Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State

by Michael Lewis

An inside look at the early days of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, as told by the public servants it targeted and one of America’s best storytellers.

Blockers. It wasn’t a compliment. In the new Washington, it was the worst thing you could be―especially if you worked in the federal government and wanted to keep your job. A Blocker was a holdover, an impediment, someone who didn't get the message―and, most of all, someone who didn't belong.

Michael Lewis found six of them.

Blockers is the story of people who believed they had a calling, who were convinced they were doing something the country couldn’t do without, and then discovered they were no longer wanted. One kept Americans’ most sensitive tax data out of the wrong hands and another made sure that politicians and civil servants played by the rules. One figured out how to stop wildfires from destroying suburban neighborhoods, another helped uncover the mysteries of cystic fibrosis.

There was also a security guard.

It should come as no surprise that the writer who made subprime mortgages gripping (The Big Short) and who turned baseball statistics into poetry (Moneyball) could transform the first two years of the second Trump administration into a thriller about federal employees. But he does.

And he does something else. He puts before us a clear question: If these public servants can’t survive in government today, then what does that say about us?

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Sociology, Audiobook, American History, 21st Century

248 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 6, 2026

About the author

Michael Monroe Lewis is an American author and financial journalist. He has also been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. He is known for his nonfiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises and behavioral finance.
Lewis was born in New Orleans and attended Princeton University, from which he graduated with a degree in art history. After attending the London School of Economics, he began a career on Wall Street during the 1980s as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers. The experience prompted him to write his first book, Liar's Poker (1989). Fourteen years later, Lewis wrote Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), in which he investigated the success of Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics. His 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game was his first to be adapted into a film, The Blind Side (2009). In 2010, he released The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. The film adaptation of Moneyball was released in 2011, followed by The Big Short in 2015.
Lewis's books have won two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and several have reached number one on the New York Times Bestsellers Lists, including his most recent book, Going Infinite (2023).

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is rage reading healthy? productive? ... Well, if you think so, it's definitely worth reading this. All of this continues to make both incredibly angry and profoundly sad.

My hat's off to Lewis, who I tend to like anyway ... I've read a fair number of his books and really enjoyed most of them. But even if this isn't a great book, I'm particularly enamored with, and appreciative of, the undertaking - his Trump-era (now) trilogy, The Fifth Risk and its follow-on companions, Who is Government?, and now this.

On the one hand this is an anecdote-driven expose of the naive, misguided, poorly orchestrated, embarrassing, almost certainly self-serving, and ultimately failed, DOGE (Musk-driven Department of Government Efficiency) debacle, while also, similar to the other two related books, a celebration of a small number of the extraordinary people (now formerly) in federal government or service that do great things for the public that most folks don't think or know about (but, if they did, they'd appreciate ... unless, in some cases, they're so fundamentally cruel that that part of their mind (or soul?) just doesn't function ... Side note: pages 208-215 in the hardback, the extended riff on Russell Vought is only shockingly depressing if you haven't been following him and his handiwork for years.

What's particularly crazy, reading the book by the time it made it onto bookstore shelves, is that, in light of all of the insanity we read about in the daily news, it's easy to forget about DOGE.... But we shouldn't. So, once again, I'm glad Lewis wrote this (and that I bought and read it).

It's difficult for me to be objective about this stuff. I've spent my entire professional life either in federal service or in work related to, broadly, the business of government. Alas, (it is what it is, but) I'm not terribly sympathetic to folks who (not only permitted, but facilitated, and, for some, celebrated, Trump twice becoming President, but) complain about paying taxes (yeah, I'm with Oliver Wendall Holmes: Taxes are what [or the price] we pay for a civilized society.) but expect, among other things, safe air travel, smooth highways (and public infrastructure), safe food, accurate weather reporting (and disaster support and firefighting services), access to innovative medical interventions, stable banking and financial markets, a national defense, and, well, you get the idea.

As part of the generation that grew up learning Civics or being taught the value of government in school (remember all of that stuff about how with rights come responsibilities?), part of me thinks that books two and three in this trilogy would make for terrific reading (or supplemental reading) in one of those classes today. Then I'm reminded that one of the reasons we got to this point is that so many advocated so strongly against maintaining those kinds of classes in public school curricula (or, of course, diluted the public school systems) ... while, at the same time, increasingly rejecting science as, well, science, ... and I would say, at this point, I'm digressing, but ... nah ... read the book.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look inside the government and the DOGE experiment

[Amelia · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Thank you @libro.fm for providing me with an Advanced Listening Copy.

I love nonfiction that reads like fiction, and "Blockers" falls into that category. This was an interesting look inside the federal government, shining a spotlight on federal employees and their jobs that you didn't know were important (or didn't know they existed), yet are essential to keeping our country running smoothly and progressing. Hearing the tales of these hardworking and dedicated public servants was both interesting and infuriating, knowing that Elon Musk, DOGE, MAGA, RFK Jr, etc, are cutting these positions without even understanding them, pushing America backwards and putting us all in peril.

Sidenote, I didn't know you could major in fire science!

[Rob S · Rating 4 out of 5]

DOGE…what a sad miserable attack to create chaos and dysfunction within the American federal government. No waxing political any further, Michael Lewis does it quite well in his typical interior investigative style. It was missing a little breadth for my preference and the deep dives are a bit narrow but it is a good contribution for just how weird things were at the beginning of this administration.

[Mike Steinharter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Lewis is so readable and so interesting. I almost couldn’t put this down. The stories about people I hadn’t heard of were intermixed with the travesty wrought by this administration. The parts about DOGe and JFK jr were truly head shaking. (Hardcopy)

[Libriar · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Lewis looks at the beginning of Trump's second term and the chaos that DOGE created amongst federal workers. It is often an ode to the dedication and importance of civil servants. It's also terrifying, as the workers he highlights often had nothing left to do except resign or be complicit in breaking the law. Michael Lewis narrates the audiobook along with some civil servants; there is background music at times, which kept startling me.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Complements the author's The Fifth Risk. Case study how DOGE gutted essential operations of the Federal Government without understanding the consequences. Excellent reading especially before midterm elections.”

[Christine Eskilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

We should never forget the farcical carnage of DOGE but I would have been fine with a little less of the NIST analysis of wildfires.

[Meepspeeps · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author takes a deep dive into a few civil servants’ experience working with DOGE, primarily in 2025. The civil servants and the DOGE members came across as sympathetic figures deeply committed to completely different outcomes. It helped me see how difficult it is to reform or eliminate government programs, but that shouldn’t keep people from trying, using appropriate resources and empathy. I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand government service better, especially the many tasks ordinary Americans take for granted.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Look for the helpers," said Mr. Rogers. Our country needs more of them than ever. This wonderful book features many of these helpers who stood for right when others were afraid. Excellent analysis and writing by a talented author.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has been quite a while since I read a book that I think should be REQUIRED READING for every man, woman and literate child in the US, but Bockers is certainly top of my list now. Lewis's two prior books on the federal government are also important, well-researched works on how much we take for granted the amazingly talented, devoted and hard-working people who work for the federal government. People like Francis Collins, who is one of the people profiled in Blockers, and Anthony Fauci, who probably bowed out for reasons we all can understand, ignored no doubt dozens of offers to make 10 times more in the private sector, but chose to spend the best decades of their lives toiling away in laboratories to help cure diseases the private sector wouldn't spend the money on.

Chapter by maddening chapter, Lewis profiles unknown people who stood at the barriers with the DOGE-bags arrived, ignorant and arrogant, demanding access to private information, security systems, etcetera, without bothering to find out anything about the departments they were disrupting. Lewis gives us the backgrounds of these heroes and heroines, but also describes the villains who forced them to leave the federal government. You finish each chapter enraged on the one hand at the idiots involved in DOGE who made such a mess of things and awed and even proud on the other that there were (and hopefully still are) federal civil servants so brave and so hard-working despite being able to command a much higher salary in the private sector (like Kathleen Walters at the IRS, an attorney who was point on TARP as well as heading the IRS Privacy Office).

When I finally finished the last chapter, in which Lewis gives us a little ray of hope, and closed the book's cover and smoothed the dust jacket, running my fingers over the raised letters that spell out BLOCKERS, for a few moments I wished there had been more profiles of these heroes. I wanted to know more people who did amazing things that no one knows about. Lewis found some of these people, and admits to leaving some of their stories on the cutting room floor. He throws in the story of Dave Lebryk at the US Treasury as an example. Lebryk blocked, for as long as he could, Russell Vought's efforts to cut funding to USAID.

But as I got to thinking, I realized that by limiting the number of heroes and heroines, Lewis made people like Kathleen Walters unforgettable in a way that would not be possible if there were five more like her to read about. He also made unforgettable the villains, like Nate Cavanaugh and Gavin Kliger of DOGE. Wherever they are, they must be hiding their faces behind a newspaper now that Blockers is out in bookstores and on Amazon.

Lewis's superpower is his ability to make something that you would think was boring into something absolutely compelling. He will remember and include that one quote that makes you laugh out loud and have to put the book down for a while. ("Talk about buying the dip." was may favorite quote, a journalist's quip about OMB head Russell Vought, who welded himself to Trump after January 6, when Trump's stock was particularly low. ) He will trace the lives of people who became superstar scientists. Especially readable was the chapter on Francis Collins, who was not ousted by DOGE, but by someone unknown, and Lewis structures the chapter as a detective story, with five suspects that he "investigates" one by one though never concludes is guilty, though I lean toward one person in particular with a personal revenge story. This chapter is the story of how the Trump Administration went after science.

So, as I said, this book is required reading. Also entertaining reading. Also instructive reading. And inspiring reading. Unforgettable stories, unforgettable people, and an unforgettable and rather frightening reality that we are facing.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blockers is an infuriating recap of the destruction Donald Trump and DOGE brought about on the Federal government. You have probably forgotten or become desensitized to the outrage from the early days of Trump II since so much has gone on since. And since DOGE actually melted away fairly rapidly. The book profiles individual career civil servants who tried to stand in the way of DOGE and were mostly swept aside. Their expertise, dedication and wisdom matches others Lewis has profiled.

[Daniel Carrillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a public service. Beautiful story telling by Michael Lewis as always

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is about a succinct of an account as you might get about how the civil service was gutted. It focuses on only a handful of cases, and it tells the story of how ignorance and fanaticism and arrogance steamrolled over the mundane patriotic people who chose to serve their country and fellow citizens.

[Ron Housley · Rating 2.75 out of 5]

Blockers — Rebels in the Deep State
Michael Lewis, ©2026, 240 pages
a short Book Report by Ron Housley, 12 October 2026

Most of us remember the early months of 2025, when a crew of twenty-something DOGE boys swept through federal agencies such as USAID, neutering long-serving employees, firing most of them — done with a grin on their faces, rooting out what Donald Trump called fraud and waste and “woke run amok.” What struck me then, and what Michael Lewis’s new book confirms, was that this was not merely a budget exercise. This was an attack on the rule of law. It was an assault on the principle that government acts through law rather than the preferences of whoever holds power. As the rule of law was unceremoniously dismantled, there was nary a peep from our protectors in Congress. Susan Collins was “concerned.”

Lewis’s account arrives weeks before the November 2026 midterms and takes up the story from the other side of the desk: the career civil servants who stood in the way. Elon Musk’s term for them, “blockers,” was meant as an insult; Lewis recasts it as a badge of honor, a label for loyal officials who refused to break the law even when the order to ignore came from above.

The cuts in waste and fraud, as Lewis tells it, fell well short of the promise. Musk had pledged savings of $2-trillion in Federal spending, and what we got was an increase in spending(!). What was cut most deeply was less tangible: the long standing reverence for protecting the rights of the individual citizen, which in this telling, was put on the chopping block along with the agencies themselves.

Entire agencies created by Congress were shut down by Executive Order; loyal employees were fired without recourse. The stage was being set for governmental rule by the whim of its rulers.

Michael Lewis is offering us another behind the scenes story, giving us an understanding I wish I had while these atrocities were first unfolding to the cheers of the MAGA faithful.

As a reading experience, Blockers does not match the page-turning tension of Flash Boys or The Big Short. Those books let us watch a story whose ending we didn’t know. Here, most of us followed the headlines day after day and assumed we understood what was happening, so there is little suspense about how it all turns out. The book’s value lies elsewhere, in the behind-the-scenes detail Lewis gives us about how it unfolded and affected the people and agencies involved.

It was a story of personal heroic integrity as the blockers risked everything in defense of the rule of law — law which the administration wanted to ride roughshod over. The administration wanted to break into IRS data to extract the current addresses of undocumented immigrants they wanted to deport. Brave employees lost their careers defending the outrageous attempt to clearly flaunt the law. The courts finally upheld the rule of law after the first tranche of data was illegally breached.

This is a story of how entire departments have been gutted of their best and brightest employees, and put under the watchful eye of nearly clueless leaders installed to “run” those departments. It was all done in the name of saving taxpayer money, but in the end the deficit spending went through the roof. Not one penny was actually saved, but decades of cultivated expertise were suddenly and permanently wiped out of existence.

The last chapter tells the mystery story of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as it endured the slash and burn tactics of what seemed like the Trump administration’s private army. Perhaps its most egregious action the abrupt firing of scientific genius Francis Collins, who at the time was NIH Distinguished Investigator in what was called the Center for Precision Health Research at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), where he was doing leading-edge research into Type-2 diabetes. All that was burned down as he was abruptly fired — unceremoniously, cavalierly, with threats, without explanation. Out of the clear blue he was told “you are no longer needed.” (p. 173) He was gone several hours later, after a lifetime of critical medical discoveries that saved untold lives.

His work was cut short because somebody wanted him gone.

As NIH director he had refused, too many times, Presidential requests that flew in the face of science or of financial prudence. He had been a “blocker.” He had to go.

And that, in its essence, is the new Michael Lewis book. It’s an inside look into how many government agencies were gutted, seemingly out of spite or vengeance, often with cruelty to civil servants, and never fulfilling the Presidential promises to slash waste and fraud or to improve efficiency.

It’s about individual “blockers,” the civil servant employees who blocked the administration from breaking the law. They put their careers on the line to follow the rule of law. They were fired for their troubles. Their agencies were drained of talent.

Everything works just a little poorer and less efficiently. The telephone “on hold” times are just a little bit longer, sometimes a whole lot longer. No money was saved in the administration’s mad rush to eliminate fraud and waste. Injustices were perpetuated; nobody was held accountable for the cruelty inflicted on both the individuals or on the system itself.

[Thomas · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

There are two journalists whose books I will read just because their names are on the cover. One is Bob Woodward. The other is Michael Lewis. How can I not, after All the President’s Men and The Big Short? That’s why I grabbed Blockers as soon as the e-book showed up in my feed.
In Blockers, his sequel to The Fifth Risk, Lewis tells the stories of six unheralded, underpaid government workers doing important jobs who resisted being fired by Elon Musk’s kids from DOGE and their successors. They failed, but their efforts were heroic.
He first celebrates a security guard at the Institute of Peace, an independent agency, who struggled creatively to keep unwarranted DOGE agents out of his building. He goes on to tell the stories of five other officials fired or forced out of important jobs despite their obvious competence and dedication. I was especially moved by the story of an engineer working to understand how wildfires interact with urban environments.
Stories like these have an emotional impact and show the value of a well-run government bureaucracy. They also reveal the damage foolish people can do when they dismantle institutions without understanding how they work or why they were established.

[Steve Peifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Lewis superpower is his curiosity, and when something grabs his interest, he drills down until he understands it fully and can communicate it passionately.

Breakers is about those who fought DOGE because it was often illegal and they were doing important work. You find people trying to understand forest fires, reform the IRS and have dedicated their lives to public service. Their passion is infectious and how DOGE was allowed to end their careers is tragic.

Lewis isn’t blind to the real issues of federal bureaucracy. The last story is about a broken water fountain and why it takes four months to fix it.

DOGE was the dumbest way to trim the government by people who had no idea what they were doing. The fact that they did so much damage without much pushback is truly scary.

It’s one of the very best books of the year.

[Daniel Sanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories of the civil servants Tim Curry, Kathleen Walters, Alex Maranghides, and Colin O’Brien were told well and provided a unique insight into the role of the “Deep State”. So much information upon which we rely to function as a society is gathered by anonymous individuals with a passion for science of all stripes.

The casual cruelty and denigration of what is often a lifetime of work was pretty depressing to read. The book doesn’t really provide a conclusion, but I don’t suspect we will know the implications of the erasure of these people for years to come.

The impact is only measurable in negative space - what won’t happen? That’s the scary and unknown consequence.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Sad Story of Destruction

This answers the question of what happens to the people who truly matter when an insane felon is elected to the most important position in the World. I cannot even start to imagine the damage that has been done to our public employees and the difficult time that will be encountered in the future trying to attract the best to work for the US government. For those of you who voted this facist into the White House, hang your head in shame because this is on you.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unsettling chilling read.
A Public Service book.
An experience of the 2025 DOGE days - reads like science fiction, or a dystopian novel. probably not liked by MAGA people, probably hated by Fox News (would no question be labeled fake news) like January 6 coverage.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

DOGE…did you ever wonder how this “machinery” of destruction got started? Was this entity within the law? The author, Michael Lewis finds six “blockers”-a holdover, an impediment, someone who didn’t belong- these people needed to serve but were no longer wanted! Readers, we will not forget how Musk-under direct control from Trump “bullied” their way into every government agency to disrupt. Oh my, enjoy.

[Paula Fahey · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

There were times I had to put this one down because I was so frustrated. But I couldn’t stand it, and I’d pick it back up. Everyone needs to read this book.

[Tracy L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who has family, neighbors, and friends in federal service, I had to read this. The average American has absolutely no idea of the positions held by these people. They were only taught to hate by despicable Vought and co. 1/3 of the federal workforce is veterans with tens of thousands more spouses of active duty military. Republicans have lost those votes as well as Independent voters. This was a ridiculous miscalculation that won’t be forgotten.

[Megan Strang · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the stories of some of the quietly important roles in government service and nodded along a lot at how the insanity sounded and felt from the inside.

[Jeanne Fellin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love to be reminded of all the fantastic civil service people on the world

[Daryl · Rating 4.75 out of 5]

Loved this book. More everyday people like these deserve recognition and respect.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another doozy. Love reading about public servants!

[Jory Kunzman · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Viva La Resistance

[Bree (AnotherLookBook) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and horrifying. Recommended reading for anyone with any interest in how government works. Really hoping this takes off like other Michael Lewis books.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were some interesting stories, however, there appears to have been no attempt to interview the people on the other side of the stories. I enjoy Michael Lewis books. This one is subpar.