Welcome to Talking Fed's, a roundtable that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day.

I'm Harry Littman. As Donald Trump flew to Alaska for a dramatic but

inconclusive meeting with Vladimir Putin, the war at home continued. Trump sent hundreds of

soldiers to patrol the streets of D.C. after declaring an emergency based on bogus assertions of a violent crime

crisis in the nation's capital. Images of uniformed personnel patrolling D.C.'s busiest areas,

and, on one occasion, running a vehicle checkpoint on a line of drivers, quickly circulated nationwide.

DC officials were able to convene an immediate hearing, after which the Trump administration backed down

from the most aggressive aspects of his policing power grab.

And more shots were fired in an intense gerrymandering arms race between Texas and California,

with both the Democrats and Republicans suggesting that it could spread from there across

the country.

Democrats of the Texas state legislature prepared to finally return to Austin and fight the

Republican effort to grab five new house seats on their home turf. But only after California

Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled a new congressional map drawn to cancel out those Republican gains with five additional Democratic

seats in California.

California's move marked the best example yet of a new resolve among a few high-profile

Democratic governors to take the fight to Trump on his own terms, both in tactics and rhetoric.

The Democratic slogan of, when they go low, we go high, seemed to be losing favor.

To discuss these glaring flashpoints and bare-knuckled brawls in D.C. and around the country,

we welcome three of the most trenchant

and far-sided analysts in the country, all good friends of the podcast. And they are.

Michael Podhorzer, the former political director of the AFL-CIO, he's the founder of the

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