Yuval Levin
speaker
343 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 16 Jan
Yuval Levin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 2.
Appearances
So that when you make an offer like this buyout offer, it's those people who are thinking, maybe I don't really want to do this job. Whereas the people who are thinking, I can't get another job. I got to stick with this one. I'll do whatever they want.
Those are probably your lower performing employees or at least your less valuable employees so that you're creating a situation where the people who are going to be hardest to replace are the people who are most likely to leave.
I think the key to that point is in the sense that they're trying to look strong but not doing it in a way that actually is strong. They face a very challenging fact. As much as they want to act as though they've just won a massive election victory and they now dominate everything, they've actually won a very narrow election victory.
And their majorities in Congress, especially in the House, are very, very narrow. The House majority is the narrowest majority we've seen since there have been 50 states. And that means they can't get much through Congress on their own.
and the administration is operating so far without really any sense that they need to get anything through Congress except the one big reconciliation bill that'll take care of taxes and spending for the year, they're not thinking in terms of how to advance their agenda as a legislative agenda. The secret to strong executive authority has a lot to do with stability.
The kind of sense of security that an effective administration can provide depends on knowing where you're headed and moving there incrementally in a way that allows you to achieve big things without making people scared of what you're up to. I think the logic of administrative power that we're seeing operating here so far is just about the opposite of that.
It's the sense that you show strength by coming in and tearing everything down and starting everything over and doing big things right away at the start so that there's a kind of shock and awe that leaves people thinking, wow, these people are really assertive. And that has happened. I think people do have that sense. And obviously there are some advantages you gain by conveying that sense.
You do scare people into doing what you want some, and you do give the impression that you're strong. But ultimately, it's very hard to make durable change in that way. Part of the reason I do think is exactly as you say, that durable change actually requires legislation in our system. Anything that isn't legislated isn't durable.
But part of it is also just the sense that doing everything right away, everything at the start, and creating this sense of disjunction, of a break... actually doesn't give people the impression that things are under control. It gives people the impression that things are out of control. Bye.
Well, it's a lot depends on exactly what they mean by presidential priorities here. So the OMB memo was about federal grants and loans. And the thing about grants and loans is they're not specified. Their recipients are not specified in law. They are an amount of money that is designated for a specific purpose.
And then the executive branch is charged with deciding among applicants who should receive them. And in making those decisions, there is a large amount of discretion afforded to the executive branch. Those grants do represent the president's priorities. And, you know, in a sense, they could have done what this memo wants to do without the pause.
They could have just told all the agencies, review all the grants you're giving. And if there are places where they clearly violate one of these new executive orders or something else on this list we give you. You're empowered to stop that now and provide the grant to another recipient or open it back up for competition. They could have done that without a pause and therefore without the chaos.
I think the decision to stop it all is a way of asserting a kind of authority over all federal spending. and saying, Congress says how much we should spend, but the president says on what.
And that's a fight they want to have, a fight over impoundment, where they want to suggest that the president basically has the authority to take Congress's legislative authorizations for spending as just a kind of beginning. And fundamentally, this is an executive decision.
There is a kind of presidentialism here that is, I think, rooted in ultimately in a kind of progressive presidentialism, a Woodrow Wilson argument that the president speaks for the country. Only the president speaks for the entire country. And therefore, presidential actions are more legitimate than congressional actions. And as you say, represent the will of the public.
I think they're wrong about this. I think they're ultimately going to fail in court on that front. But they are trying to make that assertion.
I think there's always a certain amount of where you sit determining where you stand when people talk about politics. And everybody does this. I'm sure I do it too. Where when the people you like are powerful in Congress but not in the White House, you talk a lot about the importance of Congress. We're going to see Democrats do this over the next two years, for example.
And when it's the other way around, you talk the other way around. But there's also an actual principle difference about the nature of the Constitution between a lot of Republicans and a lot of Democrats. And I think what we've seen over the last 15 years is a kind of uneasy combination of both of these things. To my mind, this is the way to worry about the Trump administration.
A lot of what they want to do in terms of the political valence of federal public policy are things that I agree with. A lot of what they want to do in terms of driving us away from DEI and towards a more kind of colorblind federal policy I think is great and very important. What they're doing on education policy so far I think is very good. I'm going to agree with them about a lot of things.
I'm a conservative. But the approach to the structure of the system worries me a lot. I worry about constitutionalism more than about public policy in this moment. And I think ultimately constitutionalism is more important than public policy. And the two biggest worries that I have about the constitutional system, not just now but in general – First of all, are the weakness of Congress.
Showing 241–260 of 343 · page 13 of 18
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