Episode Details

In the spring, Edward Brandon Becham was caring for his dying wife. He was also among hundreds of thousands of federal workers weighing whether to abandon public service. Donald Trump had taken office vowing to slash the federal bureaucracy, then entrusted the task to billionaire Elon Musk and a newly created cost-cutting team called the Department of Government Efficiency. In a matter of months, Musk and his U.S. DOGE Service wiped out hundreds of thousands of jobs, billions of dollars in spending and the job security that once distinguished government work.

Of America’s 2.4 million federal workers, nearly 4 in 10 registered to vote had, like Becham, cast ballots for Trump, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll. But as the days passed, Becham was becoming convinced that the Trump administration’s treatment of government employees — large-scale firings,

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