For all the norms Donald Trump flouted in his first term, his approach to filling out his administration was familiar. He rooted around the same sets of professions as his predecessors, hiring lawyers, CEOs, academics, and military leaders, among others. Liberals may not have liked his picks—Jeff Sessions for attorney general, say, or Michael Flynn for national security adviser—but regardless of ideology, most of his top advisers had recognizable credentials. In his second term, Trump has found a new talent pool to draw from: podcasters.

In the past week, Trump has tapped two podcasters, Dan Bongino and Graham Allen, for high-ranking jobs in his administration. Bongino, who hosts one of the most popular right-wing podcasts in the country, will become the deputy director of the FBI. Allen, of the Dear America Podcast, will serve as a top communications official at the Defense Department. Even accounting for their unconventional backgrounds, their appointments are surprising. Each has used his platform to trade in extreme conspiracist beliefs. On his show, Bongino has claimed that the pipe bombs found near the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were actually an “inside job,” that the results of the 2020 presidential election were false, and that checks and balances in the government matter less than “power.” (Though a former Secret Service agent, Bongino has no previous experience at the FBI—a departure from those who have held the role in past administrations.) Allen has reportedly claimed that climate change is part of a liberal plot to control people and has called Taylor Swift “a witch and a devil.”

Bongino and Allen, neither of whom responded to requests for comment, are part of a cohort of right-wing media figures who have been assigned top roles within the administration. That includes Darren Beattie, the founder of the conspiracist website Revolver News, who joined the State Department, and Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host who is now secretary of defense. Many, if not most, of these figures earned Trump’s loyalty by using their platforms to be obsequious stewards of MAGA—in effect, creating a quasi–state media. But as these figures make the move to government, the Trump administration is also now becoming a media-run state.

[Read: The white nationalist now in charge of Trump’s public diplomacy]

It’s hardly unprecedented for media journalists to make the jump into politics—especially in communication roles. In his first term, Trump picked Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, as his chief strategist, and then–CNBC host Larry Kudlow as the head of the National Economic Council. In 2008, Jay Carney left Time to join Barack Obama’s administration, eventually becoming the president’s press secretary. But something odder is going on now within the Trump administration: a breakdown of the barriers between media and government.

Trump’s recent appointments are only part of the melding. Consider the likes of Charlie Kirk, who doesn’t have an official government position but still seems to hold influence. In November, Politico reported that Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder and right-wing media figure, advised Trump on whom he should select for significant roles in his then-forthcoming administration. Jack Posobiec, a right-wing influencer who rose to prominence by pushing conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate, was invited by Pentagon officials to travel on Hegseth’s first trip overseas. He then claimed to have joined Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on a trip to Ukraine, meeting with the country’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky.

The right-wing media’s formal and informal roles in the administration mark a new kind of singularity. The podcasters now do policy and dabble in politics. And some right-wing politicians, including Ted Cruz and Dan Crenshaw, have their own podcasts. So do some politicians on the left, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, who announced a new show this week. But on the right, politicians and media figures more explicitly mingle and work toward the same goals.

That is especially the case now that the Trump administration has barred media outlets including the Associated Press from covering many White House events, while welcoming in right-wing media figures such as Lara Logan. Although Fox News and Newsmax have cut ties with Logan for her extremist views, she was recently included in a State Department listening session. Similarly, yesterday, the Department of Justice chose to first give documents regarding the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein to right-wing influencers—including Posobiec and Chaya Raichik, who runs Libs of TikTok, a high-profile right-wing account on X—instead of actual journalists. (The documents reportedly contain little new information.)

This blurring is indicative of a substantive shift in how the contemporary right operates. The conservative media ecosystem has long functioned as the id of the right wing. But in the media-state singularity, there is not even the pretense of space between the two worlds. President George H. W. Bush hosted Rush Limbaugh overnight in the White House, in a likely attempt to ingratiate himself with the radio host. Trump doesn’t need to do such a thing, because the modern equivalents of Limbaugh are inside his administration as high-ranking staff members. (After Limbaugh’s death, in 2021, Bongino took over his slot on many radio stations.)

The practical effect of this union is an ongoing rightward lurch. That the conservative media has infiltrated the White House explains some of the current administration’s policies—proposed mass deportations, vindictive tariffs, attempts to gut entire federal agencies. The new direction of the executive branch is a far-right podcaster’s fever dream. As Bongino posted in November: “We are the media now.” Since the election, the phrase has become popular among an online right distrustful of legacy news outlets. It’s only partially correct. Right-wing influencers such as Bongino are the media to swaths of America. They are also now the government itself.

In its earliest days, the second Trump administration cut off lifesaving food and medical aid to countries worldwide. It halted efforts to stop teens from joining drug cartels in Mexico. And it shut down programs aimed at resettling Afghans who assisted U.S. troops during the fight against the Taliban.

But at least initially, the budget for expensive artwork to hang in U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide remained robust.

The State Department planned, for instance, to purchase a $650,000 “triple-height suspended sculpture” for its embassy in Brasília. It had designs on a $55,000 “wall installation” in Malawi. A “textile work” that costs $105,000 and a $94,000 “suspended sculpture that would span two levels” were on the books for Mauritius. And $550,000 was set aside for “three ceiling suspended sculptures” that would hang in the “main atrium space” of the American embassy in Riyadh.

The intended purchases, which total nearly $2 million, were described to me by a U.S. government official with information about the State Department’s spending plans. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of retribution. I verified the planned acquisitions by reviewing a government document—dated earlier this month, weeks after Donald Trump took office—with itemized descriptions of the artwork.

When I asked about the planned purchases this week, a State Department spokesperson said that they had been developed and approved by the Biden administration. The spokesperson claimed in an email that “in line with the Trump administration’s priorities, all art-related purchases are suspended until further notice.” The spokesperson added that “zero taxpayer dollars” had been spent on the art.

But when pressed for information about when the purchases had been suspended or how the order had been carried out, the State Department spokesperson did not specifically answer. The suspension of art purchases, the spokesperson said, was not a result of executive action by Trump. Instead, the spokesperson said, “halting the purchase is rooted in an organizational ethos of reevaluating expenditures with the objectives of the new Administration in mind.”

Asked a second time when the State Department had decided to no longer buy the art, the spokesperson did not provide any timeline or evidence that the purchases had been suspended before I raised the question.

The lack of transparency over the suspension of art purchases contrasts with the gleefully public way in which Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire DOGE co-founder, have approached cuts to foreign aid. Trump’s administration has slashed the foreign-aid budget in the name of rooting out “waste” and “fraud.” Musk, the world’s richest man, has described USAID, without evidence, as a “criminal” enterprise and has boasted of skipping “great parties” so he could spend the weekend feeding the agency “into the wood chipper.”

Had the art purchases gone through, they would not have been out of the ordinary. Such acquisitions are a staple of government spending and count toward the half percent of the federal budget that is allocated to the State Department. The department’s Art in Embassies Program explains on its website that it “bridges cultures and strengthens ties with our allies through the power of visual art and creative exchanges.”

The program, described as a collaboration with artists, museums, collectors, and galleries worldwide, “curates around 60 exhibitions each year and has established more than 100 permanent art collections in diplomatic spaces spanning 189 countries.”

But at a time when the foreign-aid budget is being decimated, the planned purchases stood out.

In Mexico City, prior to the cuts, USAID had been in the process of launching programs focused on stopping gender-based violence and dissuading young people from joining cartels. Combined, the programs would have cost less than $1 million for one year, a Mexico-based Foreign Service officer told me. But those efforts are now suspended indefinitely. Meanwhile, plans to install a $110,000 painting outside the embassy’s executive suite were proceeding as of earlier this month.

“Nothing that they’re doing makes sense in terms of efficiency,” said the Foreign Service officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “And so it’s really not cool that whoever is making these decisions would think that $1 million worth of art is what the State Department should be spending their money on now.”

The Trump administration is firing some 2,000 USAID workers in the United States and is set to recall nearly all of the agency’s officers stationed abroad. Last week, a federal judge cleared the way for the plan to move ahead, with most internationally based USAID employees given 30 days to return to the country.

“I’ll probably have to live in a family member’s basement,” the Mexico-based Foreign Service officer told me. “Are they going to pay us; are they going to fire us when we land?”

Within hours of taking office, Trump issued a blanket freeze on foreign aid, including drugs to treat HIV and food for starving children. Within days, a halt-work order swept across USAID; workers overseas were left in limbo, with no ability to do work, as food and other supplies sat unused. Over recent weeks, as Musk and the White House accused USAID workers of criminality and fraud without providing evidence, Pete Marocco, a Trump loyalist put in charge at USAID, has moved to systematically dismantle the agency.

When confronted by a reporter with some of the disinformation he’s spread about USAID, Musk responded: “Some of the things that I say will be incorrect, and should be corrected.” Since then, he has continued to post falsehoods to his more than 200 million followers on X, his social-media platform.

In a court filing on Wednesday, Marocco said that 92 percent of USAID contracts, totaling roughly $57 billion, “were terminated” after a review by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Told of the planned art purchases before the apparent suspension, current and fired USAID employees reacted with derisive laughs and expletives.

“No, no,” a recently fired USAID worker told me. “And then I get cut because I’m providing, like, fucking grain from American farmers in Kansas to farmers in Southern Africa. Fuck that.”

With approximately the same amount of money that had earlier been set aside for embassy art, the fired USAID worker said, the U.S. could continue supporting farmers in Southern Africa as the region recovers from one of its worst droughts in recent history.

It was crucial to “get these seeds, to get them planted before the rainy season. And we were just getting them in there. And now the plug was pulled,” the fired worker said. “Now we’re letting those fields just, to what, to rot?”

A Foreign Service officer who recently had to evacuate from the Democratic Republic of the Congo told me that she is living in a basement with her husband and children. She’d been instructed to return to Washington and report to USAID headquarters, only for the office to be closed to all staff.

“I haven’t been sleeping; I haven’t been eating,” the officer said. “My husband has not been doing either of those things either. We’ve both been frantically applying for jobs and checking our finances.”

“I essentially am grieving the loss of a life, a profession, security, trust in our government, possibly all of our belongings and our democracy,” she told me.

Over in Doha, Qatar, the State Department had plans to acquire a $60,000 series of “works on paper” drawings. Qatar is one of the main processing points for Afghan refugees, including those who helped the U.S. government during its war against Taliban fighters and who are vulnerable to retaliation now that the radical-Islamist movement is in power. More than 2,000 Afghans are stuck in Doha after Trump indefinitely suspended funding for a program that relocated Afghans to the United States.

“I’ve been to the ambassador’s houses in Mexico City and Doha, I’ve been to those places, and there’s a shit ton of art already,” says Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran and the head of #AfghanEvac, a coalition of veterans and advocates helping Afghans who are seeking resettlement.

“We can’t fund taking care of our wartime allies to the tune of $18,000 per person,” VanDiver told me, citing government figures. “But we can buy sculptures and art so that President Trump’s ambassadors can look at more pretty things in addition to the pretty things already there.”