Talking Feds is sponsored by our friends at Total Wine and More,

rewarding curious connoisseurs with a wondrous selection of wine, spirits, and beers.

Hi Harry here, just a quick note on our offerings on Patreon. We've got a half dozen new ones in

the last couple of weeks, three in the last few days, including discussions about the Theranos

trial, the DOJ motion to stay the Texas statute, and the new compromise voting rights bill.

So there's a wealth of great stuff there, and you can go look at it to see what's on offer

and decide if you'd like to subscribe. And here's our show.

Welcome to Talking Feds, a round table that brings together prominent figures from government

law and journalism for a dynamic discussion of the most important topics of the day. I'm Harry

Littman. The week put to the test, the adage, as California goes, so goes the nation with unclear

results. No sooner had the polls closed in the Golden States Recall election on Tuesday,

then it was clear that Governor Gavin Newsom had handily beaten back the recall,

and analysts started to sift through the election for clues about the national mood and the two parties

respective prospects going forward. After coming out full Trump in the last few days of the campaign,

Newsom's main Republican opponent had conceded and withdrawn his previous Trumpian claims about

rigged results. That led some observers to posit that the election had shown that the former

president's stranglehold on the Republican Party might be loosening. President Biden for his

part proclaimed the Newsom triumph as a full-throated endorsement of aggressive COVID policies of the

sort that Newsom has instituted in California. The president, two days later, introduced his own

path of the pandemic plan with aggressive policies for businesses and health facilities in particular.

But ideological holdouts like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis showed no signs of even baby steps

in Biden's direction, doubling down on their opposition to pushing vaccines, even as cases and

...