Let’s Get to the Marrow of What Trump Just Did

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the first day of President Trump’s second term, he signed a record 26 executive orders. Some of them were really big. Others feel more likely messaging memos. And still others are bound to be held up in the courts. So what does it all amount to? What exactly in America has changed? In a former life, I co-hosted a podcast called “The Weeds” with other policy wonks at Vox, including Dara Lind and Matthew Yglesias. We’ve since gone our separate ways; Lind is currently a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, and Yglesias is the author of the Substack newsletter Slow Boring. But since this was such a big policy week, I wanted to get some of the band back together. In this conversation, we discuss how much Trump’s immigration orders will actually change our immigration system; whether any of Trump’s orders address Americans’ concerns over prices; how serious Trump actually is about tariffs; and more. Book Recommendations: The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer Left Adrift by Timothy Shenk Why Nothing Works by Marc J. Dunkelman Middlemarch by George Eliot Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu and Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. In 2017, when Trump came into the White House for the first time. On day one, he signed exactly one executive order
0:38.5	who was targeting the Affordable Care Act. In 2025, he signed 26 executive orders on day one,
0:46.1	throwing pens into the roaring crowd. Some of these orders are really big, ending birthright
0:51.7	citizenship, there were big orders on energy. He was signed orders
0:55.2	about Doge and governmental efficiency, about the federal workforce. Some of them were more
1:00.2	messaging bills. Some of them are big, but they may not be big after the courts get done with them.
1:05.6	So what has really changed here? What is all this flurry of policymaking and activity amounted to? One of the
1:12.4	difficulties of covering Donald Trump is it's always hard to know where to look first, or even to look
1:18.0	at all. Back in the day, I used to do a policy podcast at Vox with Matt Iglesias, who is now the
1:24.1	author of the excellent substack newsletter, Slow Boring, and Darlin, who's now a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
1:31.1	Thought it would be good to have a bit of a reunion with two of the people who follow the policies
1:35.0	that the Trump is working on most closely to get into the guts of what is actually changing
1:39.9	and what, as of yet, really isn't.
1:43.1	As always, my email,
1:46.1	Ezraqlion show at NYTimes.com.
1:58.4	Darling, Madagliasius, welcome to the show.
1:59.5	Good to be here.
2:00.1	Good to be on.
2:00.8	It's like old times.
2:01.1	Yeah.
2:03.3	So let's dive into immigration first.
2:07.3	Donald Trump signed about 10 executive orders on border security and immigration.
	...

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