Michael Lewis stops by to talk his new book Blockers and explains that he wrote this book after The Fifth Risk led him to realize that the people inside government were remarkable characters doing important work, and when Trump’s second term began he saw a kind of “extinction event” in which the executive branch was being turned into a loyalist operation by driving out competent civil servants and dismantling the referees of the system. He says the book’s narrative came from following the logic of that attack—seizing power, eliminating inspectors general and other checks, then cutting contracts and firing probationary workers—while weaving together linked stories of federal employees whose work and lives revealed what had been lost. He also describes how hard it was to get these nonpartisan workers to talk, how many were traumatized but still puzzled by what had happened, and he singles out the Elon Musk/DOGE effort as disorganized, ignorant, and destructive, especially in its casual slashing of contracts and attacks on agencies like USAID and the Veterans Administration. Subscribe to Fast Politics and listen 4x a week for interviews just like this on your favorite podcast app: https://episodes.fm/1645614328