The Political Cycle: Deep States and Blobs

Note: Starting this week, I’ll be sending out the Political Cycle – the podcast I co-host with

Tom Hamilton

and

Emily Tamkin

– via Substack. If you prefer listening to the show on another platform, you can always subscribe via Spotify or your podcast app of choice.

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Elon Musk and his DOGE squad continue their crusade against government bodies, slashing departments and firing federal employees. This, apparently, is done in the name of stripping things back, maximizing efficiency, and getting rid of the dark forces that obstruct government productivity.

But where did the idea of federal employees as a powerful force come from? And does it exist elsewhere in the world? Rohan Venkat, Emily Tamkin and Tom Hamilton discuss how countries view their own civil servants and federal employees.

Here are the Trike Recommendations from this episode:

• https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/canadian-detained-us-immigration-jasmine-mooney

• https://casi.sas.upenn.edu/iit/election-conversations-2024-rohan-venkat-pavithra-suryanarayan

• https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/january/everyone-has-their-reasons

• https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-doge-firing-federal-employees-ivy-league-jobs.html

• https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/health/food-safety-trump-fda-cutbacks-deadly-outbreaks.html (if only they’d published this before we recorded!)

Subscribe below to our contributors' Substacks:

• ET Write Home by Emily Tamkin

• India Inside Out by Rohan Venkat

• Dividing Lines by Tom Hamilton

The Political Tricycle is a Podot podcast.

It's presented by Emily Tamkin, Tom Hamilton and Rohan Venkat.

Executive Producer:

Nick Hilton

.

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To watch a video version of the show, go to COOLER.NEWS