Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 247 at Background Briefing.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with Republicans in the Texas legislature and Senator Cornyn calling on Cash Patel's FBI

to arrest the Democratic lawmakers who fled the state to stop the gerrymandering power grab, ordered by Trump.

Meanwhile, as the lawless Trump-Bondi team cook up a criminal case against

President Obama, making clear the law doesn't matter to the mob boss and criminal in the Oval

office and his consularie at the DOJ, we are left to hope that the courts, and in particular the

Supreme Court, will defend the law.

Joining us is John Nichols, the Nation Magazine's Washington correspondent. His books include

The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party, the enduring legacy of Henry Wallace's

anti-fascist, anti-racist politics, and most recently coronavirus criminals and pandemic

properties, accountability for those who cause the crisis.

We will discuss his article at the nation,

Representative Democracy will live or die in Texas.

Then, with Trump's last-minute effort underway to make a deal with Putin

before Friday's deadline of imposing secondary sanctions on Russia

unless it agrees to

ceasefire talks with Ukraine.

We'll speak with Alexander Motel, a professor of political science at Rutgers University,

a specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires,

and theory.

He's the author of 10 books of nonfiction,

...