated grants, loans, and so on? Well, I think most, I was with everybody else and thought they just had made a mistake and wrote an overly broad and indiscriminate memo and, you know, didn't carefully think through

all the implications of it. And of course, it quickly had to get pulled back for that very reason. So, you know, once the government signs a contract, the other party, you know, has a legal commit, you know, standing to get that money, whatever it is they've been asked to do. And so the government has obligations that it can't get out of easily without being told by a court they have to continue paying something.

If the government has signed contracts and made other obligations. So there's all kinds of encumbrances on government decision making and new administrations have to just generally work with that and try to change things prospectively.

Change things prospectively. So laws and statutes governing how money can be spent cannot be ignored. There was yesterday a federal judge in Rhode Island who blocked the Trump administration's memo freezing federal funds, who said that the White House has defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, citing evidence submitted by many states, including California, saying that some grants are still frozen. Have you seen this type of

sort of indirect defiance of the courts, I guess, or defiance of the courts? No, I think that that is probably the aspect of the last month or so that's been most disconcerting. Administrations sometimes disagree with court decisions and grumble about them. But by and large, the norm has been, and it has to be a norm, that the executive branch has complied with judiciary decisions.

That's how our system is supposed to work. That's why it's always worked. So to the degree that this administration is trying to create more space for it to push back on those decisions and not comply, obviously, that's worrisome. I think in the end, they're going to have to. But, you know, that remains to be seen. Yeah. Complying with court orders, you say, has to be a norm. And what the administration is doing is worrisome. Why? What do you think the impact could be?

Well, I mean, the way our system works is that, of course, the courts are viewed as the final decision makers when there's dispute about the legality of what the executive branch can do or what the even, frankly, what the Congress can do, depending on the provisions of the Constitution that are being discussed. So.

If you don't have an independent judiciary being able to arbitrate disputes about legal authorities of governmental power, yeah, of course it's worrisome because then presumably that could be abused. And, you know, power starts to accumulate in parties where it's not supposed to be. So our system is very intricate and balanced and it has been for a long time and it needs to remain that way.

Do you foresee Russell Vote trying to reissue a more targeted and potentially more successful federal funding freeze memo under the powers of OMB as you know it? I don't think they'll do a memo per se, but I do think there could be

a concerted effort. They've signaled and they really do want to test the impoundment authority of the president. That is the unilateral authority of a president to just not spend money that's been appropriated by Congress. That was tested a little bit by President Nixon, but frankly, not nearly as

as expansively as it looks like this administration is going to try. And it was reined in by a law that got passed in 1974 called the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act,

So we've had 50 years of relative peace around this question about whether presidents can do something like this. And now the incoming administration has basically said they don't agree with that law. They think it's unconstitutional. And so my guess is they will try to find something that's favorable to their position to try to push forward and get a ruling that they think will move more in the direction of greater presidential power.

So, James, I imagine there are many in conservative circles, but also outside of them who feel the government has become big or overly complex and are sympathetic to the idea of reducing the power it has, maybe the amount of money that goes out, but in particular, reducing the federal workforce. Right.

And I was asking Megan about this earlier. Vote has said he wants to inflict trauma on the federal workforce. If you wanted to pursue an effort to shrink government, do you think his program is the right approach or would it be the approach you would have taken? No, I think there's a just profoundly off-base kind of predicate that's driving a lot of this forward, which is that

that the agency staffing and administrative costs of the federal personnel and so on are central to sort of this quote unquote big government. The federal agency workforce, the civil service is not frankly that big relative to where it's always been. It's pretty much been stable. And it's in fact,

not really the size of the workforce that drives quote-unquote big government. And that has to do with its regulatory authority, its reach, its ability delegated by Congress through various statutes to get involved in industries through regulations and other matters. You don't need a lot of staff to be able to do that. So equating the staff and the size of the federal workforce with

size of governmental power, I think, is misguided and off base. I think it's convenient because the public sometimes reacts and agrees with that position, or at least a portion of the public. But I don't think it's accurate, and I don't think it'll get them very far. In fact, what they may end up doing is just harming the ability of the government to perform functions that the

You know, they're going to reduce the competency of the agencies rather than change them fundamentally. So I think that's sort of where they've gotten off track. James C. Capretta, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former associate director at the White House Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush. Thank you so much for coming on. You're welcome. Thank you.

And now I'd like to bring in Bob Bauer, professor of practice and distinguished scholar at New York University School of Law. Bob, really glad to have you with us. Thank you. Glad to be on the program. So how do you interpret vote and the administration's approach toward federal agencies and workers? I'm curious if you, like some of our listeners, are raising in questions and comments, are seeing a pattern emerge here.

vote has articulated a particular theory of executive branch authority which he refers to as radical constitutionalism he laid this out as early as 2022 and his view um and

This might have been, on his part, maybe more crudely expressed than he intended at an event some years ago, is that he doesn't want, and I'm paraphrasing, President Trump to have to worry about legal arguments in the Oval Office, that one of the big problems in the last administration is that lawyers came pooping in after policies had been devised to say that they couldn't be implemented, there were legal problems with them of one kind or another, and he lost his patience with that.

What lies behind that is a view that the administrative state, the deep state that he's looking to shake up and dramatically reduce and reorient, is itself unconstitutional. He says we live in a post-constitutional order. So his view is that he's engaged in a constitutional restoration project, and he needs around him lawyers who understand that. And that is perhaps a view that

that isn't shared by everybody in the administration. I have no way of knowing what the White House counsel thinks about it or what the attorney general thinks about it. But that is clearly his view. And he has been given the responsibility that he wanted at OMB to be able to drive these theories into practice. And so I think

That whatever effect experience in the court has on this program, whatever disagreements within the administration about how far he can take it, that's where he starts. That's his view, very openly and expressly articulated. And I think it's very clear what an extraordinary view it is. I mean, it sounds like you're essentially describing.

vote as feeling like the laws are just wrong and he doesn't need to follow them and that even if they are unconstitutional because the constitution itself needs to be reinterpreted well restored is probably the way restored that's what the founders want yeah yeah it would that at some point i can imagine how he dates it i'm not sure he may have already done it

we went off the constitutional rails and the order that we currently have the legal order we have is itself fundamentally unconstitutional it's a break with the constitutional design of the founders of the framers now how far will he go uh with that uh in challenging the legitimacy of court rulings uh you know that's still to be determined and he won't be the only voice and

We can only look to what he has said in the past, which is he wants to be surrounded by can-do lawyers who don't get in the way. And then the administration will proceed aggressively and see how far it gets. And I suspect we'll see a little bit of movement forward, movement backwards. There may be some unpredictability to how the administration responds to the challenges that it's now confronting, but it means business.

And part of what it's doing is establishing facts on the ground that it would be very difficult for courts to remediate, driving people out of the government who can't be brought back, wrecking agencies like USAID that it would be very difficult to quickly reconstruct at some point to the version that we're familiar with. Part of it is I think they're blustering a bit because they hope to instill a little fear in the courts that the courts have to give them a little room or they will defy court orders.

Now, whether they actually will defy court orders, we don't know. What we do know is that they're engaging in a provocative, very provocative behavior. And at least one judge has already concluded that an order that he issued was not followed by the administration. And he's made it very clear that he intends to have that order followed. We'll just have to see how all this plays out. Yeah, we do have a clip of a vote talking about

In a video in May of 2023 at the Center for Renewing America pro-Trump think tank that was obtained by ProPublica, this is sort of outlining one of the strategies that I think you underscored about how he would go about carrying out what he wants to carry out with regard to challenging the law. And we are trying to build at the Center for Renewing America almost a shadow office of management and budget.

We're trying to build a shadow office of legal counsel so that when a future president says, what legal authorities do I need to shut down the riots? We want to be able to shut down the riots and not have the legal community or the defense community to come in and say that's an inappropriate use of what you're trying to do.

The other thing that's gotten coverage is the fact that, you know, vote is very unhappy with the 1974 law governing impoundment. I'm wondering what you think about how vulnerable that law is. I think that the theory that we're seeing emerging, I'm trying to be careful here because we're at early days here. And so it's particularly with some provocative statements that we're discussing here, including, you

whatever Vice President Vance meant with his tweet the other day about how courts cannot prevent the presidents from exercising their legitimate authorities. It is easy, and we learned this in the first term, to overreact to what's taking place. There's a provocative quality to these communications, a confrontational quality to these communications. And as a result of that, there may be some difference between proclamation and action. Having said that,

There is clearly a view within the administration who shares it, how far it will be pushed. I don't know that presidents in the exercise of their enforcement authority under the take care cause of the Constitution.

can decide that there is funds that Congress have authorized and appropriated under duly enacted statutes that they choose not to spend. And they choose not to spend them for administrative programmatic reasons. I mean, there is some give and take in the law for programmatic delays and other reasons why Congress's will can't be immediately effectuated. But in this case, the theory would be because his administration believes

has a different view of policy and is not prepared to spend the money the way Congress directed or precisely as directed or in the full amount is directed now again, I want to emphasize this is important. We don't know how far they're going to take it But I do not think given the clear allocation of responsibilities to Congress Textual responsibilities to Congress the power of the purse having been given to the Congress

I don't think that taken very far, this theory will succeed. But again, there's this early turn taking place within the administration in which you're having some provocative suggestion that they might be willing to take it a very long way.

Well, Barbara writes, I cannot understand how Christian nationalists apparently claiming to follow Jesus justify wanting to cause trauma to their perceived enemies, the exact opposite of what Jesus said and did. Another listener writes, what legitimate criticism has anyone made about the CFPB? I can't think of anything that they're doing that doesn't wholly benefit the middle class. And I'm not even sure it's clear that they're stymieing growth.

We're talking about the latest developments with the CFPB, the attempt to stop work there, the attempt to cut off federal funding. This is led by Acting Director Russell Vogt. He was placed as Acting Director after being confirmed to lead the Office of Management and Budget last week. Bob Bauer is Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar at New York University School of Law, White House Counsel to President Barack Obama in 2009 to 2011. Megan Meserly is a White House reporter at Politico. And you, our listeners, are joining us.

via Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, a KQED forum, by emailing forum at kqed.org, and by calling 866-733-6786. And we'll get to your calls right after the break. I'm Mina Kim.

Turing with Tia is the quirky YouTube talk show where Tia Creighton is the host and all her guests are talking AI chatbots. Whether it's health and beauty, science and technology, pop culture, or current events, Turing with Tia delivers answers about everything.

That's T-U-R-I-N-G, Turing with Tia, a funny and fascinating way to experience artificial intelligence. Only on YouTube at Turing with Tia. Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union, now offering real-time money movement with instant pay. Make transfers and payments instantly between financial institutions, online or through Star One's mobile app. Star One Credit Union, in your best interest.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're talking this hour about Russell Vogt, newly confirmed to lead the Office of Management and Budget, and the

philosophies, theories, beliefs, ideologies that drive the types of policy decisions that we're seeing, things like the effort to stop the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We're talking about it with Bob Bauer of NYU School of Law and Megan Meserly, White House reporter for Politico, and we're talking about it with you, our listeners. Let me go to Louise in Berkeley. Hi, Louise. You're on.

Hi. Since my call, I appreciated the former manager of OMB. I thought his descriptions were very cogent. I've been pretty upset as a 30-year government...

government employee that retired in 2018 about the flagrant disregard of procedures, including, say, the well, this isn't about vote, but that was more about the fork in the road business. They had no business authorizing nine months of administrative leave. And I was my initial comment was about the I just my ears just

aches to hear when they say what Russell Vogt believes. I could believe that the earth is flat. You know, let's talk about what the law is. And I did see your subsequent guests go into that. So I appreciate that. Yeah, I just think that...

We got wing nuts in charge. Yeah. And it's scary. I'm so sorry, Louise, for what you are probably going through watching what's happening to your fellow federal employees and really appreciate you calling in.

And Bob, I do appreciate Louise's point about you can believe whatever you want to believe, but vote is uniquely in a position to wield tremendous power with regard to how to carry out things that will affect people's lives and carry out, I guess, essentially his beliefs. I do want to ask you about what has struck me as an apparent contradiction.

but maybe it's not. He has basically said that he wants to return power to the American people, right? And that the greatest challenge confronting a conservative president, his words, is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power. But that ultimately, this president will then need to exercise self-denial

to use the bureaucratic machine to send power away from Washington. Can you explain this to me? Well, the self-denial phrase, I'm not quite sure I want to look at the full context to fully understand that. I believe that what you're suggesting, and if I'm talking past the point, please bring me back, that you have a conservative view, and it's not just Russell Vos' view,

that the administrative state has grown way beyond constitutional proportions, that it has sapped authority from elected officials. And in that sense, by doing so, it has thwarted the democratic will. Voters go to the polls.

They elect the president. They elect members of Congress. They don't elect those who administer with considerable authority key agencies in our executive branch. And for that reason, by trimming back those agencies, in some cases getting rid of some, in other cases restructuring and reducing the funding for others, they

They make the government more responsive to the popular will. I mean, we've heard that line of criticism for a long time about unelected bureaucrats who drive policy without regard to the preferences or the express will of the American people in the elections that they participate in. Now, related to that, of course, is the view that the one elected official who represents the American public most directly is.

is the only one who's elected on a national basis, the one of two, the president, the vice president of the United States, and that he embodies that will. And therefore, the authority that he exercises has to be wide in scope,

has to be a strong president and a president who, in acting as he does, carries within the authority of the mandate that presumably voters in electing him registered at the polls. So that's a conservative view. It's not unique to this administration by any stretch of the imagination. But again, votes view of this so-called post-constitutional order that he wants to dismantle has been expressed in very, very aggressive and

terms and particularly some of the comments, by the way, that were included in that clip that you played part of about frustrations with the role of lawyers constantly trying to pull people back to the way the law is now, which is not the law he believes that is constitutionally grounded, that we should continue to live with. Yeah. Megan, do you see votes increasing?

plans to sort of shrink the bureaucracy or the administrative state, as you say, being at odds at all with any of Trump's other nominees. I guess one that comes to mind is Kash Patel, who appears really wanting to use the power of the FBI, at least if his previous comments are to believe in a major, you know, retributive way. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's a good question. And this is something I've been talking actually with a lot of folks about is, you know, they, you know, folks who are allied with with the president and with Russ Vought, you know, they say, OK, yes, there's all this, you know, they view it as cutting away of the fat that has to be done. But even if they all agree, let's say about that part, they don't all agree about the what comes next.

There's sort of this idea that that Russ Vogt and Elon Musk both have sort of this zero based budgeting, right? You cut everything down to zero and then you build back from that. But because President Trump now has this, you know, big tent coalition, there are a lot of different demands in there and lots of different visions for what people believe government should do. For instance, a good example is Vice President J.D. Vance, who's talked a lot about, you

you know, the family and he wants, you know, government to adopt more policies to actively promote the family, right? So that would be like proactive steps taken by the government, which sort of runs contrary to the sort of the libertarian, the small government at all costs view, which is where I think you get into some of the nuance here within the administration is not everyone is going to be on board with that.

just as like everyone's not going to be on board with, you know, the powers that, you know, the FBI or any other agency should use. And so it's sort of like everyone's on the same page right now and speaking with one voice. But sort of once we get past this phase, you know, I think a lot of folks are expecting there to be a lot more rumblings and dissent and potential clashes within the administration because there isn't sort of like a unified vision about what exactly it is that government should be doing. Hmm.

Let me go to caller Lynn in Beaumont. Hi, Lynn, you're on. Hi, thanks. First, let me say, so I'm now a grandmother and a mom and a retired second grade public school teacher down in Riverside County. And I'm calling and I've been following this so closely. Also, I'm a huge NPR fan of all stripes. But I'm calling to really kind of passionately deny the...

the validity of the point of view that vote has been promoting, especially in a lot of these clips and in what Mr. Bauer was talking about earlier, the idea that the president embodies the closest connection between citizens and our national government for 40 years. So back when I was

30 years old and I still had kids in diapers and wasn't a grandma and wasn't retired. Since then, I've been an advocate with a volunteer group to specifically deal with Congress. And I can say from 40 years of my own personal experience that this democracy was set up to work and that citizens can go with policy presentations to their

own members of Congress as constituents and actually get things done. And I liked what your previous speaker, James, said about some of these terrorist

tear it all down and then build it back like Elon Musk talks about, that reduces the function and the competency of our government. And I just want to say, in terms of the House of Representatives, and I've probably personally had face-to-face meetings with over 40 years, gosh, four dozen, three dozen, maybe at the least, members of the House of Representatives on policies to prevent poverty and to address poverty both in the U.S.

and globally. I volunteer with a group called Results at results.org. And I go in and sit down and talk to their staff and talk to these members of Congress. And that power of the purse and that power of constituents, people like me, to be able to go in and say, look, SNAP is greatly valuable. And here's the best example I have. USAID is

I've worked on, well, all of them.

To the point of sociopathy, I think the tech bro cool motto of move fast and break things has rationalized and ushered in the unprecedented destruction of an entire democracy. Maybe someone can apply that approach in business, but it doesn't belong in democracy. Let me go to Barbara in San Francisco. Barbara, you're on.

Thank you. We have three branches of government, executive, judicial, and legislative. The legislative is being silent, not defending and supporting their own approval of national spending. So we need both Democrats and Republicans to rise up and help save our country. Barbara, thanks. I want to get actually Bob's reaction to this. Bob, what legal avenues do

or other ways, if you want Democrats to push back, do they have, do you think that are potentially most effective? Well, I assume you mean when you talk about challenges to the course of conduct. Yes. And also even Congress. Yeah. Well, Democrats and potentially others who are concerned and do not agree with the direction that this government is headed,

So there are a couple of things. First of all, it should not be forgotten that

We have midterm elections and as it goes in this country, I mean, they're really not that far off. They're 18 months away or so. And the House margin that Democrats hold is very narrow and they'll be looking to take the House back. Midterm elections have generally there have been exceptions, been pretty hard on incumbents. And in a period of turbulence like this and potentially significant voter dissatisfaction,

maybe among amendments, independents and not only among Democrats, there could be a very significant swing. And if the House does shift, if the House does shift over to the Democrats, there will be much more oversight and much more of a legislative response or at least predictable legislative response from the opposition party. And in the meantime,

Public pressure does make a difference. There are going to be, take for example, the funding freeze, which has affected farmers around the country. Republicans who, when they hear on issues that are vital to them from their constituents, may begin to move on some of these issues in the direction some of your callers are looking for. Right now, it's unclear where this is headed and how much it's going to bite, how much it's going to affect people, although on the face of it does seem

It has to affect people. These funding freezes obviously do. And the effects have been recorded. That's now in litigation. But I do think there is going to be a reaction by the affected constituencies that will have an effect on the Congress. That's always what happens here. In the first instance, with the new president, there's an enormous amount of pressure, particularly with this president, for a number of reasons we can talk about.

to give him what he wants and particularly give him the government he wants and the people he wants in those positions. But when constituents begin to feel the pain, and there's a lot of that discussion now taking place in farm states, it will affect the behavior of even Republican members of Congress. And last but not least, of course, we're seeing this play out at great lengths in the courts. And courts are not insensitive to the environment in which they're operating. They decide the case in front of them, but they are also very sensitive to the larger picture.

Let me remind listeners, you are listening to Forum. I'm Nina Kim. We're talking with Bob Bauer, professor at NYU School of Law, co-author of After Trump and The Unraveling. Also, Megan Meserly, White House reporter at Politico. And earlier, we were joined by James C. Capretta, former associate director at the White House Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush, now with the American Enterprise Institute.

So then how worried are you, Bob, about a recent poll showing that more than half of Americans approve of Trump so far? This was a CBS poll that was taken a few days ago, February 7th, I think, and it represents the highest approval rating he's received since, you know, he ever held office. So from his first term till now. Do you have any thoughts about that?

I have a lot of thoughts about polling, generally speaking. Polling, we know now that, you know, we all understand that, you know, polling, quite frankly, like weather forecasts, can actually hit the mark pretty well a lot of the time. But it's very inexact. It can be influenced by very quickly by events that are not picked up in earlier surveys. And I think that it is...

I think that it is fair to say that anything this early, before any of these decisions, apart from how dramatic they may be portrayed in the press, have played out, how people understand them, the extent to which they think they're affected by them, whether they believe that there's a sideshow taking place in Washington to the exclusion of what they want the government to do, which is to focus on bread and butter issues. I think it's way too early to say that these numbers really mean anything. What about you, Megan?

I know that that poll might be a touch of an outlier, but there is another pupil that also found a pretty consistent higher level of approval for this president so far. You know, this is one of the threads I keep talking about with people is this idea that, you know, these cuts, obviously the work that, you know, USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the work that they do is very important and does impact the lives of everyday Americans.

But people aren't necessarily seeing the impacts, right? Like with USAID, the impact is sort of soft power influence abroad. You're not going to see that overnight. With the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, you're not seeing the harm that the agency prevented that might have happened to you. And so a lot of folks I talk to think that we're going to start seeing a lot more impacts from these cuts the more that they continue. For instance, there have been cuts into the Department of Education, a lot of

folks have strong feelings about their schools. If those schools start being impacted in folks' districts, you know, people in Congress are going to start hearing about it. You know, we saw with that, with the tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican from Iowa, pushed back, you know, worried about the harms to agriculture, right? So as we start seeing more and more of these types of cuts,

have more impacts on, you know, sort of the everyday person and those impacts start reaching their way back to Congress. I think we are going to start seeing potentially more pushback or at least grounds for pushback from even Republican members of Congress. And to finish where we began, what are you watching for in terms of votes next moves?

Yeah, we have our eyes on a number of agencies. So, I mean, obviously, he's still continuing to, you know, chip away at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But between him and Doge, like I mentioned, Katz at the Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services.

Department of Defense, one that the president himself said that he would like folks to take a look at, that is likely to raise some issues in Congress as there are still many defense hawks there who may not take kindly to jobs being cut in their districts and who have strong feelings about the U.S.'s place in the world. So these are all things we're keeping an eye on moving forward. What are you watching, Bob? Well, I am watching for...

Of course, the outcome of court decisions. We're going to see how that plays out, how the way the legal landscape is restructured. And again, and we're saying the same thing here. Also, the effects of this as they are felt throughout the body politic and the effect that has on the Congress and its response to the president. Bob Bauer, thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you.

Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar at New York University School of Law, Megan Meserly, White House Reporter of Politico. Really glad to have you with us, too. Thank you. My thanks also to our listeners for sharing their responses, experiences, and questions around this. And my thanks to Caroline Smith and Mark Nieto for producing today's segment. You have been listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim.

Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.