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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick.

We heard in our last episode from Aetul Gawande, who was a senior figure at USAID until days before the Trump administration began dismantling it and throwing it into a wood chipper.

Across the federal government, the number of federal workers fired under Trump, this is reported

by CNN, stands at over 100,000. Some of those workers have turned to a website called

We the Builders. It's a resource for federal employees who've lost their jobs or who are afraid

of losing them or who have a whistleblower complaint or who don't know how to follow conflicting

instructions about Musk's email demands. We the Builders was created by federal workers associated

with the U.S. Digital Service, which has now been absorbed into Doge.

Two of the site's creators are Kate Green,

who recently left for a job in the private sector,

and the man will call Milo, who's still employed in the government.

He asked us to use an alias.

They spoke with our producer, Adam Howard.

So, Kate, let me start with you.

If you could explain what We the Builders is and how it came into fruition.

So We The Builders is a way for people who are federal workers to get their message out, to explain what's happening,

to people who have less access. Like, this is why this matters. This is why this is dangerous.

And that idea coalesced, along with another idea that we were floating, which was to tell

stories directly of federal workers, like humans of New York, but for federal workers.

...