Terry Gross

And also there's something that's being called not a pocket veto, but pocket rescission.

Can you explain that?

These are powerful tools.

My guest is Andy Kroll, an investigative reporter for ProPublica covering the Justice Department and the judiciary.

He has an article in The New Yorker in collaboration with ProPublica about Russell Vogt titled Donald Trump's Deep State Wrecking Ball.

We'll be right back.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.

It seems that one of the things that Russell Vogt is doing is creating chaos, freezing funds with agencies not knowing if those are going to be unfrozen or if they'll never get that funding back, creating chaos in many ways in agencies.

Creating some chaos in Congress because Trump has been telling Republicans in Congress what to do.

And sometimes that's contradicting what they've already voted to do.

Is chaos a goal of Russell votes?

I wonder if that's intentional.

Like if you want to destroy federal agencies and the so-called deep state, one way to do it is to discourage people from working in federal government, to make it seem like...

You're not going to have a reliable job.

We might take it away from you at any point.

If the president thinks you're disloyal and you're not following his agenda, he has the right to fire you.

We can defund agencies.

We can close the doors of agencies.

So like you're asking for instability.

You might be an idealist, but, you know, this might not be good for you.