Welcome to Talking Feds, 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.

We taped this episode Friday afternoon and minutes after we ended, there came the cataclysmic

news that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died.

The development has set the country real in.

On the one hand, it brought home the magnificence of Ginsburg's life and tenure.

On the other, it made an already tumultuous social, legal, and political landscape

incalculably more complicated and critical.

Our great guests from this week, Natasha Bertrand, Matt Miller, and Senator Al Franken, were

good enough to return to the studio, or at least their laptops, on Sunday afternoon,

some 36 hours after Justice Ginsburg's death to give us their initial thoughts about

where this leaves the country.

I'll start with one thing.

And that is, as with other huge breaking news, Talking Feds, this podcast does a Talking

Feds Now episode.

In fact, we've just produced and published a really moving and rich hour with three

former clerks of the Justice that provides a portrait of her in all her human qualities.

I think it's in the nature of things that the period of sort of sweet remembrance and

Shiva, as it were, will be too short as the pundits and parties move very quickly into

the political implications for both parties, emerging from Ginsburg's loss.

...