
Talking Feds
Talking Feds is a roundtable discussion that brings together prominent former government officials, journalists, and special guests for a dynamic and in-depth analysis of the most pressing questions in law and politics.
Latest episodes

Jun 26, 2025 • 1h 7min
Cory Booker’s Long Stand
Recorded live at Talking San Diego, Senator Cory Booker charts the personal and political path that led him from the streets of Newark to the well of the Senate—and to the longest speech in congressional history. With urgency and candor, he reflects on what it means to watch democracy erode in real time, and why moral imagination is now a political necessity.
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Jun 23, 2025 • 1h 15min
Trump at War
The episode starts with a 20-minute discussion with War Powers expert Rich Bernstein about Saturday’s bombing of Iran. From there we go to our Friday roundtable of Talking Feds stalwarts–Jason Kander, Norm Ornstein, & Jacob Weisberg. We focus on both the prospective bombing of Iran and the domestic use of force in CA & elsewhere. The court of appeals opinion green-lighting the federalization of the national guard in CA raises the prospect of an expansion to different big cities in blue states.
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Jun 19, 2025 • 51min
How Social Media Broke Democracy and Childhood
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt joins Harry Litman to discuss his bestselling book "The Anxious Generation" and how the shift to smartphone-based childhood around 2012 triggered a mental health crisis—especially among liberal girls. Haidt explains his moral foundations theory, why Americans can't agree on basic facts anymore, and how social media created a "curse of Babel" that's undermining both democracy and child development. Plus: his four practical norms for rolling back the phone-based childhood and why we may be accidentally training kids for authoritarianism.
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Jun 16, 2025 • 1h 1min
California Screamin'
A wild, turbulent, and ugly week. Trump used protests to his immigration operations in LA to declare a “rebellion” and federalize the national guard. A court decision rejecting the move was itself stayed, leaving the situation tense and tenuous. Sen. Padilla was roughed up and arrested when he tried to ask a question at a press conference. Meanwhile, the Administration brought Abrego-Garcia back only to charge him with crimes, and an effort to have Congress ratify DOGE cuts looked likely to fail. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jun 12, 2025 • 45min
Who Is Government, Really? with Michael Lewis
Harry sits down with Michael Lewis—author of Moneyball and The Fifth Risk—to discuss Who Is Government?, his new book spotlighting the unsung public servants who quietly hold the country together. They trace the project’s roots to Trump’s chaotic transition, explore the GOP-led assault on federal expertise, and ask: Can the damage be undone? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jun 9, 2025 • 56min
Caught in a Bad Bromance
It was a week in which events looked to be spinning out of control on multiple fronts. The bromance between Elon Musk and Donald Trump hit the rocks and broke to smithereens, with Musk by week's end calling for Trump's impeachment. The Big Beautiful Bill looked likewise to be at rough shoals, w/ several R's threatening to leave the fold. More courts ruled against the gov, especially in alien cases, and the gov reversed ground and brought Abrego Garcia home, only to charge him with federal crimes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jun 5, 2025 • 57min
Nine Years of Warning America: A Conversation with Rick Wilson
A special recording from our Talking San Diego event with Rick Wilson. A longtime Republican strategist turned fierce Trump critic, Rick was among the first to sound the alarm on the threat Trump posed to American democracy. For nearly a decade, he’s been relentless in his efforts to expose that threat—most memorably through a sharp, unflinching, and often darkly funny series of political ads that take aim at Trump and his enablers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jun 2, 2025 • 54min
Taco Tuesday Every Day
The Elon Musk Era of government came to an abrupt end as the architect of DOGE left the Administration, somewhat the worse for wear and tear. What remains in his wake of DOGE’s slash-and-burn agenda is unclear. Sen Barbara Boxer, Mara Liasson, and Stuart Stevens join Harry to assess the Musk experiment. We then move on to Trump’s no-holds-barred war against Harvard, and the damage it threatens for the school & American society as a whole. We then turn to the moving target of Trump’s TACO tariffs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

May 29, 2025 • 26min
Plane Hits House
It's the latest monthly Molly mashup where Molly Jong Fast of Fast Politics fires legal inquiries at Harry, and Harry counters with political questions. The two trade vantage points on the Qatari "Palace in the Sky," with Harry explaining its illegality and Molly its political inanity. They move on to the pasting Trump is getting in the courts, and Molly’s sense of his quickly declining popularity. Molly explains why Dems are likely to take the House in the midterms. And both concur that as damaging as the first few months have been, his chance at actually replacing our constitutional democracy with an authoritarian state has passed him by. Lots more besides! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

May 26, 2025 • 58min
"Fight Fiercely, Harvard!"
A terrific round table of Alisyn Camerota, Bill Kristol, and Mike Podhorzer join Harry to analyze a week in which only a couple things went right for Trump this week, but they were big-ticket items. The House R’s dragged the “big beautiful bill” over the finish line by a single vote. And the Supreme Court gave Trump a big victory that will permit him to fire leaders of certain important agencies without cause. But otherwise the courts forcefully rejected Trump’s overreaching executive orders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices