Andrew Prokop
speaker
268 appearances
9 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 15 Sep
Andrew Prokop’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
You don't do with a sledgehammer and retire 10,000 people and shut down agencies and programs. The first thoughtful thing any administrator does, left or right, is what are the unintended consequences of any action we take? I always did that in any program. They are not only doing that, they don't care. And that's the thing that's extremely dangerous here.
There's going to be a catastrophe caused which we can't predict.
We were paying them tremendous amounts of money and we're not paying them anymore because they haven't done a thing for us.
USAID, run by radical lunatics, and we're getting them out, and then we'll make a decision.
For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending through what is known as impoundment.
In that process, we identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.
Donald Trump said he'd end the war in Ukraine in his first 24 hours in office. He did not. He also said he'd immediately slash grocery prices. Yet my eggs keep costing more, Donald. But he has delivered on a bunch of other promises. If you heard yesterday's Today Explained, you know the pardons are flowing as are the deportations, and he's really shaking up the federal government.
He fired a dozen or maybe more inspectors general late Friday night with zero notice. That's not even legal. On Monday, he fired another dozen or so prosecutors who worked with Jack Smith, They can sue and their lawyers, so probably.
And then he also just issued a pause in federal grants, loans, and financial assistance, apparently until his administration can make sure all that money is being doled out in line with their priorities. But he's also trying to deliver on that ancient promise of his to drain the swamp. And that is where we are going to focus our energy on the show today.
This special series from The Verge is presented by Adobe Express.
Today Explained, Sean Ramos from here once again with Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent at Vox. Andrew, we've seen lots of pardons. We've seen deportation. How is Trump, too, doing so far on reshaping the federal government?
When you talk about people from Silicon Valley, are you talking about Elon Musk, who, of course, is still in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, RIP Vivek Uncle, which, of course, pledged to cut two trillion from the federal workforce? Or are we talking about something else?
OK, so we've got a really broad effort here to shake up federal agencies between returning employees to the office, removing these protections from various classifications, rolling back DEI, getting rid of people who've been around for less than a year. What is the greater goal here? Is it just to lay off a bunch of people?
Some of them are even shooting for Mars here. I do think it's important that we remember that While clearing out the federal government, you are affecting thousands upon thousands of families with mortgages and kids in schools and all the rest.
Andrew Prokop, Vox.com. You also heard the voices of some federal employees. That tape came to us from our friends at 1A over at WAMU 88.5 Public Radio here in Washington, D.C. Mr. Musk goes to Washington when Today Explained returns.
What's that about?
So when you see what our new and former president's trying to do right now with Doge and all the rest, the Office of Personnel Management, all that stuff, are you kind of like, heck yeah, someone needs to do that? Or what's your reaction?
So you're saying you wish Democrats had done more, and you were part of a Democratic effort to do more. Could you tell people about what that was called and how it went?
So the USDS is the United States Digital Service. And unlike Doge, which a lot of people know because it's got a very famous guy in charge and also because it's a meme coin, I imagine most people haven't actually heard of the US Digital Service, which is maybe part of the problem. What were y'all doing and why didn't people know about it if they didn't?
So is Doge, which is this new effort, the Department of Government Efficiency, just like a USDS 2.0? Is it literally going to be some of the same people? Or is this an entirely new outfit trying to reach the same end, more or less?
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