Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org.

I'm Ian Masters, and today will continue a retrospective of the major news stories of 2025 from the background briefing archives and go to an interview on July the 20th of 2025 when many were fretting over whether we might be in a constitutional crisis when we were already there. We examined whether we are past that and already in a Trump dictatorship

and should be working on how to get the Constitution back and restore our democracy.

Joining us was Sean Willens, the George Henry Davis, 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University.

His books include The Rise of American Democracy,

Jefferson to Lincoln, the age of Reagan, a history, 1974 to 2008, Bob Dylan in America,

and the politicians and the egalitarians. His latest book is No Property in Man, Slavery and

anti-slavery at the nation's founding, and he's the co-host of the podcast, The Court of History.

Then we will go to an interview from September the 28th of 2025 when our guest was on a boat

with a flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza. Joining us was David Adler, General Coordinator

of the Progressive International, who previously

served as a foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders in his campaign for US President,

policy director of the Democracy and Europe Movement 2025, and the co-founder of its Green

New Deal for Europe campaign.

He was on a boat with a flotilla heading for Gaza

that already had been under attack by Israeli drones,

dropping explosive and incendiary devices as well as chemical agents.

And David had an article at The Guardian,

We are sailing to Gaza, here's why.

Then finally we go to an interview from October 1st of 2025 on a frightening move that went under the radar by Trump and Stephen Miller to outlaw and defund political opposition as anti-Christian and anti-American in the name of dismantling left-wing terrorism, which means going

after over half of the country's common beliefs that don't align with Stephen Miller's

extreme political paranoia and delusion.

...