Whether the implement of choice is a scalpel or a chainsaw,

U.S. presidents have been pledging for decades to cut wasteful government spending. But even

when those promises were kept, they've often come with

an asterisk. From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd. Ronald Reagan vowed to cut

waste and improve efficiency, but the federal workforce expanded by hundreds of thousands of

positions during his tenure, and the federal debt nearly tripled. Bill Clinton

cut staff jobs within agencies, but his efforts added to the number of federal private contractors

on the payroll. So it's worth asking as about half of Americans cheer the cuts enacted by

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, while the other half look on with concern or dismay,

how much will the structures of federal bureaucracy change

under the second Trump administration?

Journalist Andrew Coburn has been looking into this

for Harper's Magazine, where he is the Washington editor.

His article about this is titled Rage Against the Machine.

Andrew, welcome back to think.

Hey, great to be with you.

President Trump has been a vocal opponent of what he calls the Deep State since at least

his first term in office.

That term sounds so menacing.

Is the Deep State really just another way of saying federal bureaucracy or does it mean

something else?

Well, I think you can expand it a bit to include the federal bureaucracy, but also associated

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