AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The government is now funded for another six months. Yesterday, President Donald Trump signed the stopgap measure, a victory of sorts for congressional Republicans and a wound for congressional Democrats. That's amid more government-shrinking moves from the White House and DOGE and increasing worries about the future of the economy. Joining me now is NPR senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Hi, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi there.
RASCOE: So let's start with the government shutdown that did not happen because enough Senate Democrats voted in favor of advancing this continuing resolution. There's been an awful lot of division within the party over this. Fill us in on that.
LIASSON: That's right. Tremendous division and rancor inside the Democratic Party about what the better strategy was in this case. Normally, it's pretty easy to be the opposition party. You just vote no on everything. But in a case like this, it was much more complicated. House Democrats were united in opposition to this bill. But over in the Senate, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, was worried that a government shutdown would play into the hands of President Trump and Elon Musk - would give them even more power to drastically reduce the federal government without any congressional input and that Democrats would also be blamed for this. So now Democrats are having a big argument about whether Schumer is the right man for this job at this moment.
RASCOE: Mara, can you talk to me about those efforts by Elon Musk to shrink the federal government? Like, what's the latest on that?
LIASSON: The latest on that is that seven more agencies were targeted in an executive order on Friday night, including the Agency for Global Media, which funds the Voice of America. And this is despite pushback from federal judges, from Republicans, including Vice President Vance, who told NBC News that there are, quote, "a lot of good people who work in the government." Vance also said that Musk had made some mistakes with the mass firings.
But Musk is not taking a more moderate tone. He's continuing with his chainsaw approach to cutting the federal government. He's continuing to disparage, even savage federal workers, calling them corrupt and incompetent. And he reposted on X something that said, quote, "Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong didn't murder millions of people. Their public sector employees did." That post was later deleted.
RASCOE: All this slashing and freezing of funding and staff, plus Trump's use of tariffs - which we'll talk more about in the next hour of the program - how are consumers feeling about all of this?
LIASSON: Not too good - according to a new survey from the University of Michigan that tracks consumer confidence, it showed that consumer confidence has fallen for the third consecutive month. Voters are also worried about inflation. They're seeing the stock market drop dramatically, even though there are some rebounds.
Business leaders are less confident than they had been. They're pulling back on investing and hiring. Big retailers are also warning about consumer demand falling, and layoffs in the private sector are at their highest level since 2020. So lots of uncertainty and whiplash and confusion, and that is bad for business.
RASCOE: President Trump gave a speech on Friday. It sounded like a campaign speech, but it wasn't at an arena. It was at the Department of Justice.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Unfortunately, in recent years, a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government obliterated the trust and goodwill built up over generations.
RASCOE: What struck you about this speech?
LIASSON: This was a norm-busting speech. It's very unusual for a president to give a campaign-style speech at the Department of Justice. Their - the idea is that you should keep politics out of law enforcement, but he's doing what he promised to do in the campaign. He wants to turn the Department of Justice into a personal retribution machine, and he says he wants to punish those who investigated him. He's called them scum and thugs. He's moved to punish law firms that represent his political opponents. He said news organizations like CNN and MSNBC are corrupt and, in his eyes, illegal. So big, profound change in our system of government.
RASCOE: That's NPR senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Mara, thank you so much.
LIASSON: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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