Bestselling author Michael Lewis is publishing a book that casts federal bureaucrats who defied Elon Musk's DOGE reforms as heroic resisters — and the real question neither CBS nor Slate bothers to ask is by what authority unelected officials decide which presidential orders they'll follow.
"Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State," due Oct. 6, profiles government workers who stood in the way of the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk promised "at least $2 trillion" in savings and dispatched young staffers to find the "blockers" — people who would get in the way — and remove them. Lewis calls the term "an insult." Both outlets covering the book treat that as settled fact.
CBS News gives Lewis the soft-focus treatment, letting him explain that civil servants take an oath to the Constitution — as though reciting the oath settles the question of who decides what's lawful. "I was blocking people from violating the law," says Kathleen Walters, a former top IRS executive profiled in the book. Walters insists executive orders are "normal" and "as long as they're lawful, our job is to administer them." The implication is plain: she, not the elected president, gets to decide what's lawful.
Walters has worked for "every administration since Bush," CBS reports. That's the tell. Career bureaucrats who outlast presidents aren't accountable to voters. They're permanent Washington — exactly the unelected power the Founders warned about when they built a republic on consent of the governed.
Slate is even more effusive, calling DOGE's young staffers "sullen, Elon-worshipping idiot boys" and describing their campaign as "clueless, largely illegal, and entirely ineffective." Slate reports one IRS official "had to resort to locking herself in a darkened conference room" to avoid a DOGE staffer named Gavin Kliger seeking access to confidential data on 7 million taxpayers. That sounds alarming. It also raises a question Slate won't entertain: why should anyone — young DOGE staffer or career bureaucrat — have unilateral access to 7 million Americans' tax records? But Slate buries the legitimate concern under layers of snark.
Both outlets omit the other side entirely. No DOGE representative is quoted. No taxpayer who might welcome $2 trillion in savings gets a word. Lewis — who has made millions turning complex institutions into hero narratives — is treated as a neutral chronicler rather than what he is: the administrative state's most effective publicist.
Lewis tells CBS that people who distrust government "just don't know how much they trust the government" — citing tap water, air travel, and bank deposits. It's a rhetorical sleight of hand: conflate the basic functions of government with the sprawling, unaccountable bureaucracy DOGE was created to trim. Americans trust the water. They don't trust the swamp.
The book's title says everything. Lewis calls these workers "rebels." In the American tradition, rebels fight entrenched power. These people are entrenched power — and they just got a bestselling PR agent.
