missions in brighton, florida. and finally, we're happy to announce our grand prize winners. add dad koch and tyler soonny for their documentary old enough to fight, old enough to vote. >> we're calling because this year we received 2,800 videos from almost 6,000 students and we're just calling to let you guys now you won grand prize. >> yea! >> you know with this year's to tick was an open-ended question so we had some time to focus in. and when i looked on line and i got the contact information for the person who authored the 26th, i thought we have to do this. we have to get in contact with this person. we sent e-mails, started

filming, we sent even more e-mails after that and everything kind of fell into place. >> since we were pick the minute it was pretty difficult, you know, 26 different amendments we looked at and eval wait. and there's lots of controversy going on in the public so we sat down and found something that related to us at our age. what affected us is we're heading into college next year and the 26th amendment we were able to get in contact with some important people here in iowa and around the country and it really clicked for us. >> the top 22 winning entries will air on c-span in april. and you can watch every student cam documentary online at student cam.org. a panel looks at president trump's use of executive power and possible conflict of interest concerns. this event was hosted by the heritage foundation.

well, good evening, everyone. thank you very much for coming to this jointly hosted event with the heritage foundation and the claremont institute. we're just a year into the trump presidency so at the one-year mark you'd think that people who professionally an lice politics, journalists, political scientists would have conducted competent evaluations of how the president has executed his constitutional duties. since the president shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, there's much to discuss. given that president trump has taken away from the paths of his predecessors and given the boldness of his many policies. besides controversial boldness, if many ways president trump has also been a rather conventional republican president rolling back regulations, dealing with

the administrative state, appointing justices, trying to work with congress on legislation. but if you're looking for such an evaluation, you'd be lost in the hurley burley of hysteria surrounding trump the man, what trump tweeted, or what he may have implied. here he three editorial titles that nicely encapsulate the tone of the public square today. everyone in trump world knows he's an idiot. odds are, russia owns trump. is it time to call trump mentally ill? this isn't from the onion, it's from the "new york times." the press encouraging or inciting fa gnat cal hatred does a disservice to the public. as originally conceived, the press's aim was to bolster public reason and enlightenment, but one fears it does the opposite. one may even suspect that what seems like moral righteousness in the press may, in fact, be hatred on account of the

challenge to their dominance over public opinion. their freedom to abuse the public mind causes their pride to grow and distorts their judgment further. given this poisoned public atmosphere, tonight we'd like to take a step away from trump the man, trump the tweeter, or trump-related gossip and look at trump the expectsive wielding executive powers. at one-year mark what has the president done in terms of executing his constitutional duties? we've assembled a top notch panel today to tackle this. ryan williams, the president of the claremont institute am be our moderator tonight and he'll field questions. speak first on law enforcement and immigration is john fonte who is a senior fellow and director of the center for american common culture at the hudson institute and the author of the book called sovereignty or submission, will americans rule themselves or be ruled by

oth centers speak next on the regulatory state will be add dom white, and director of the center for the center of administrative state, george mason university's school of law. and last, we have professor charles kesler who will speak on the use of the bully pull lit. i. he's a senior fellow at claremont institute and editor of the claremont books. he's also the dangler die camma distinguished professor of government at claremont college and author i am the change, barack obama and the crisis of liberalism. john, take it away. >> thank you. i'm going to talk about president trump and immigration policy. we could see view immigration policy three ways, through the lens of a citizen, the lens of a client, or the lens of a consumer.

there's the small "r" republican view of immigration through the lens of citizenship. progressives view it through the lens of identity politics. what matters most is not an individual citizenship but one's race, ethnicity and gender. in this framework there are clients and there are service providers. the overarching framework is the administrative state. third, for some cato libertarians what matters is not whether one say citizen or a client, but the consumer. for them, the transnational consumer in the global marketplace is superior to the rieft a free people to rule themselves by determining, for example, their own immigration policy. immigration enforcement by the trump administration is an example of republican government, small "r." it's based on the principle of sovereignty of the people. those core principles of sovereignty and consent are

directly challenged by two forces in america today. by progressives and by some libertarians. on the transnational progressive left, nancy pelosi makes a clear case for open borders. quote, she says, we are all americans north and south in this hemisphere. this is a community with a border running through it. so much for citizenship. libertarian alex nor ras stat at the cato institute declares america's core founding principle is the enlightenment they're riff rights. freedom of movement sin dispense able to the full use of those rights. to restrict an immigrant's ability to the united states not only infringes upon his natural rights but also upon the natural rights. americans who want to hire the immigrant. tom west in the political theory the american foundee explains that the cato approach violates the core principle of the

government. here's west. quote, since citizenship is the evekt infect of a compact there's no right to imgreat unless there's consent on both sides. unquote. illegal immigrants are here without the consent of the people in other words. let's just jump into the weeds on immigration. what we see say unitary executive in action with dhs secretary neilson, acting director of ice, that's immigration cust tons enforcement tom holman, attorney general jeff session, john kelly and the president all on the same page on immigration. trump's first year saw an increase by 25% in interior enforcement. which had plunged to a ten-year low in obama's last year. ice is going into sanctuary jurisdictions. acting director of ice tom holman said if he, jerry brown, thinks sies going away, we're not. as a matter of fact, we're going to increase our appearance in

california. in december and january they conukt dd raids in california, new jersey, arresting criminal aliens in new jersey 80% of them had prior felony convictions. now some argue that sanctuary policies are need sod that immigrants will not be afraid and come forward and report crimes and so on. this myth has no basis in reality. a 2009 analysis by the university of virginia found no decline in crime reporting after the implementation of tough enforcement programming in the is on immigration -- immigrant communities. consider the example of prince george yes, sir county in maryland, about ten miles from here. it's been a sanctuary county since october, 2014. since that time as the washington post reported because of ms 13 people live in fear, gang control over local businesses seine forced through extortion and intimidation daily. the rebirth of the once defuncted ms 13 in the united states was fueled by fresh recruits from a massive wave of

almost 200,000 unaccompanied minors, so-called, from central america. this wave was facilitated by the obama administration that gave asylum to boys 16, 17, and older, no reliable proof of age, and placed them many times with illegal immigrant relatives where they were often recruited by ms 13. the trump administration has cracked down on ms 13. ice has conducted operation raging bull from stopt november 2017 and arrested hundreds of ms 13 gang members in cessionist -- oh, excuse me, i mean sanctuary jurisdictions. these crimes include murder, kidnapping, sex traffic, drug traffic, assassinations, extortion and blackmail. the jut justice department under jeff sessions has demanded documents and threatened subpoenas for 23 sanctuary

jurisdictions under the nine 96 emigration law. justice has threatened to recoup funds previously given out and caught out future grant money to jurisdictions which include chicago, cook county, louisville, kentucky, jackson mississippi, and the three states of california, illinois, and oregon. the department of justice under sessions is also reexamining the policy of administrative closure. which many considered a backdoor amnesty by the obama administration. there are 350,000 closed cases in administrative closure. these are illegal aliens that could be deportd, cases are just closed, mostly to fight backlogs are, but it turns out backlogs have increased. there are 368,000 backlog cases. that's over a million people with immigration violations that attorney general sessions is now reviewing to see what categories

might be reopened. in addition he's hiring additional immigration judges that work for the justice department. the bureau of immigration appeal. let's go into the weeds and look -- just look at one exg of vetting people coming into this country. let's take the k-1 fiancee visa. remember the woman involved in the mass murder terrorist attack in san bernardino, california, was admitted to the united states under the k-1 visa. there are two steps in a k-1 visa. first step is a petition by an american citizen for his alien fiancee to the immigration service. this is supposed to include face-to-face interviews in the process of face-to-face interviews was often skipped during the obama administration. obama administration approved 90.5% of this first step. that was in the last year of obama. first year of trump it's down from 90% to 66.2. there's a lot of fraud in this

f program and they started having actual interviews with people. that's the first step. second step, the alien fiancee is interviewed as a state department consulate office. this is after the first step's been approved. under obama's last year, 99% approval. under trump first year there's an increase of denials of 20%. there's been a lot of fraud and poor vetting on in program so that's being cleaned up. another program, an office created by executive order of the president called voice. victims of immigration crime engagement, voice. it's created by executive order to assist victims of illegal immigrant crime. some conservatives of national view wrote that voice would serve no good purpose, quote. actually, the office serves several good purposes, the creation of voice say challenge to the sanctuary jurisdictions that protect criminal aliens then release them into the

general population. where they're free to commit even more crimes against americans. kate steinle's murder, for example, in san francisco had illegally entered the united states over six times. he was deported five times, and he served over a year in various prisons in the west coast for numerous felony convictions. we need to delegitimize the entire sanctuary movement. this gravity and political war where immigration enforcement is the occupation of the moral high ground, the grand narrative that explains the immigration story to the public. the creation of voice is one instrument among others that should be used to seize the offensive in fighting for immigration policy that serves first and foremost the american people. in conclusion, i want to say that almost all of president trump's administrative immigration enforcement measures, almost all of them have been fought tooth and nail by progris sives, by some

libertarians and by elements of administrative state particular lit lawless judiciary. never doubt for a moment that on this issue progressives and libertarians are allies and that both of them are major adversaries of the immigration law enforcement and, thus, of democrat democrat democratic sovereignty. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you very much to the claremont institute and my friends at the federal site, thank you very much for my friends at the claremont institute and the heritage foundation for inviting me today. it's a special privilege to be on this stage. heritage does so much important work on regulatory reform. some folks in the audience today do important things that you ought to read and it's an honor and privilege to be able to share their stage for a moment to offer a few thoughts on the administrative state and president trump's attempts to reform it.

the second year of a presidential administration is an important reflection point. it's a claremont event i feel safe quoting insurance ston churchill. the start of year two is, quote, not the end, it's not even the beginning the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. and at this point i think we can safely say the trump administration is off to a great start on many of the major reforms of administrative regulatory excess that defiant obama administration. but at this point i think we can also ascertain a danger in president trump's own access, a danger both in principle and in practice by which i mean if president trump wants to succeed in reforming the administrative state for the long run, then i hope he will significantly change his own use of the bully pulpit to help further that aim spot let's start with the administration's good start. recently the office of information and regulatory affairs reported that the administration has already either stopped or delayed nearly

1600 proposed pending regulatory action. that's on top of the 15 major regulations that the administration has already rolled back perhaps permanently through use of the congressional review act. and in addition to that, all the myriad reform efforts being undertaken by the agencies, the individual agency level through the notice and comment process. it's an amazing start. now, in the aftermath of president obama's administration, perhaps any republican administration would have undertaken at least some regulatory reforms. president trump and this white house put an unprecedented emphasis on the use of executive orders as a tool for energizing and steering the reform process. of all the things i could focus on in terms of success so far in this administration, i think that's the point that really merits the most attention, that use of executive orders as a tool for executive energy. instead of waiting for agencies to identify and pursuit right

priorities, president trump issued executive orders setting the agency's agendas from the top. now, to be clear there are limits on what a president can obtain lawfully through executive orders. he can't order agencies to ignore lawful statutes, but when statutes afford agency's broad zis discretion, as they almost always do, then the president can use executive orders to further direct and channel the agency's use of that discretion. and that is precisely what president trump did in at least two important ways. first, he issued executive order 13777 requiring agencies to repeal two old rules for every new one. and, capping the total costs that agencies can impose on society. now, president's day and reagan have used across the board to oversee and channel the agency process. but this executive order and these particular tools were new. and i think an important and welcome innovation in redoubling the white house's efforts to oversee, manage, and limb the

regulatory process across all executive agencies. because it's a new approach, especially in the from the government, it will take some ironing out and practice, but it's an innovative and important development. second, in addition to that across the board executive order, president trump issued many executive orders targeting specific agencies or policies for reform. in executive order 13772, he announced new core principles for financial reform, financial regulators to vindicate. an executive order 13783 he announced new policies for energy independence and economic growth to be pursued first and foremost by the epa's reform of obama's unlawful and excessive clean power plant. these are just two examples that i could offer of executive orders that exemplify the approach to regulatory reform. and energetic is the keyword because i think these executive

orders exemplify latcheder hamilton view of executive power and good government. he's famously explained, quote, energy is a leading character in a definition of good government. and while we usually recall hamilton's appeal in terms of national security, hamilton stressed the importance of an energetic executive and domestic as well. so so far it's a good and important example of a president energetically leading the executive branch and conveying energy to an agency leadership. furthermore, these orders promote transparency and accountability. after all, they're signed by the president, the president is expressly endorsing and directing these policies. and so accountability flows all the way up to the top and not just getting trapped in the bureaucratic apparatus. these policies are connected to the president himself and our constitutional system. that's a good thing. his agencies will need that energy in the days and years to come when his administration's

regulatory reforms will face immense challenges. in the courts, in the court of public opinion, and even within the agencies themselves thanks to the so-called self--styled resistance movement. and frankly, as we enter this stage of the process, i think president trump's own rhetoric will make the work of reform harder, not easier to complete. consider this. last year federal agencies began myriad notice in common proceedings to undo obama agency regulations. this year, the notice and comment process flofts those cases will end. the agencies will complete their process and the matter will turn to court where parties will challenge those policies before skeptical judges. judges are supposed to be fairly defer rent chal to the agency's conclusions, but that traditional defer rent chal approach presumes a fairment of reasonableness on the part of the executive branch. now defer chal will agencies be at least on significant or

controversial policies? i think last year's immigration reform lawsuits which john referred to a moment ago may be a forebearer of what's to come in terms of the judges scrutinizing the agencies with extra skepticism given how the president conducts him snefl public and how he himself talks about the policies, the aims that his administration is pursuing. now that say short-term concern. here's a much more significant and longer term concern. genuinely sustainable long-term regulatory reform requires legislation in the say generational project but there sat least some cause for hope in the future. in the senate for example, a bipartisan coalition of senators enacted a major act. senators portman and hatch were joined by heitkamp and mansion for serious reforms to the apa. but to actually enact reforms to the apa, let alone reforms to substantive laws like the clean

air act, will require sustained legislative dialogue and bipartisan. this president trump's use of the bully pulpit make this long term bipartisan dialogue more likely to succeed or less? >> president trump did not create our political divisions but is he exacerbating them through his singular use of the bully pulpit had the roosevelt coined the phrase pulley pulpit for his use of the white house for preaching his agenda, president trump's is serving much different tends to a different effect. it's counterproductive as a matter of his administration's own agenda. the better approach is one exemplified by the president who birthday we marked today if the in his first inaugural address, george stressed that, quotes, the foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immune able principles of private morality and.eminence of free government will be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens and

command the respect of the world. as with so many things, president washington was right. an american president should promote republican virtue and the public good, not detract from it. and the white house should be a bully pulpit for winning the affection of our citizens and commanding the respect of the world. i hope president trump will begin do so for the good his country and for the good of his own administration's important reforms to the administrative state. thank you. [ applause ] . thank you, ladies and gentlemen, it's very -- it's a lovely occasion and i'm very happy to be here and i wanted to especially thank arthur milikh who has put together this interesting panel.

my focus is not on executive power or the administrative state, those have been covered, but the bully pulpit. and i should begin by distinguishing that subject from the pulpit -- the bully and the pulpit which is i think the way a lot of people in washington look at donald trump in general and especially trump's rhetoric. but what i thought i would do actually was in a very quick and preliminary way say something about the specific character of president trump's use of the bully pulpit. in terms of classical retoric cal analysis. those of you who have

encountered air stot ristotle'sc perhaps some time ago in a classroom may recall that there are three characteristics and political speech really of almost any kind exhibits. three characteristics. and aristotle called these f as, path as, and lowing gos. three forms of proof, really, that a political receiptor rition uses every time he attempts to influence an audience. the first is ethical proof, meaning what is the character of the speaker? what does the audience think about the speaker and how does he use the audience's per sechti -- perception help him in his endeavor? rhetoric political speeches always about more than the argument, it's about the character of the person making the argument, is he believable? does he reach you?

and that leads to the second characteristic, passion. what passions in the audience does the speaker appeal to? what does he -- how does he attempt to play upon and to win the audience's trust in him and to move their emotions in the direction of his arguments? and argument reason is the third character. you've got proof from character, the proof from passions, and the proof from reason. so as i say, something very briefly about each of these in connection to president trump. so, first i would say, although i'm risking many generalizations here, that the leading element in the ethical presentation of trump, you might say, how does he present himself ethically, is a form of courage.

as a speaker, he starts from and returns to a sense of courage in defense of one's own. other speakers obviously start from a different sort of ethical reputation. courage in defense of one's own doesn't require that one be perfect or ethically high-minded necessarily. and in a certain respect, therefore, it's very suitable for president trump's political speech because he has a problem on the front of ordinary ethics and morality. if you don't believe me, read any never trumper. since the entire for two years the never trumpers have poured

invektive on the very bad character of mr. trump for very many reasons. but after two years, i don't think they have really advanced our understanding of mr. trump, his agenda, his talents, or our understanding of the political situation of the country. but they have produced a very large pile of invektive which is getting larger every day. the amazing thing is how comparatively ineffective this argument has been. it has been repeated again and again and again on the left, on the right, on television and editorial columns. mr. trump is a very bad man, he's a liar, i don't need to go into the specifics. you know what they are. he's accused of many vices and many sins. but the amazing thing is, to me,

that it has -- these arguments have not really inhibited his believability in the political sense. they have not prevented him from winning political victories, impressive political victories in the past year, and they have not proved the trump card that his opponents have thought they would prove, although it certainly is their long suit, these kinds of arguments. on the contrary, and precisely because he takes this stand in a way on the certain kind of assertiveness, a certain kind of courage, you know, these things are less important to his -- to his audacity and to -- i'm use an obama word, to his assertiveness than they would be if he were starting from a different point of view. some examples of what i mean by courage in this particular way.

one of the peculiarities is that he looks the guilty conscience on the question of race and civil rights. it is really quite amazing. he is almost alone in this. every other -- firt wally every other republican, virtually any of the 16 other candidates who ran against him had a very typical republican point of view on the question of civil rights and race, which is they feel guilty about their party's, you know, southern strategy, their party's complicity in -- in resisting affirmative action and various other kinds of things. there is, as far as i can tell, nothing of that in mr. trump. he is very -- he is much closer let us say, to the position of

clarence thomas than he is to -- on this question of race and racial remedies than he is to the position of any of jeb bush or any other major republican contender who might come to mind. he doesn't -- it's not as important in a way, for his own arguments as it is obviously for clarence thomas. but i think it is still quite remarkable. also, the kind of courage that more specifically that he represents is associated in a way with his reputation as a builder. if he calls himself a builder, he calls america a nation of builders. he -- i mean, he's many things besides that. he knows his way around a construction site, he also knows his way around a tv studio. his career has included things other than being a landlord or a

builder. but, still, that is where he comes home. that is what -- that is how he chooses to present himself. and he associates himself, you might say, almost perhaps voluntarily with a certain kind of brazen, masculine assertive ethics that comes with that job, the job of a builder. he gets things done, he's impatient with words or mere verbiage. he will build a beautiful building, he will build it but he will build it quickly and he will build it profitably. and you can count on that. so i would say one could go -- go on and flush this out and the question of courage radiates, but enough for that. on the question of what is the passion to which he appeals in

the audience, i think the clue here really is the term greatness. make america great again. his appeal to the passion rescues to the noble, let's say. he doesn't neglect justice, had is the fundamental political passion. but he really -- his heart seems to be more in the noble than in justice as such. he certainly is capable of attacking the injustice of a political establishment, for example, that has mow no liesed money and income streams in america, and for the last 20 years or so. but he's in a way more eloquent and more naturally, i think, persuasive when the subject is -- is the adjoining one of the way they have attempted to

monopolize honor, the way they look down on the white working class, the way they look down on the poorly educated. remember this during the campaign he said at one point looking at poll results, i love the poorly educated. something no other republican candidate would ever say. and so this -- this, you know, this disdain for the disdainers, this defense of popular honor against the experts and the ruling class, you might say, gives him a very keen nose for unearned success and for liberal hypocrisy, which say very important arrow in his quiver. i mention only one word, pocahontas. final thing on this question of logos or the actual argument

that is typical of so far at least of president trump. i mean, there's -- as a nonpolitician and as a very much an amateur in the field of politics, trump is in some ways a little logos light. he doesn't have historical examples, he doesn't have a kind of ready set of comparisons like most political speakers and politicians would. he just hasn't thought like that. he hasn't read those things in his long, earlier life. but, still, one could say that whereas a reagan focused -- reagan's logos in a way went to the question of limited government and recovering limits

on government. trump's goes to the integrity of the nation, to being one people, a people that is worthy of love, being americans first. and i think america first is, in a way, a distraction from the argument he's really making, because it's not -- it's not essentially -- it is not an isolationist argument and it's not essentially a foreign policy argument, it's an argument from the nature of political life or political right that a nation that -- that justice-like-like charity ought to begin at home. and there's nothing -- there's nothing radical about that, there's nothing new about that appeal. and yet, you know, in the early

21st century it comes across as strikingly courageous and different from the kind of political argument that one hears elsewhere. essential to putting americans first is putting the people's authority, their sovereignty over that of the government's, including that of the administrative state, and directing executive power on their behalf to their ends. with that, i shall subside. thank you. [ applause ] . . >> thank you, charles, thank you adam and john for your remarks. i also wanted to echo charles and the rest of the panelists in thanking arthur milikh the associate director here at heritage and david aser rat, couldn't be here today without the director and thanking

heritage for graciously providing us space for this argument. this one is that the claremont institute is going to continue to have. we think the current trajectory and future trajectory of the trump administration, the conservative movement, the republican party is a very important question, it's a question that gets to fundamental questions of the structure of our regime. and it's one, really, that goes back to a rolling crisis in american government that's at least 40 years old, i think, perhaps inaugurated by reagan's breakup of the old liberal consensus which before that was a progressive consensus which wanted to reorient government away from the view of founding limited government, separation of powers, and most importantly for our topic today i think and political control of the branches of government and to replace it with administrative rule, expert rule, neutral -- the neutral science of government in its independent and rather than a politically

dependent branch of rulers. i think that's the central question or many of us at claremont think that's the central question that was at stake in this last sloctielecti we want to continue to have this question. i think this help stokes those fires and i think and hope will continue to make this debate both passionate and high minded. so that's the spirit of this panel today. i don't mean to pick on adam, but i thought one thing that you said spoke directly to this larger context and to the extent that i agree with john and charles a little bit more, i thought it might be a nice jumping off point for us after which point we can open it up for questions. but you said that president trump did not create our current political divisions but is he exacerbating them. i think that's true, but i think maybe i might view it more positively than you do. so to the extent that our modern political parties over this 40-year sprerd sorted themselves

idealogically in these two camps of which i spoke, the sort of progressive rule by expert on the one side and then the return to limited government and popular control on the other, the to the extent that we're at loggerheads on that question, which say regime level question, don't we need to heighten the contra tics and continue the exacerbation? and then one of these parties has to win this argument definitively and advance for a generation or more on a project of reform? you brought up washington, but don't forget jefferson who in the election of 1800 said we're all republicans, we're all federalists, but what he meant was we won so really we're all republicans now. and the federalist party, of course, was no more after that. so throw that open for all tleef o -- three of our panelists. >> i'll grant the point that the principles that i'm glad to see this administration pursuing in

terms of fundamentally reforming the administrative state, principles that i dedicate my work towards, principles that you and the claremont institute all of us dedicate our work towards, those are things on which you fundamentally cannot and must not compromise the constitutional principle. the progressive project in the 20th century was at loggerheads with this based view of american constitutionalism, you said progressivism was at odds with that, i think it was, then i agree. i think amplifying the differences between our approach and their approach and trying to rally the american public to our side rather than theirs say noble cause. i didn't mean to suggest otherwise. in the meantime, there are reforms that can happen, important reforms that can happen. again, i singled out one in particular. it's not going to be enacted this year, it might not be for years. but these fundamental reforms to the administrative procedure act

that's something that can be achieved in a political lifetime and something we should strife towards. i do not see that becoming more likely in light of the way the president trump talks about his opponents, talks about other americans. i mean, i could go gone at length and i don't want to belabor the point. but i think it's important that the fight to reform american government, to bring it back to structural constitution, it's fundamentally important. but i never thought that the moment at which we'd be seeing advances on that would be the exact same moment at which so many republicans would be down-playing the importance of that other fundamental constitutional value. the one the framers talked about the federalist papers while they were talking about structural constitutionism. that's the virtue. they said republican government presupposes more than any other form of government. and so i really am uncomfortable with seeing that side of republican -- republican

government and american constitutionlism being downplayed in service of pursuing the structural constitution. i don't want to let go of that fight. >> john or charles. >> okay. i think we all share the goal what adam is saying is the return of the constitution, put it simply that way. the problem is, flois that the progressive left is now dominating institutions in our country. we discussed the administrative state, i think of what i like to think of as the culture rar ral via than, the mainstream media, universities, the human rights departments of fortune 500 companies, silicon valley, mainland churches, the fact that george washington's plaque was

removed from christ church where he went in virginia's tells us something about our culture. so the conservative movement can't simply be talking about republican virtue or taking these small steps, it has to -- and i think this since the left has taken over are all of these institutions by a revolutionary mean, there has to be a vigorous revolutionary opposition to overthrow this progressive project. i'd like to think in terms of no political movement is succeeded without having both bad cops and good cops, those pushing. that includes the american revolution. we're talking about washington and adams but there's also tom payne and sam adams who without them i don't think washington and adams would have succeeded. so the bad guys along with the good guys. what you have illinois now say little strange situation. usually the vice president is the bad cop, nixon, eisenhower, here you have the president actually play the bad cop role.

but as charles said, since no other republicans wanted to do it, it had to be done by somebody. >> i'd say first of all that i agree with almost everything adam said. i don't think there's anyone who wouldn't like to reach for the edit button on the twitter feed of the president occasionally at least. but the other side, the reason why -- where i would depart from you a little bit at least is the other side of republican virtue is republican corruption. and the question now i think is how and to what extent republican institutions, including constitutional ones are corrupted. and the great example is congress, it seems to me, or at least one of the first examples

is kron congress. the problem with the administrative state could not exist out congress which crete create today. it cannot be solved without congress. but congress seems very comfortable with the administrative state. it enjoys a lot of benefits from the administrative state, it avoids a lot of things. -- in order to return in this instance popular control of the government to the people through their congress. and in -- i mean, it is -- the populism has always seemed to me in a way a word of limited usefulness in describing what's going on in our politics now. because in the era of the administrative state, the people can do very little themselves

directly. there are elections, but there's very little else that they can do. there are few handles they can seize to change the government. the courts will stop them, i mean, if we have many examples in california of conservative initiatives that passed using the techniques of direct democracy only to be struck down by courts, federal courts or state courts, very activist courts. and many of the ways in which, you know, a people could get control of its government again, i don't need toile this, are not available right now. or at least don't have much efficacy. and if t would be very useful i the president would speak to that problem and put some pressure on congress morally and intellectually on that point. and if he's looking for subjects for tweets, there's a huge

subject there waiting for him. >> i think we have some time for >> this is for you, dr. kesler, and adam, you might want to chime in as well. i know you're talking about president trump's ethos, his form of courage and defense of his own and how it's not really having an effect now, but do you think in the long-term, it might impact, like, the midterms or maybe the next election? because to me, personally, it feels like we're at year eight instead of year one or year two. and i just don't know if maybe that is leading to, like, the start of exhaustion or something. >> i understand your sentiment. i mean, i wrote, many months ago now, that the president risked

inducing a state of nervous exhaustion in the country, and i think that is a danger. it's not a danger -- i mean, it's a danger that proceeds from the peculiar way he exerts his courage, if you want to call it that, the kinds of fights he picks. many of which he can't win, but he can -- i mean, he can't win the fight, but he can get some benefit out of having the fight. but there's also a collateral cost to that, which is that the public is consumed, perhaps more than it needs to be, or ought to be, by the day-to-day, you know,

controversies that the president sometimes unleashes. and i think that is a problem for him. on the other hand, you know, there's, in politics, every advantage has a disadvantage, and vice versa. and he's done reasonably well, i think, in the first year, very well in certain respects, in his first year, so let's see what happens. >> charles referred to president trump inducing a state of exhaustion. i'm sure we all feel exhausted from time to time with the political maelstrom, but looking ahead to the next election cycle, i wonder if he's not inducing something quite different and actually i think it would be quite ironic. i think if anything, president trump is inducing, among his political opponents, his critics, to borrow a famous line from michael anton's article of they now face a flight 93

election. he is giving to them, ironically, the same sense of doom that, main many ways, amplified his own political base. it's hard to imagine democrats not seeing the next presidential election as their own flight 93 election. >> i think what he's doing is what he's done successfully is to push the overton window, the climate of opinion that the swedes call the opinion corridor, issues that were never discussed before. in fact, getting back to immigration for a moment, the majority now favor limiting legal immigration, which would have been unheard of a couple years ago. the latest harris harvard poll. and this is basically due to president trump and his expansion of the overton window. as far as exhaustion, everybody does, at some point, every president does exhaust himself with the public, but i think what's happened here, by moving the overton window, i think he's made it impossible to go back to the mccains and the romneys and

jeb bush. i think now there's a -- the situation is altered within the republican party. >> wait for the microphone if you would. >> the sense of hysterical overreaction to everything that the man does began before he was sworn into office, so i don't think it's fair to lay this sense of exhaustion entirely at the feet of the president. >> no, no, and i wouldn't do that. it is, i mean, with -- it is the media that creates the moment here of exhaustion, but it's -- and without the existence of social media, we'd be having a very different kind of conversation about this. i mean, it's not all his fault, but he has exploited the

technologies and the opportunities that have come to him in a very vigorous way to move the climate of opinion. but i will say that the test in the long run is, you know, is he persuading people? i mean, you can move them because of immediate concerns, interests,fears, but are you changing the minds of your own party and then the majority of the country in the long run, and that is his challenge. that's his major challenge, i think, and it's -- that is very hard to measure, certainly, this early in a term. >> i just want to follow up on that question. this is a bully pulpit, right? doesn't it seem perhaps he's using it more to keep the media off guard and give voice to

people who would have an opinion, who cannot have an opinion? is that the purpose of the bull l ly pulpit. >> well, i mean, as adam said, the term is really an invention of teddy roosevelt, and he meant it to imply that the powers of the president are not limited to those actually specified in article 2 of the constitution, and that one of the most important powers he has is simply the power to fascinate the country and to concentrate the attention of the country on the moral message or the political message that he is delivering. and through that, to move public opinion and thus the congress. and that is what, you know,

since woodrow wilson, we have -- and teddy roosevelt, we have called leadership. and that was originally, in a way, a critique of energy, a critique of the notion that the idea was there's not enough energy in the executive. the constitutional powers don't give him enough play in american politics. he's not -- he wasn't, you know, the president didn't used to be at the center of american politics in quite the way he has been ever since teddy roosevelt and woodrow wilson, basically, in the 20th century. and so there are some interesting constitutional implications or questions to be raised about the bully pulpit, but it is now, you know, an accepted part of american political life, obviously, for liberals and conservatives and democrats and republicans. >> i just wanted to add, you know, the last really great reforms in service of rolling back the administrative state,

the great structural reforms were early in the reagan administration, president reagan campaigned on the need for regulatory reform, easing regulatory burdens, making government more accountable, and in the very opening weeks of the -- of reagan's first term, his task force created this new apparatus, this structure, for white house oversight of agencies. it was immensely controversial at the time, but the white house undertook a sustained campaign in support of the reforms, and furthermore, the white house undertook a sustained investment of resources in seeing those reforms succeed. there's a great article in the new issue of national affairs, right alongside arthur's great article. there's an article where he traces the history of these reforms through the reagan administration and beyond, and the reagan administration, by formulating sound reforms, by standing behind them rhetorically, and investing political capital to see them succeed in the real world,

managed to entrench major success in regulatory reform, so much so that when president clinton was elected 12 years later and democrats assumed he would roll it back, he didn't roll it back. he sustained it. that's a great example of the bully pulpit in connection with the president's other constitutional powers succeeding in real reform, and that's the ideal that i hope the trump administration pursues in the next three or seven years of his administration. >> well, the presidential twitter is obviously here to stay. there's -- any future president is going to be using this, replacing the fireside chat and the television speeches. that's certainly here for good now. >> time for one more. >> it's a good argument for calvin coolidge, though. >> time for one more in the back, sir. >> a few weeks ago, bobby jindal

wrote in a "wall street journal" article that trump had saved the republican party by bringing back disaffected blue-collar workers that had traditionally voted democratic. he went on to say that now it was time for trump to leave, but put that aside for a moment. who else in the republican party could attract that same group of people that he has brought into the republican party? was there anybody on the stage with him during the last debates that could pick up that mantle or do republicans have to look to a bench, you know, in the minor leagues or some place else to try to find people who can continue to draw on that segment of the american population. >> well, in terms of policy, there's no question that senator tom cotton of arkansas would be the most likely heir.

i don't know about personality. not necessarily personality, but certainly in policy. he would be the most likely person to carry on, and that's -- you know, every policy he's involved with, whether it's immigration, whether it's part of foreign policy, and crime, for example, he's one law and order, he stood against the big effort on so-called criminal reform promoted by many folks, including the koch foundation. he stood against that as has jeff sessions. sessions was sort of a forerunner, i think, of the populous uprising with president trump's victory, and i think cotton may be the future here. >> i would say, you know, it looked for a while as though there might be a series of primary challenges in 2018, and there still might be in 2020,

from, you know, the steve bannon right to try move the party and especially the senate in a trumpest direction. i always thought that was a fantasy and now there is no more steve bannon circle in washington or really -- i'm not even sure there is in the party. now, i think it will come in a different way. people -- if trump is successful, he will have imitators. and the party will -- rather than -- in a series of ideological confrontations, i think it more likely now that the process will be sort of more peaceful and gradual one in which a new cohort of candidates will come forward and out of that cohort would be potential

competitors to tom cotton for the future presidential nominations. >> thank you all for coming and join me in thanking the panelists. join us for reception to follow. monday on c-span's landmark cases, we'll explain the 1886 case of yick wov. hopkins. the unanimous ruling, written by associate justice stanley matthews, found in favor of the laundromat owner and established

that equal protection under the 14th amendment applies to immigrants as well as citizens. examine this case and the high court's ruling with mae ngai, professor of asian-american studies and history at columbia university and author of "the lucky ones." and joshma blackman. watch landmark cases live monday at 9:00 eastern on c-span, c-span.org, or listen with the free c-span radio app. and for background on each case while you watch, order your copy of the landmark cases companion book. it's available for $8.95 plus shipping and handling. and for an additional resource, there's a link on our website to the national constitution center's interactive constitution.

oochl we asked students to choose a provision of the u.s. constitution and create a video illustrating why it's important. students competed for the chance to win cash prizes and we received 2,985 entries from 46 states. the first prize winner for the high school east category goes to hemakshi and jansikwe from maryland for "no trespassing, seeking justice for native women." the first prize winners of our first prize high school central category are will and james. our student cam first prize winner for the high school west goes to may and payton from idaho. the first prize winner from our middle school east category is kiera, uma, and kiah from eastern middle school in silver

spring, maryland for "survival of the veiled face." our judge's special citation for creativity goes to raheem, william, and zane'ah from florida for their documentary. and finally, we're happy to announce our grand prize winners, adam and tyler from dallas center-grimes high school in iowa for their documentary. >> calling because this year, we received 2,985 videos from almost 6,000 students in the competition and i was just calling to let you know you won the grand prize. >> yes! >> you know, with this year's topic, it was just such an open-ended question so we really had some time to focusn