February 24, 2025 – Rupa Bhattacharyya

Jon Stewart dives into Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, a.k.a. DOGE, and how the Elon Musk-led project masks its allegiance to corporate overlords and negligence to the American people under the guise of slashing the government’s budget. “We shouldn’t live in a world where the only programs that get saved are the ones Republicans are willing to put their stamp of approval on.” Jon Stewart joins Georgetown Law’s Rupa Bhattacharyya, former Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, to discuss how Elon Musk and the DOGE project’s reckless budget cuts are affecting valuable programs like the one she used to oversee. Bhattacharyya explains how federal agencies and programs were typically non-politicized until Trump’s second administration, how similar uncertainty is affecting the World Trade Center Health Program, and why these roles are what the government exists to provide.