Yuval Levin

And so they made examples of a series of agencies, the USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and people at the Department of Education and so on.

And both those were real, right?

They did change those agencies and functionally destroyed a few of them.

But it was also a message to everyone else in the civil service, as firings were, as everything was, to...

either shut up or get on board, right?

You can be cowed, you can be on the team, but otherwise they're going to come for you.

And that might've changed things at a cultural level, which would matter.

Do you think that's happened?

The two places where I think there has been tremendous policy change are tariffs and immigration.

Yes.

And those would not show in the same way on a tracking of federal legislation passed or rules promulgated.

But how do you understand those areas where Trump really has reshaped what the government is doing in ways that are affecting the real world in a very profound way?

You keep saying Trump is doing this, Trump is doing that.

Is that the way you understand what is happening?

So you take a normal White House, right?

The George W. Bush White House, the Barack Obama White House.

I would even say this is how the Joe Biden White House worked, despite, I think, people later being less sure of that.

And there is a policy process that ladders up and there are briefs delivered and then it goes all the way up and you have meetings with the chief of staff and the domestic policy director and the president and the president is making decisions.

And one thing that constrains how much happens in a day is that the policy process for significant decisions can only absorb so much.

Is that what you understand to be happening in the Trump White House, a complex policy process laddering up to the president?