This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

In 2017, when Trump came into the White House for the first time, he signed exactly one executive order on Day 1, targeting the Affordable Care Act.

In 2025, he signed 26 executive orders on Day 1, throwing pens into a roaring crowd. Some of these orders were really big. There were orders ending birthright citizenship and increasing energy production. He signed orders about the Department of Government Efficiency, and the federal work force.

Some of the orders were more messaging bills. Some of them may not be so big after the courts get done with them.

So what has really changed here? What is all this flurry of policymaking and activity amounting to?

One of the difficulties of covering Donald Trump is that it’s always hard to know where to look first — or where even to look at all.

Back in the day, I used to do a policy podcast at Vox with Matthew Yglesias, who is now the author of the excellent Substack newsletter Slow Boring, and Dara Lind, who’s now a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. I thought it would be good to have a bit of a reunion with two of the people who most closely follow the policies that Trump is working on in order to get into the guts of what is actually changing — and what, as of yet, really isn’t.