The Continuous Action - The Authoritarian’s Fist

The Authoritarian’s Fist

Explicit content warning

04/20/23 • 23 min

1 Listener

The Continuous Action

Imagine a world in which the president had unfettered power to use the massive federal workforce as a weapon against political rivals. In that scenario, federal officials would be forced to serve a political party’s interests instead of the public interest. Your access to federal benefits and services could be slowed or blocked depending on your declared political affiliation. That’s a world that former President Donald Trump tried to make a reality in the final days of his administration.

Exploiting a statutory loophole, Trump issued an executive order in October 2020 that could have made tens of thousands of federal employees, maybe hundreds of thousands, fireable at will by political operatives. Public servants could have faced retaliation if they reported corruption or refused to follow unlawful orders.

President Joe Biden rescinded the executive order before Trump could implement this new system. But the nation isn’t out of the woods. Congress has failed to close the loophole that made this plan possible. And now, there’s a movement to resurrect it and politicize the civil service.

On this episode of The Continuous Action, Virginia Heffernan and Walt Shaub delve into the issue with Rudy Mehrbani, senior director for governance at the Democracy Fund and a former director of the White House’s Office of Presidential Personnel.

For transcript and show notes, visit pogo.org/podcasts/the-continuous-action

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For transcript and show notes, visit pogo.org/podcasts/the-continuous-action

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Anything Goes

Members of Congress write their own rules — and those rules allow stock trades galore!

In this episode of The Continuous Action, host Walt Shaub dives into topic of congressional stock trading, outlining the problems with the practice and asking the question we’re all thinking: How is this legal? He’s joined by a member of Congress who’s leading a bipartisan coalition working to make sure it won’t stay legal for long.

The fact is, there’s no way for us to know what our elected representatives learn in closed-door government briefings, or whether they’re profiting from that knowledge. But what we do know is that members of Congress and their immediate families are free to buy and sell stocks while they’re in office, and some of them are turning quite a profit.

Even if they’re all following the rules, the lack of adequate guardrails is enough to shake the public’s faith. And it has: at least one poll shows that more than 70% of voters favor banning congressional stock trading.

To learn more, Walt talks with Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) about the quest to ban congressional stock trading. Spanberger leads a bipartisan coalition of members, including Representative Chip Roy (R-TX), which is fighting to put a congressional stock trading ban in place. They may not agree on much else, but these dozens of members of Congress agree that time has come to stop the trades.

For transcript and show notes, visit pogo.org/podcasts/the-continuous-action

Special thanks to Caroline Kenney and Jason Linkins, whose voices appear at the top of this episode.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

Infiltrated!

A 2015 membership roll for the Oath Keepers, a violent, anti-government extremist group, included hundreds of current or former employees of the Department of Homeland Security. That’s according to a leaked document reviewed by the Project On Government Oversight. Since the creation of the document, members of the Oath Keepers, including its founder Steward Rhodes, have been convicted of seditious conspiracy and other offenses related to the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

Any connection between this extremist group and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is obviously disturbing — especially considering the department’s role in fighting domestic terrorism. And this list may just be the tip of the proverbial iceberg. An internal study found that “significant gaps” have impeded the department’s ability to “respond to potential threats related to domestic violent extremism within DHS.”

On this episode of The Continuous Action, Virginia Heffernan and Walt Shaub sound the alarm. POGO senior investigator Nick Schwellenbach joins them to share the findings of his investigation into the troubling ties between extremists and the government agencies responsible for protecting the public.

For transcript and show notes, visit pogo.org/podcasts/the-continuous-action

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.