Talking Feds

Natasha Bertrand, Bill Kristol, and Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren join Harry to analyze a series of topics that expose, and are driven by, the country’s deep partisan divide. The Feds discuss the substantive and political goals of both parties for the investigation of January 6 by a select House committee, on which Congresswoman Lofgren will serve; the state of play in the battle over the wave of new...

It’s our annual Supreme Court review and retrospective, in the wake of a very significant Supreme Court Term, the first with the conservative super-majority including the three Trump appointees. Amy Howe, Melissa Murray, and Steve Vladeck join Harry to wrestle with the main cases on their own terms but also for what they portend about where the new Court is now and where it’s going. Is a more mode...

In a week providing living proof of the adage that politics is the art of the possible, President Biden maneuvered his way to partial progress in several key areas, including Infrastructure, Gun Violence, and Voting Rights, where the DOJ sued Georgia to enjoin that state’s new voting law. Talking Feds stalwarts Matt Miller and Juliette Kayyem, and first-time Fed Betsy Woodruff Swan, join Harry to...

In a week with heavy action at every branch of government and on the international stage, Congressman Ted Lieu, David Frum, & Jen Rodgers join Harry to break it all down. At the G7, Biden reassured allies by not being Donald Trump, but his longer-range prospects for foreign policy success were less clear. The country learned of a brazen campaign by the Trump WH to get DOJ to run to court to suppor...

In a week ending with a classic DC scandal embroiling the press, Congress, the DOJ, and the WH, three old DC hands — George Conway, Joe Lockhart, and Asha Rangappa — join Harry to take apart the roles of all the players. The group considers how we can still unearth the facts of this and other Trump scandals. It considers whether Merrick Garland can stick to his neutral institutional approach. Fina...

Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett, Jon Alter, and Matt Miller join Harry in a week when the continuing influence of former President Trump was on regular display. Trump’s former Counsel, Don McGahn, finally testified before Congress; but he was limited to facts already in the public record. Core Trumpians Matt Gaetz and Louis DeJoy were looking down the barrel at serious criminal charges. And state ac...

This week we take an in-depth look at the position of the White House Counsel, one of the most important players in government, yet one that remains obscure to many people. The Counsel is integrally involved in most aspects of the Presidency and takes a center-stage role at times of great crisis. In this episode, previously only available to subscribers, Harry speaks with Bob Bauer, President Obam...

Rick Wilson, Erin Burnett, and Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon join Harry to talk through the political and legal landscape, starting with the Republican Party’s gyrations to avoid the establishment of a bipartisan commission to investigate the events of January 6. They then analyze the New York AG’s new criminal investigation of Allen Weisselberg, ending with the Supreme Court commission and the l...

Feds Emily Bazelon, Juliette Kayyem, and Max Boot dig into a week of big stories across a range of areas and the changes they portend for coming months. With its ouster of Liz Cheney, the Republican party split along the seam of the Big Lie, making it the party’s defining covenant into 2022. It now appears that COVID won’t taper to zero but to an extended period of risk minimization. And the Colon...

This week we listen in on the most knowledgeable counterterrorism and national security professionals — Frank Figuliuzzi, Katherine Schweit, Malcolm Nance, and Philip Mudd — as they discuss the state of threats to the Homeland and the measures the government is taking to address them, including Biden's anticipated domestic violence and extremism package, the issue of the social media as a breeding...

100 days into the Biden Administration, 3 friends of the podcast with special insight into the DOJ – Katie Benner, Matt Miller, & Andrew Weissmann -- join Harry to focus on the state of the Department under new AG Merrick Garland. The 4 discuss the Giuliani search warrant and its broader implications. They then take up the restoration of pattern and practice authority and its deploy in 2 cities. T...

In the wake of the guilty verdicts in the Chauvin case, Jamie Raskin, Phil Rucker, and Bianca Vivion Brooks join Harry to break down the reasons for the outcome and, more importantly, what it augurs—or doesn’t-- for broader reform of police practices in this country. The group then turns its attention to climate change and President Biden’s commitment to cut emissions in half by the end of the dec...

After a week of seismic developments in foreign affairs, a banner trio of expert commentators -- David Frum, Evan McMullin, and Fiona Hill -- join Harry for a breakdown of the events and their portents. The group analyzes the announcement of the end of the Afghanistan war and whether it was the best of the bad options for the US. We turn to an in-depth discussion of Russia sanctions and the situat...

We tackle this week perhaps the most entrenched stalemate in American political life: the regulation of gun ownership and gun violence. The US has rates of gun deaths 5 to 25 times that of other developed countries, and large majorities support at least certain reforms; and yet we repeatedly play out the same cycle of outrage followed by inaction. Congress members Conor Lamb and Eric Swalwell, and...

In this episode of Talking Feds, the roundtable delves into three different aspects of our polarized national life. Yamiche Alcindor, David Jolly, and Norm Ornstein join Harry to analyze the trial week in Chauvin and the broader stakes the case presents. They then take up the culture clash over the idea of vaccine passports. Finally, the four try to make sense of the quicksand Matt Gaetz is in, ty...

In the immediate aftermath of the $1.9 trillion recovery package, the Biden administration is readying the most ambitious and progressive set of economic reforms in the country in at least the last 50 years, with a total price tag of $3-4 trillion. Nobel-Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, former Council of Economic Advisers member Betsey Stevenson, and former senator Al Franken join Harry to br...

This week we turn our sights to the United States Senate, as a phenomenal group of experts–Bill Kristol, Jen Rubin, & Senator Whitehouse–join Harry to break down the most important & challenging topics on the Senate’s plate. We first consider the prospects for passage of landmark voting rights legislation, including the possible elimination of the filibuster. We then turn to oversight of unsolved...

It was a historic week for the country and the presidency, with passage of a 1.9 trillion stimulus that represented the most fundamental alteration in the role of government in at least 50 years. Congressman Joaquin Castro, Joe Lockhart, Laura Jarrett, & Matt Miller join Harry to analyze the landmark provision. They then turn to immigration, where Biden's ambitious plans face less certain prospect...

The Feds go back to basics and back to our roots with a nuts-and-bolts prosecutors’ dissection of the three potential criminal cases against Donald Trump—in Fulton County, Manhattan, and the DOJ--from the vantage point of the concrete specifics that experienced prosecutors focus on in determining whether to bring a case. Cynthia Alksne, Judge John Gleeson, Jen Rodgers & Andrew Weissmann join Harry...

No government agency bore the impact of Trump’s wrath more than the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump singled out the Bureau, the traditional crown jewel of U.S. law enforcement agencies, for outrageous and vicious slander. Three of the country’s most prominent and thoughtful experts on the FB–Frank Figliuzzi, Andy McCabe, and Asha Rangappa– discuss the damage the last four years inflicted an...

It was a week of intense storms, natural and political. Record-setting frigid weather spread across the country from Washington to Texas, and a cold war took effect between Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. A stellar set of guests—Lawrence O’Donnell, Ashley Parker, and Norm Eisen—join Harry for a bottom-line assessment of the impeachment, an analysis of the GOP sturm und drang, a look at the first...

As the evidence in the second impeachment trial draws to a close, an expert panel of legal and congressional experts – Matt Miller, Norm Ornstein, and Hakeem Jeffries, who served as a House Manager in the previous impeachment trial – join Harry to analyze the trial and what an acquittal portends for the future of Trump, Trumpism, and the GOP.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and Ca...

This week Talking Feds turns its view outward, to the challenges in foreign policy the new Administration inherits. After 4 years of aberrant foreign policy that saw the US bully our allies and coddle our enemies, the Biden Administration faces a different herculean task trying to right the ship of state, with the complication of China’s arrival as an economic superpower. Anne Appelbaum, Garry Kas...

The debris from the Trump years litters the political landscape, and it’s a herculean task to try to clean up the mess and repair our constitutional foundations. Where to begin and who has the political will and interest to pursue it? And is it even possible, with some 70 million citizens, and much of the Republican Congress, still in thrall to Trump? Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, whose book “Afte...

Three veterans of the heady first few days of a new Administration – Dee Dee Myers (Clinton), David Frum (George W. Bush), and Valerie Jarrett (Obama) – join Harry to analyze and critique the Biden Administration’s first few days and the challenges it faces for the first 100. Should the new government go big early? How will the impeachment trial affect it? Can Biden hold the Ds together while reac...