Imagine the United States without FEMA and the National Weather Service. Imagine our water and air with no EPA, or investing with no SEC. Picture a government where all agencies are disbanded or rendered powerless. This isn’t a nightmare scenario from some dystopian novel — it’s the alarming vision behind Project 2025 and the agenda of Donald Trump and JD Vance.

In my recentWhoWhatWhy podcast, I explore the concept of “ungoverning” — a strategy far more radical than simply reducing taxes and regulation. 

My guests, Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead, in their new book, Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos, argue how and why this deliberate dismantling of governmental capacity poses an existential threat to American democracy.

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