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Welcome to our VIP feature for Hot Air as well as a members-only show in the Hughniverse! Duane Patterson and I now are doing a Week in Review show for Friday evenings, exclusive to members in both platforms. Duane has been the Generalissimo behind the Hugh Hewitt Show for more than two decades, and we have partnered on weekly commentary since 2007.

We discuss all this and more in today’s episode. Even the Chris Christie development, at which I scoff, but Duane insists that it will be strategically important. “Who are the two people who can prosecute Trump in a debate?” Duane asks me. Only Ron DeSantis will have the standing to do so from a pro-MAGA perspective, and only Christie will be temperamentally inclined to do it from other directions. “That’s why Chris Christie is this cycle’s Colonel Jessup,” Duane argues. “You want me in that debate. You need me in that debate. … Christie [will] basically go in there to basically go after and kneecap Trump.”

We cover a lot of other ground as well:

• Ron DeSantis’ legislative victories this spring “make him the most relevant politician on the Republican side,” I say, “other than Donald Trump, who is relevant for other reasons.” Duane agrees and says that is why DeSantis had to run this cycle. “You run right on the heels of the most consequential, significant legislative term the state has done.”
• I argue that the HHS effort to shut down Catholic worship in a Catholic hospital is the most significant story this week. “With this Eucharistic candle affixed to the wall, the local fire marshal has no problem with it,” I argue. “They don’t have a problem with it in every single Catholic church that has the same damn thing. And so this is just an excuse to try to shut down religious expression by using the economic power of Medicare and Medicaid, hopefully to push Catholics out of the health care system altogether. Because that’s always been an ambition of the Left. And this is just such an absurd bureaucratic complaint that there’s no possible other motive in place for this.”
• If we’re talking legal fights, though, Duane says we need to watch Loper Bright. The Supreme Court just took this up and it could cripple the regulatory state by ending the Chevron deference rule. Chevron “is a legal doctrine that says if there is any doubt and it’s not specifically spelled out in a law or a statute, deference is given or the benefit of the doubt is given to a federal agency because, well, they, they’re federal agency. They mean well, and we’re just going to give them the benefit of the doubt. Well, no, that’s, that’s not how it should be.”
• But speaking of the Supreme Court, both Duane and I agree that the full-out smear campaign against Clarence Thomas is probably the story of the week, and we discuss it at length.

We also talk about the laughable Russian false-flag operation at the Kremlin as well as the reports this morning about their troops beginning to fall back in southern Ukraine. With Yevgeniy Prigozhin threatening to pull Wagner Group mercs off the field, Russia needs all of the propaganda boosts it can get. Hunter Biden’s war with the White House gets some discussion too, as well as his ludicrous cries of poverty in his utterly stupid attempt to get out of child support. Bank collapses also come into the conversation, so don’t miss it — and join us in the comments!