“Deep Cuts” is a narrative audio documentary series from the Brookings Institution about what happens when the machinery of government is rapidly dismantled, downsized, or reshaped.
Each episode goes inside one federal agency or program affected by the Trump administration’s cuts and asks a deceptively simple set of questions: what did this thing actually do, and what happens when it stops, and what comes next?
On February 11, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order establishing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The executive order marked a key step in one of the most significant efforts in modern American history to reshape the federal government.
The executive order marked a key step in one of the most significant efforts in modern American history to reshape the federal government.
Through public servants, experts, critics, and the people these institutions served, the series Deep Cuts—hosted by Molly Reynolds and Scott R. Anderson—examines the often-invisible systems government built in response to previous crises, and what happens when we begin to forget why they existed.
Across nine episodes, “Deep Cuts” shares the stories of those impacted by the workforce reduction of USAID, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), AmeriCorps, the Department of Education, statistical agencies, Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). “Deep Cuts” goes inside the federal agencies and programs reshaped by the Trump administration’s cuts to understand why each was created, what its employees actually did, what was lost when that work stopped, and what could happen next.