Donald Trump will enter office at a time when presidential power has significantly expanded, because of a string of Supreme Court decisions in recent years. These decisions can be understood to have two functions: They give presidents a “sword” to act more decisively and unilaterally, and a “shield” that protects them from prosecution against actions taken in their official capacity. What will these capacities mean for Trump’s second term — especially as he has promised to radically transform the federal government?

Gillian Metzger is a professor at Columbia Law School who has studied the presidency, the administrative state and the Supreme Court’s relationship to both. In this conversation, guest-hosted by Kate Shaw, a New York Times Opinion contributing writer and law professor, Metzger discusses two key Supreme Court cases — the Trump immunity case, which gave presidents broad protections from prosecution, and the Loper Bright Enterprises case, which overturned the Chevron doctrine, expanding judicial power. Shaw and Metzger also cover how much leeway Trump actually has to take some of the bolder executive actions he’s floated, including ending birthright citizenship; what still remains uncertain about the federal government’s regulatory powers in the post-Chevron regime; and more.

“The Demise of Deference — And the Rise of Delegation to Interpret?” by Thomas W. Merrill

“The DOGE Plan to Reform Government” by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy

Book recommendations

Creating the Administrative Constitution by Jerry L. Mashaw

The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy by Daniel Carpenter

“Curation, Narration, Erasure” by Karen M. Tani

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

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 klein-show-book-recs.html">https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with 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 Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. 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.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This election felt like the peak of the TV-ification of politics. There’s Trump, of course, who rose to national prominence as a reality-TV character and is a master of visual stagecraft. And while Trump’s cabinet picks in his first term were described as out of central casting, this time he wants to staff some positions directly from the worlds of TV and entertainment: Pete Hegseth, his choice to run the Pentagon, was a host on “Fox and Friends Weekend”; his proposed education secretary, Linda McMahon, was the former C.E.O. of W.W.E.; Mehmet Oz, star of the long-running “The Dr. Oz Show,” is his pick to run Medicare and Medicaid; and he’s tapped Elon Musk, one of the most powerful figures in American culture, to lead a government efficiency effort. 

Two years ago, we released an episode that helps explain why politics and entertainment are converging like this. It’s with my old Vox colleague Sean Illing, host of “The Gray Area,” looking at the work of two media theorists, Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, who uncannily predicted what we’re seeing now decades ago.

And so I wanted to share this episode again now, because it’s really worth stepping back and looking at this moment through the lens of the media that’s shaping it. In his book “The Paradox of Democracy,” Illing and his co-author, Zac Gershberg, put it this way: “It’s better to think of democracy less as a government type and more as an open communicative culture.” So what does our communicative culture — our fragmented mix of cable news, X, TikTok, YouTube, WhatsApp and podcasts — mean for our democracy? 

This episode contains strong language.

Mentioned:

“‘Flood the zone with shit’: How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy” by Sean Illing

“Quantifying partisan news diets in Web and TV audiences” by Daniel Muise, Homa Hosseinmardi, Baird Howland, Markus Mobius, David Rothschild and Duncan J. Watts

Book Recommendations:

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann

Mediated by Thomas de Zengotita

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

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 klein-show-book-recs.html">https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero, Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones. Our production team also includes Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin, Jack McCordick and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This is our first bonus content of the paywall era, a subscriber-only, election-themed “ask me anything.” If you haven’t subscribed and would like to, you can do that directly through Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or click here. If you don’t want to subscribe, you’ll still have an end-of-year “ask me anything” coming down your feed — a mix of politics and things in life that, thankfully, aren’t politics.

And if you do subscribe, thank you so much for supporting the show. We hope you enjoy this little extra for your money.

Thank you, also, to everyone who sent in questions. We read them all and wish we had time to get to more of them.

But in the time that we had, the show’s supervising editor, Claire Gordon, quizzed Ezra with listeners’ questions on the meaning of “the working class,” whether an election that seemed to hinge on the economy could qualify as postmaterialist, the lessons he worries the Democrats will overlearn, his response to L.G.B.T.Q. voters who fear political backlash, what the election means for Israel’s war in Gaza, how blue cities should respond to their apparent electoral rebuke and more.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

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 klein-show-book-recs.html">https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was fact-checked by Michelle Harris 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 Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. 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.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

It was possible to see Donald Trump’s first election victory as some kind of fluke. But after the results of this election, it’s clear that America is living in the Trump era. And for Americans who’ve struggled to process this fact, you have lots of company around the world. From Hungary to Brazil, right-wing figures with openly authoritarian goals have been voted into power, to the concern of many of the people who live there.

A political phenomenon that spans countries like this — especially countries with such different levels of wealth, political systems and cultures — requires an explanation that spans countries, too. 

So we wanted to re-air this episode that originally published in November 2022, because it offers exactly that kind of theory. Pippa Norris is a political scientist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She’s written dozens of books on topics ranging from comparative political institutions to right-wing parties and the decline of religion. In 2019, she and Ronald Inglehart published “Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism,” which gives the best explanation of the far right’s rise that I’ve read. And it feels so much more relevant now in this country, after Trump’s decisive election. 

In this conversation, we discuss what Norris calls the “silent revolution in cultural values” that has occurred across advanced democracies in recent decades, why the “transgressive aesthetic” of leaders like Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is so central to their appeal, the role that economic anxiety and insecurity play in fueling right-wing backlashes and more.

Mentioned:

Sacred and Secular by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart

“regression-placeholder.pdf">Exploring drivers of vote choice and policy positions among the American electorate”

Book Recommendations:

Popular Dictatorships by Aleksandar Matovski

Spin Dictators by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman

The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

Thoughts? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. (And if you're reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion" in the subject line.)

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed atklein-show-book-recs.html"> https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Roge Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by our senior engineer, Jeff Geld. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin, Jack McCordick and Aman Sahota. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. 

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Right after the election, I talked about how the results reminded me of 2004. George W. Bush won re-election that year — and unlike four years earlier, the popular vote, too. Democrats were truly, undeniably in the wilderness. But two years later, they found their way out. Democrats won the House for the first time in 12 years. And two years after that, with the election of Barack Obama, they completed their trifecta. Does that comeback story have any lessons for Democrats today?

Rahm Emanuel is the person to ask. He helped orchestrate that 2006 Democratic victory as the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He was Obama’s first chief of staff. And before that, Emanuel was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton. Emanuel has been a central player in most of the biggest Democratic victories of the past few decades. And people like David Axelrod and Steve Israel have been floating his name to lead the Democratic National Committee to help guide Democrats out of the wilderness once more. But Emanuel is also a controversial figure in the party. And the eras of Democratic politics he represents have complicated legacies and aren’t remembered with unanimous warmth.

In this conversation, Emanuel argues that Democrats have fallen out of touch with what Americans actually want. We discuss why Democrats lost this November, what lessons they’ve forgotten from the Obama and Clinton years and how he would plot a Democratic comeback today.

Book Recommendations:

Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills

The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn

The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

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 klein-show-book-recs.html">https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. 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. And special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

There are a lot of different opinions about how the Democratic Party should rebuild after the blow of Donald Trump’s victory. And for the next two episodes, we’re going to showcase two very different ones.

Faiz Shakir was Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign manager, and he believes that Democrats need to embrace a Sanders-style class-first populism. This question of whether Sanders or a candidate like him could have beaten Trump loomed over Democratic post-mortems of the 2016 election, and they’ve reared up again this year, as Democrats have continued to lose working-class voters. As Sanders put it in a blistering statement: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

But some Democrats have been frustrated with this criticism. President Biden has been arguably the most economically populist president of the modern era. And the Democrats who have been winning in redder parts of the country aren’t democratic socialists. So I wanted to have Shakir on for a lively debate. Shakir worked not just for Sanders; he was also a senior adviser to the Senate majority leader Harry Reid and to Nancy Pelosi. And he’s currently the founder and executive director of More Perfect Union, a media outlet focused on issues affecting America’s working class.

This episode contains strong language.

Book Recommendations:

The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandel

Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek

Don’t Get above Your Raisin’ by Bill C. Malone

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

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 klein-show-book-recs.html">https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. 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. And special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The core conflict in our politics right now is over institutions. Democrats defend them, while Republicans distrust them, and seek, in some cases, to eliminate them.

This is really bad. It’s bad for institutions when Republicans are elected, because of the damage they might inflict. And it’s bad for institutions when Democrats are elected, because when you’re so committed to protecting something, it’s hard to be clear-eyed or honest about all the ways it’s failing. And when Democrats won’t admit to the problems that so many Americans can see and feel, that creates a huge opening for the right. So, what are Democrats missing?

Steven Teles is a political scientist and director of the Center for Economy and Society at Johns Hopkins, and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center. Jennifer Pahlka is the founder of Code for America and the author of one of my favorite books on why government doesn’t deliver, “Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better.” She’s also a senior fellow at Niskanen.

In this conversation, we discuss how and why the country has become polarized over institutions; the ways this was supercharged during the pandemic; the reasons government agencies are so focused on process, often at the expense of outcomes; how a second Trump administration will probably distract from some much needed institutional reforms; and more.

This episode contains strong language.

Recommendations:

“Voice and Inequality: The Transformation of American Civic Democracy” by Theda Skocpol

“Infrastructure Costs” by Leah Brooks and Zachary D. Liscow

Why Nothing Works by Marc Dunkelman

The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

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 klein-show-book-recs.html">https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, 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.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

I’ve been watching since the election to see what timeline we’re in. And Donald Trump’s first wave of selections for appointees were pretty straightforward. But then came the turn: Pete Hegseth, a former “Fox & Friends” host, to helm the Pentagon; Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence; and the real gut-punch, the former representative Matt Gaetz for attorney general.

In the parts of government that can be weaponized most dangerously — the military, the intelligence services, the Department of Justice — Trump is putting true lackeys and loyalists in charge. I fear we’ve entered the bad timeline.

Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a staff writer at The Atlantic, and the author of a new book, “Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World.” In this conversation, we discuss how she’s been processing Trump’s picks, what to make of Elon Musk’s role in Trump’s inner circle, the indicators to look out for when governments slide in an autocratic direction, the appeal and excitement of autocratic regimes that often get missed in our history books, the relationship between autocracies and futurists, the politics of performance and more.

Mentioned:

Join our team as a story editor

Book Recommendations:

Moneyland by Oliver Bullough

Offshore by Brooke Harrington

American Kleptocracy by Casey Michel

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. 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. And special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Democratic Party has been hemorrhaging nonwhite and working-class voters. There are a lot of theories about why that has been happening, blaming it on the party’s ideas or messaging or campaign tactics. But I think the problem might be deeper than that — rooted in the structure of the Democratic Party itself.

Michael Lind is a columnist at Tablet magazine, a co-founder of New America and the author of “The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the Managerial Elite.” He argues that the Democratic Party in recent years has become more beholden to special-interest nonprofits, which claim to represent large constituencies but actually reflect the interests of the donor class. In this conversation, we discuss why he thinks the nonprofit complex became so powerful, how that might have led to a disconnect between the Democratic Party and its core voter base and what he thinks Democrats could do to course correct.

Book Recommendations:

Where Have All the Democrats Gone? by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira

Tyranny, Inc. by Sohrab Ahmari

Mother Jones by Elliot J. Gorn

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

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 klein-show-book-recs.html">https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. 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.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

To understand the 2024 election results, it helps to go back to 2020. Donald Trump lost the election that year, but he made significant gains with nonwhite voters. At the time, a lot of Democrats saw that as a fluke, a hangover from Covid lockdown policies. But the Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini saw it as bellwether.

In his 2023 book, “Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP,” Ruffini argued that Trump was ushering in a party realignment. A trend that had been happening for years in the white electorate – college-educated voters moving to the left, and non-college-educated ones moving to the right – was now evident, he said, among voters of all races, breaking up the core of the Democratic base.

And so far, the data we have from this election suggests that Ruffini was right.

In this conversation, Ruffini, a founding partner at Echelon Insights, contextualizes the 2024 election results by looking back at 2020’s. We discuss what Democrats missed about these voter trends; the appeal of Trump’s brand of class politics; why Democrats might have been better off with a red wave in the 2022 midterms; and how Kamala Harris’s campaign may have hurt her with nonwhite working-class voters.

Book Recommendations:

Steadfast Democrats by Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird

The Real Majority by Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg

The New Americans by Michael Barone

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

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 klein-show-book-recs.html">https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, Jack McCordick and Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu 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.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.