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

I'm Harry Littman. This is our monthly contrarian episode with a roundtable

drawn from the deep bench of that new media undertaking, and it comes at a natural inflection

point in our living national drama. Last week brought a spate of

retrospectives on Trump's first hundred days. On one side of the ledger, Trump 2.0

has inflicted historic, perhaps irreversible damage, warping the executive branch and

reshaping civil society in deeply destabilizing and undemocratic ways.

On the other side, a surprisingly hollow record for the maximum leader, virtually no new legislation,

a fusillade of executive orders, many stalled or likely to be invalidated by the courts, and a free fall

in approval ratings that threatens to derail or at least stall his authoritarian momentum.

Now entering our second hundred days of Trump 2.0, Trump's overreach continues, but it's

increasingly being met by serious resistance in the courts,

among Democrats in Congress, and most critically, from the American people.

This week, a Trump-appointed district court judge in South Texas issued the first opinion

on the merits of the administration's deportation

program, resoundingly striking it down as unlawful. And Trump took it on the chin in several

other cases, most notably in a tour to force released after we taped, Judge Barrel Howe of the D.C. District Court demolished the

administration's effort to target law firms based on past work for Democrats. But while the

federal courts continue to hold the line on judicial review, the administration keeps sending

mixed and troubling signals on whether

it will acquiesce when push comes to shove or will instead plunge the country into paralyzing

chaos.

...