Hello, I'm City Journal editor Brian Anderson. Thanks for joining us for the 10 blocks

podcast featuring urban policy and cultural commentary with City Journal editors, contributors,

and special guests.

During the late years of Barack Obama's period in office, the president and his team relied heavily on the power of what's come to be called the administrative state to bypass Congress,

a Congress that after a series of midterm defeats to Democrats,

had proved hostile to the White House's progressive agenda.

In 2014, President Obama declared his pen and phone strategy.

If the Republican-controlled Congress was unwilling to act on his priorities,

he would sign executive

orders to direct federal agencies to enforce new rules or to ignore existing rules.

In June of that year, the administration announced its clean power plan, giving unprecedented

authority to the Environmental Protection Agency over the energy policies created

by state governments. Later in the year in November, the president unilaterally granted

temporary legal status to nearly 5 million illegal immigrants, so-called dreamers, despite

claiming for years that he lacked the proper authority to take such action.

But these kind of actions don't end there.

With the election of Donald Trump, there is now an opportunity to reform the bureaucracy

and restore some of the balance between Congress and the President.

Joining me to discuss the past and future of the administrative state is Adam White.

Adam is a Washington-based attorney, a research fellow at the Hoover Institute, and a very

valued contributing editor at City Journal Magazine.

His essay, Break the Bureaucracy, appeared in the Winter 2017 issue, and you can

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