Hey everyone, before we dive into today's episode, I want to tell you about an upcoming event in San Diego that you won't want to miss if you're in the vicinity next Friday, March 21st.

Talking San Diego will be welcoming Maureen Dowd, the esteemed Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist for a conversation anchored in her new book,

Notorious, which is a compendium of rich, nuanced, in-depth profiles of well-known personalities

from acting, music, fashion, big tech, and business.

For tickets and more information, visit TalkingSan Diego.net. Hope to see you there.

Welcome to Talking Fed's, a round table 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. We are living, there's no getting around it, in Donald Trump's America.

The relentless challenges to the constitutional rule of law, the separation of powers, and free

expression proliferate by the weak.

Democrats had a rare opportunity to flex their muscles and force a government

shutdown, but minority leader Chuck Schumer ultimately decided the costs to both the party

and the country outweighed the benefits. He opted to vote to close debate on the resolution

to fund the government through September and effectively

guaranteeing the passage of a continuing resolution that Speaker Mike Johnson was able to shepherd

in the House with just a single Republican defection. Taking a page straight from the playbook

of authoritarian leaders, most notably

Hungary's Victor Orban, Trump continued his full court press to extend his influence into civil

society. He pulled $400 million in funding from Columbia University and is now reviewing the school's eligibility

for over $5 billion in federal grants unless it implements a slate of academic changes and cracks

down on pro-Palestinian protesters. Meanwhile, the White House continues to bar the Associated Press from access to key events

because of its refusal to go along with renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America,

as Trump insists.

And in yet another overreach, Trump cited bogus national security concerns to blackball a second major law firm.

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