Has Trump Achieved a Lot Less Than It Seems?

As long as it may have felt, we are one year into Donald Trump's second term as president. To follow the Trump administration in the news is to be exposed to the full muzzle velocity of this presidency, the overwhelming procession of new stories, wild statements, like spectacular, outrageous, sometimes terrifying events. It feels like so much more is happening than the human mind, than the entire media, than the country can absorb. But how much has actually changed? How much has Trump actually gotten done? How many of these stories that were so spectacular when they began have followed through into durable difference in how the government works or what it does or how we live. About a year ago, just a few weeks into Trump's second term, I had Yuval Levin on the show. Levin is one of the smartest thinkers on the right, a real conservative who thinks deeply about institutions and the nature of the presidency and how these things work in the constitutional order. And at that time, he was in some ways a a very measured voice. This was the moment of Doge and Musk and executive orders, and he was skeptical that as much was actually happening as seemed to be happening. So now after this truly wild year, a truly historic year in American politics and life, I want to have him back on to see what he thinks has happened and how his analysis of Trump has or has not changed? As always, my email, EzraKleinshow@nytimes.com. Yuval Levin. Welcome back to the show. Thank you very much for having me, Ezra. So we talked, at least on the show last year, right after Trump took office. And this was in the the sort of early chaos. It was Doge and executive orders and this feeling that the entire presidency was being reshaped. They could do anything. You were a little less alarmist and were were skeptical that they were going to accomplish as much as it felt like they might at that moment. We're a year into this long second term. Where are you now? Well, yeah. It has been a long year in a lot of ways, and there's been a lot of action, I would say. But I think that on the whole, the view that they were not well set up to accomplish an enormous amount of durable policy change is still more or less my view. I I think that a year in, you're hearing two kinds of stories. One story says there are a lot of accomplishments. The the southern border is much more secure than it was, a year ago. Woke left wing radicalism in in a lot of institutions is back on its heels now. The Iranian nuclear program has been set back a lot. The the war in Gaza is over, and the surviving Israeli hostages are home. The big beautiful bill is law. Unemployment's low. The economy is strong. It's a year …