Ron Rudson

In 2007, 2008, I went out and I bought the most popular luxury mattresses. I tore them apart and I realized, based on the raw materials cost and the analysis that I had done, that I was able to sell that level mattress, but with a very affordable price.

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At Sotva, we have a 365-day home trial. Why would we want to rush you or try to push you into something that's not right for you? We want to make sure that we guide you to the right mattress. Our team is always available to be helpful to make sure you make the right choice. To learn more,

In 2007, 2008, I went out and I bought the most popular luxury mattresses. I tore them apart and I realized, based on the raw materials cost and the analysis that I had done, that I was able to sell that level mattress, but with a very affordable price.

I tell my pediatric moms and dads. If they get a rash after the MMR, it's okay. It's not measles. It's just your body's reaction to the vaccine.

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This message comes from NPR sponsor, Sotva. Founder and CEO Ron Rudson shares why Sotva sales associates are focused on finding the perfect mattress for their customers.

To learn more, Go to s-double-a-t-v-a-dot-com-slash-n-p-r.

This message comes from NPR sponsor, Sattva, maker of quality, handcrafted mattresses. Founder and CEO, Ron Rutzen, shares one of their core values.

At Sattva, we believe sleep does unlock a superpower. When you wake up and you're totally refreshed, you go after things more. And it all starts with being on the right mattress. And that's what Sattva has been inspired by from the day that we started.

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This message comes from NPR sponsor, Sattva. Founder and CEO, Ron Rudson, shares the story of how he got started creating Sattva.

In 2007, 2008, I went out and I bought the most popular luxury mattresses. I tore them apart and I realized, based on the raw materials cost and the analysis that I had done, that I was able to sell that level mattress, but with a very affordable price.

To learn more, go to saatva.com slash NPR.

In 2007, 2008, I went out and I bought the most popular luxury mattresses. I tore them apart and I realized, based on the raw materials cost and the analysis that I had done, that I was able to sell that level mattress, but with a very affordable price.

This message comes from NPR sponsor, Sattva, maker of quality, handcrafted mattresses. Founder and CEO, Ron Rutzen, shares one of their core values.

It's bulls**t. Plain and simple. When they say affordability, and I've heard this line ever since I first went to a meeting in 1989, what they're meaning is profitability. Affordability to them means being able to close sales, hand the keys, and walk away.

Listen, I saw the association fight for a decade, fall on its sword and twist it over a $200 exhaust fan requirement. They spent thousands of dollars and staff hours You know, just grinding on this issue of a requirement for an exhaust fan.

They don't want those maps updated because all of a sudden a lot of areas that were previously developed are off limits. Or the rates, because of the higher proven risk, go up substantially.

What was its main goal? Advocacy. Look, trade associations exist for one reason, and that is to help facilitate trade. the profit-making ability of their members. And it really doesn't owe an apology for that. What it owes an apology for is for pretending they're something that they're not.

They pretend that they're an advocate for the American homebuyer, and it's all for show because what it's really about is figuring out how you can warehouse the American homebuyer for the least amount of cost and the most amount of profit.

This message comes from NPR sponsor, Sattva. Founder and CEO Ron Rutzen shares the experience they hope to create in their viewing rooms.

He's one of the prime authors of the Project 2025 agenda. That's what the Conservative Heritage Foundation produced as a blueprint for a second Trump term. Trump himself disavowed that document many times during the campaign, but we've already seen some of its authors entering his new administration.

And vote in particular will be in a key position to change the way the federal government does business.

Lori Chavez de Riemer is a Republican member of the House from Oregon who just lost her reelection bid earlier this month, so she will be available in January. She had the backing of Teamsters President Sean O'Brien and was seen as the most pro-labor of the prospects for this job. You may remember O'Brien addressing the GOP convention last summer. and Housing and Urban Development.

Scott Turner was in the first Trump White House. He was director of the Opportunity Revitalization Council there. His job was helping attract business investment to depressed urban areas. Before that, he played for several teams over a nine-year career in the National Football League.

For the moment, it suggests there is a limit to what Trump can demand from Republicans, even in this, his moment of maximum triumph. Gates said he stepped out so as not to be a distraction, but it's widely reported Trump called Gates the morning he withdrew and told him the votes just weren't there in the Senate to confirm him.

But we don't know if this Gates case was a one-off or if it established some kind of precedent by which the Senate will try to push back Again, Trump quickly replaced Gates with former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. They have a political connection going back a decade and more.

She was mentioned for this job eight years ago, and she was on Trump's defense team during his first impeachment trial. The Washington Post is reporting that Trump plans to have Bondi clean out all the justice attorneys who built the criminal cases against him.

It's hard to see how it wouldn't one way or another, but the police have also said that allegation in 2017 was investigated and no charges resulted. Trump personally does not seem to be overly troubled by such controversies, whether his own or those of his nominees, but it could worsen some of Hegseth's other issues.

He has been openly hostile to the idea of women in combat and critical of the Navy admiral, who is now the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hegseth is a decorated veteran and a commentator on Fox News, but he does not have any relevant administrative or political experience for one of the toughest jobs in any government.

If you watch the Republican National Convention, you know that Trump's connection to the world of professional wrestling has been important to his political persona and outreach. It might not seem to have much to do with education, but as you say, the Department of Education is one Republicans regularly suggest should not exist at all.

It annually funnels billions to schools and students, but Republicans say that could all be handled directly with the state and local governments. Ron Elving, thanks so much. Thank you, Scott.

Good to be with you, Scott.

Treasury is the crown jewel in this collection. It's one of the original four cabinet positions, all the way back to George Washington choosing Alexander Hamilton. Trump has chosen billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Besant. Most people have not heard of him, but that's going to change.

He's going to be in charge of imposing tariffs that Donald Trump insists he wants to have on foreign goods, especially from China. And he'll also be pushing the renewal of Trump's tax cuts from 2017, which are about to expire at the end of 2025. The new boss at the Office of Management and Budget is Russell Vogt. Not a surprise. He had the job for a while in the first Trump term.

Good to be with you, Sarah.

We do seem to be walking up to it. The phrase refers to a conflict between constitutional powers that has no clear resolution in the Constitution itself. Now, Trump suggests that a judge cannot contradict him because that judge didn't run for president.

One has to wonder, does Trump understand and accept that the courts are meant to act as a check on the elected branches, the Congress and the presidency? This one deportation case is going to an appeals court next week, but there are more than a dozen court rulings out there against Trump so far. They're being appealed, and at least some of them will probably reach the Supreme Court.

So how far is Trump prepared to go in pursuing his version of reality here? So far, at least, Trump has said he will not defy court orders. He will appeal them and rail against them and call for impeachment of the judge, but he has not yet said he will defy the courts outright.

The DHS is cutting jobs at its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and in the offices of the Ombudsman for Immigration Detention and the Ombudsman for Citizenship and Immigration Services. The DHS spokesman told NPR Friday that these offices, quote, obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining DHS's mission, unquote.

Well, their job was to provide in-house oversight and restraint on this powerful agency and make sure it stays within the law and follows its own mandates. That's what watchdogs do. That's what ombudsmen offices are for. But here, as with the inspectors general, Trump is fired in various agencies. The new administration sees these watchdogs and guardrails as impediments.

And the Trump question is, why should anyone have any authority over these agencies other than the president? People can tell him that this is based in the laws and regulations as written and ultimately in the constitutional separation of powers. But it's not clear he accepts that answer.

That could be the question of the year, Sarah. But let's start with the Institute of Peace. It was created by an act of Congress 40 years ago under President Reagan. Its mission is to prevent or resolve violent conflicts in other countries. The Institute calls itself independent and says its employees are not federal workers.

But the White House says the president considers the Institute to be, quote, one of his agencies, unquote. And it says the Institute employees are rogue bureaucrats. As for the pushback from Congress, well, the Republican Party controls both House and Senate, and it's been very much on board for Trump and so far at least for Elon Musk as well.

The Democrats, meanwhile, are debating how to resist Trump without making bad things happen like a government shutdown and how to resist without doing damage to their own interests and those of their voters.

Thank you, Sarah.

The New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have reported that there have been clashes between Musk and members of the cabinet, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, both of whom were reported to have been scolded by Musk for not cutting enough and for having too many DEI hires still working for their departments.

Yes, that's right. It's not a clear liability yet, at least not for Republicans in Congress, because as we saw on Tuesday night at the State of the Union, Musk is still a hero to Trump fans, both in Congress and beyond. Musk still polls well among Trump supporters. But the Musk stock may have seen its peak, Scott. We will see how the cuts to Veterans Affairs staffing, for example, go down.

with the families of vets in the care of the VA. And we'll also see how much Musk gets to do with Social Security. That's the most popular federal program in history by all measures. But Musk has compared Social Security to an illegal private investment swindle. He did that on Joe Rogan's podcast last month.

Yes, Newsom took a more centrist position on bans on trans athletes in school sports. Now, Scott, I remember when would-be presidents would go on Larry King's CNN talk show to say they were thinking about the White House. Now, there may be a trend, as you suggest, towards starting your own pod. No one can be surprised that Newsom is thinking about what he may do for a living next.

He's term limited as governor after 2026. So why not start a pod and start having guests who might attract an audience outside your own political base? And certainly Charlie Kirk at age 31 with millions of followers hoping to be influential even after the Trump era, he certainly speaks to people far from Newsom's base.

Far apart and possibly getting farther even as we speak. Speaker Mike Johnson has said he wants a clean bill to extend current spending commitments through the end of the fiscal year in September and That sounds like the simple, typical kick-the-can solution here.

But House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries points out that the bill Johnson is backing would actually be a setup for the new Trump-Musk budget regime, with all that implies and sets in motion. And Johnson himself says the new spending bill would get the ball rolling on the next era of Trump-Musk cuts.

So there will not be any Democratic votes for that, meaning the Republican leaders in the House will have to get a majority. and in the Senate, a supermajority with the votes of their own members alone. And it's going to be tough bringing every last Republican on board for all this controversial stuff. That's not impossible, but the odds are not good.

So right now, it seems likely that next week at this time, we'll be in a shutdown, at least for a short period of time.

Thank you, Scott.

Good to be with you, Scott.

It's been sold that way, like it's Trump siding with his cabinet over Musk. But if you listen to that clip we just heard, it still seems that Musk gets to come along batting clean up and deciding whether the cabinet secretaries and other Senate-confirmed officials have done enough. So who decides what's enough? Is it Musk or is it Trump himself? And do we know whether that's really a difference?

At Sattva, we believe sleep does unlock a superpower. When you wake up and you're totally refreshed, you go after things more. And it all starts with being on the right mattress. And that's what Sattva has been inspired by from the day that we started. To learn more, go to saatva.com slash NPR.

This message comes from NPR sponsor, Sattva, maker of quality, handcrafted mattresses. Founder and CEO, Ron Rutzen, shares one of their core values.

To learn more, go to saatva.com slash NPR.

In 2007, 2008, I went out and I bought the most popular luxury mattresses. I tore them apart and I realized, based on the raw materials cost and the analysis that I had done, that I was able to sell that level mattress, but with a very affordable price.

This message comes from NPR sponsor, Sotva. Founder and CEO Ron Rudson shares why Sotva sales associates are focused on finding the perfect mattress for their customers.

In 2007, 2008, I went out and I bought the most popular luxury mattresses. I tore them apart and I realized, based on the raw materials cost and the analysis that I had done, that I was able to sell that level mattress, but with a very affordable price.