AI Summary
5 min readIn the first days of the second Trump administration, a 26-year-old from DOGE showed up at the U.S. Institute of Peace and demanded the building. Colin O’Brien, the head of security, refused them entry. The Institute is a congressionally created nonprofit that owns its own building and operates at arm’s length from the White House — it was set up under Reagan precisely so it could mediate conflicts abroad without being seen as an instrument of American power. O’Brien assumed he could call the DC police. Instead, the private security firm he hired was turned by the Trump administration (the State Department held a contract a hundred times larger, and that money was at stake). The DC police sided with the intruders. O’Brien physically locked the DOGE team inside a portico, but they broke in using a key from the security firm. The building is now the Donald Trump Institute of Peace. As Michael Lewis puts it, the episode was “blatantly illegal, but it’s working its way through the courts slowly.” The deeper point: this administration cares more than any before about extending power into places it does not belong, and it is willing to worry about the law later.
The difference between the first and second terms
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What you'll learn
- 1 Timestamped Navigation Outline
- 2 (00:52) **Colin O'Brien and the US Institute of Peace Takeover** - How a security chief physically repelled DOGE from a congressionally created nonprofit
- 3 (07:28) **Two Parallel Dynamics: Lawlessness vs. Executive Power Expansion** - Distinguishing between illegal seizures and aggressive but legally-gray assertions of authority
- 4 (10:10) **First Term vs. Second Term: From Neglect to Hostile Takeover** - How Trump's approach to governing fundamentally changed
- 5 (15:50) **Howard Lutnick at Commerce: The Incompetent Saboteur** - How an unqualified political appointee destroyed NIST's critical fire science work
- 6 (27:14) **The Travel Agent Problem** - How small cost-cutting measures destroy government effectiveness
- 7 (30:57) **The Real Goal of DOGE: Traumatizing the Workforce** - Why the stated mission of cutting waste doesn't match what's actually happening
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Michael Lewis, the New York Times bestselling author of "Moneyball" and "The Big Short," stops by the studio to talk to Lovett about "Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State," his latest book on the government employees who stood up to Elon Musk and Donald Trump during the heyday of DOGE.
Lovett and Lewis revisit the story of Colin O'Brien, the security chief who locked DOGE out of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and break down how Howard Lutnick's takeover of the Commerce Department reveals the inner workings of Trump's government.
Then, Lewis shares what essential government employees told him about working under DOGE, why he thinks DOGE may have been created in the first place, and how the next Democratic candidate should make rebuilding the government a top message following DOGE's damage.
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