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Blockers by Michael Lewis Book Cover

by Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis's Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State follows career officials like USIP security chief Colin O'Brien, IRS privacy officer Kathleen Walters, and NIH director Francis Collins as outsiders with no clear authority attempt to dismantle the federal government's operational core, written for readers concerned with governance and the fragile human infrastructure behind public institutions.

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Chapter mindmaps

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Chapter 1: Prologue: The Guns

Key concepts: Prologue: The Guns

Prologue: The Guns

The Lockdown at USIP

  • DOGE trio tries to enter USIP building on March 14, 2025
  • Colin O'Brien, chief security officer, orders lockdown
  • DOGE returns with FBI agents and reinforcements
  • Colin refuses to defer to Nate Cavanaugh's authority

The Fake Document and Legal Authority

  • DOGE presents forged letter on USIP letterhead
  • Document falsely claims Hegseth, Rubio, Garvin fired president
  • USIP is independent nonprofit, not a government agency
  • 1984 law: president can appoint but not remove board members

A Private Corporation, Not an Agency

  • USIP is a hybrid institution, privately controlled
  • Congress created similar hybrids since Red Cross in 1900
  • USIP legally most removed from presidential control
  • If DOGE can take USIP, it can take anything

The Guards and Security Betrayal

  • FBI asks Grok if Colin still runs security guards
  • DOGE likely to use building's own contractor, Inter-Con
  • Colin cuts access to mechanical lock to protect institute
  • Only Kevin Simpson, trusted Inter-Con manager, holds key

Colin O'Brien's Perspective

  • Responsible for 400 employees across 28 countries
  • Initially dismissed DOGE as political theater
  • Changed view after DOGE shut down federal agencies
  • Left work early, assumed nothing would happen before holiday

DOGE's Tactics and Authority

  • No warrant or court order, only attitudes
  • Young DOGE staffers in casual clothes, backed by FBI
  • Authority derived from Musk, who derives from Trump
  • DOGE members bunk with Musk at GSA building

Implications for Government

  • Raw power attempt to change century-old governance
  • Threat extends to Federal Reserve, Kennedy Center, civil service
  • Congress failed to respond to DOGE's actions
  • No organization is safe if DOGE can act unchecked

Chapter 1. The Refs

Key concepts: Chapter 1. The Refs

Chapter 1. The Refs

The Trump Branding Climate

  • Washington institutions renamed for Trump: Kennedy Center, Dulles, Mount Rushmore
  • Congress pushed bills for Trump currency, holiday, and triumphal arch
  • New climate tolerated certain behaviors and discouraged others
  • Tim Curry slow to see what it meant for him

The Invisible Referee

  • Deputy Associate Director at OPM, three levels down
  • Refereed manager-worker disputes and agency-union negotiations
  • Called OPM's 'bus person'—if hit by a bus, government stops
  • Unions and management both thought he was their guy

A Magic Trick of Blankness

  • Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump people all guessed his politics
  • Colleague of 100 hours could not name his politics
  • Built blankness on purpose: off-rack suits, wire glasses, shaved accent
  • Flew to Oxford, Mississippi for colleague's child's memorial, told no one

The Rules of Civil Service

  • Congress created merit-based civil service in 1883
  • Kennedy's 1962 order extended veterans' appeal rights to all civil servants
  • Nixon's abuses produced Civil Service Reform Act of 1978
  • Act protected whistleblowers, created FLRA and MSPB, gave unions bargaining rights

Maxine and Due Process

  • Maxine reversed into security officer, led chase, shut down base
  • Fired for cause, but MSPB judge cut penalty to seven-day suspension
  • Full board raised to ninety days and gave her back her job
  • Managers grew slower to discipline, unsure how judges might rule

A Referee's Job

  • Handled conflicts across entire government, reviewed other referees
  • Worked through roughly 7,000 MSPB decisions each year
  • Often wrote new rules when White House or Congress changed them
  • OPM called the motherboard of the deep state by Project 2025 architect

Schedule F

  • Aimed to reclassify civil servants as political appointees
  • Would strip due process and merit protections
  • Targeted the referee's own office and workforce
  • Tim Curry's role became central to resisting it

Chapter 2. The Information

Key concepts: Chapter 2. The Information

Chapter 2. The Information

Kathleen Walters and the IRS Privacy Office

  • Chief privacy officer overseeing 650 staff protecting 266 million tax returns
  • Personal crises: breast lump, family cancer deaths, packing her Arlington home
  • Saturday email asked staff to list weekly tasks, risking privacy violations
  • Employees commit crimes just by confirming someone filed a return

Gavin Kliger's Arrival at the IRS

  • Young man in black appeared in IRS lobby on February 13
  • Treasury had no record; he was hired by OPM and attached to DOGE
  • Demanded IRS phone, laptop, email, taxpayer system access, and commissioner meeting
  • Said he came to root out fraud, but fraud was the wrong target

Privacy Briefings and Kliger's Resistance

  • Required tax audit, ethics, and taxpayer-information briefings before access
  • Kliger refused to shake Phyllis Grimes's hand, played on his phone
  • Asked what he could do that would not be shared outside the agency
  • Briefing normally 45 minutes took half that; he asked her name again

The DOGE Playbook and IRS Restructuring

  • Playbook from Twitter: accuse, terrify, fire en masse, rehire selectively
  • Executive order promised four-person DOGE teams; lawyers never materialized
  • IRS restructured after Nixon to stay out of White House reach
  • Only two political appointees; no president had fired an inherited commissioner

Political Vacuum and the Chaos Agent

  • Trump signaled ouster of Danny Werfel in December 2024 Truth Social post
  • Billy Long's nomination stalled; career official ran the agency
  • IRS had no political leadership when Kliger entered
  • They called Kliger the Chaos Agent

Direct File Dispute and Kliger's Ignorance

  • Direct File let taxpayers prepare and file returns for free
  • Accounting firms fought rollout; Kliger accused Kathleen of making it harder
  • Kliger thought NIST was an IRS committee; it is a Commerce Department agency
  • Kathleen thought, 'We're in trouble. This kid doesn't know anything.'

Kathleen's Career and the Littlejohn Leak

  • Inspired by father's service; Georgetown, UVA, corporate law, joined IRS 2006
  • Helped create privacy office, ran TARP and COVID responses
  • Took privacy job after Charles Littlejohn leaked Trump's tax returns
  • Littlejohn leaked 15 years of Trump and 7,000 others' returns; sentenced to five years

Chapter 3. The Risk

Key concepts: Chapter 3. The Risk

Chapter 3. The Risk

Unconventional Risk-Takers

  • Key people arrive without deliberate plans, from improbable places
  • Many are immigrants or children of immigrants
  • Hamid Jafari led polio eradication in India
  • Anh Duong fled Vietnam, led bunker-busting bomb team

Alex Maranghides

  • Greek, well-off, no emigrant family background
  • Liked difficulty; circled Sifnos at age twelve
  • Chose WPI to design ships, found fire science
  • Senior project on paper ignitability flew on shuttle

Fire Science Disparity

  • Indoor fire research drew nearly all funding
  • Wildfire left to Forest Service, resisted same treatment
  • Wildfire front produces 150 megawatts per linear meter
  • Outdoor fire governed by wind, fuels, atmospheric interaction

Wildland-Urban Interface

  • Oakland firestorm 1991 killed 25, destroyed 3,000+ homes
  • Interface fire is discontinuous and heterogeneous, hard to predict
  • Outdoor experts saw problem as community's, not theirs
  • Alex wrote program estimating vegetation distance from houses

Halon and the Towers

  • Spent seven years replacing halon, banned by Montreal Protocol
  • Team of 120 settled on FM-200 substitute
  • On 9/11, NIST asked him to explain why towers fell
  • Joining NIST made him an American citizen

Standards and the Bureau

  • Began with questions like how heavy is a pound
  • 1885: American pound's weight 'not known'
  • Markets alone create 15 sockets, 12 track gauges
  • 1904 Baltimore Fire: hoses wouldn't fit hydrants

Asymmetry of Information

  • Markets left alone do not create standards
  • Bureau drifted from making standards to checking them
  • Found manufacturers not meeting their own standards
  • Broad founding law let bureau study nearly anything
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