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“Big Balls” is 19-year-old high school graduate Edward Coristine, who now works as a “senior adviser” in the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology. That pretty much sums up President Elon Musk’s reign of terror running through the federal government, even as Trump’s Clown Cabinet gets virtually unanimous support from a spineless U.S. Senate. This week we talk with a veteran of federal departments that are being gutted by the Musk administration.
In Michigan, we have our first polling on how the race for Governor might be impacted by third-party candidate Mike Duggan. We get the detailed findings from veteran pollster Bernie Porn, CEO of EPIC-MRA. Also on our radar:
- Governor Whitmer and the Legislature are in last-minute 3-way negotiations over Michigan’s minimum wage and paid medical leave;
- The CEO of Ford warns that Trump’s economic agenda could cripple the auto industry which means crippling Michigan’s economy;
- And the Governor is looking at weed and big corporations to fund more fixing of the damn roads.
Also joining us on the podcast: University of Michigan law professor Sam Bagenstos, who was a senior staffer at what it now Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services, the Project 2025-driven office of Management and Budget, and the probably-soon-to-be shuttered Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights.
Bagenstos took an extended leave from U. of M. to serve in multiple roles in the Biden administration, with senior positions in HHS, the Federal Budget Office and Department of Justice. From June 2022 to December 2024, he was general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where he played a key role in advancing and implementing policies across the department, including:
- pursuing several initiatives on abortion and reproductive rights;
- crafting and defending the first-ever Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program;
- drafting and issuing major rules on civil rights, health privacy, Medicare and Medicaid, drug advertising, the regulation of “lab-developed” medical tests and food safety, the treatment of unaccompanied migrant children in HHS care, the treatment of LGBTQ+ kids in the foster care system, and many other issues;
- advancing marijuana rescheduling, and advising and defending the Food and Drug Administration’s tobacco enforcement program; and
- working with the Department of Justice on litigation involving HHS, including significant abortion rights, free speech, and tobacco regulation cases in the US Supreme Court.
From Inauguration Day 2021 to June 2022, he served as general counsel to the Office of Management and Budget. There, he worked on President Biden’s Day One executive orders; helped respond to COVID-19, including implementing several crucial aid programs; responded to regulations adopted by the prior administration just before the inauguration and helped advance the new administration’s regulations on labor, health, the environment, and much else; helped craft and implement the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure law, and what became the Inflation Reduction Act; and assisted in developing two annual budgets, along with advising the entire Executive Branch on issues of appropriations law and administrative law.
In an earlier stint on leave from the Law School, from 2009 to 2011, Bagenstos was an appointee in the US Department of Justice, where he served as the principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, the No. 2 official in the Civil Rights Division. There, he helped promulgate the 2010 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations—the first comprehensive update of those regulations since they were first issued in 1991—and led the reinvigoration of the Civil Rights Division’s enforcement of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead v. L.C., which guarantees people with disabilities the right to live and receive services in the most integrated setting appropriate. He led the negotiations of significant Olmstead settlements with the states of Delaware and Georgia, which guarantee appropriate, community-based services to thousands of people with disabilities. He also personally argued major cases in federal district courts and courts of appeals.
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This episode is sponsored in part by EPIC ▪ MRA,
a full service survey research firm with expertise in
• Public Opinion Surveys
• Market Research Studies
• Live Telephone Surveys
• On-Line and Automated Surveys
• Focus Group Research
• Bond Proposals – Millage Campaigns
• Political Campaigns & Consulting
• Ballot Proposals – Issue Advocacy Research
• Community – Media Relations
• Issue – Image Management
• Database Development & List Management
