Howdy all, welcome to our fourth episode on American National Government! In this episode, we are going to spend all of our time talking about federalism, or the way we balance power between the national government and state governments. We'll briefly touch upon separation of powers and checks and balances, but federalism is our primary concern. The slides this week talk about how our Constitution and our federalist balance have evolved, the different eras of federalism (e.g. state-centered, cooperative, etc.), and finally how the national government has pushed for what it wants (through grants or mandates for instance) while states have pushed back using lawsuits ...