Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 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 today's confirmation of an unhinged Putin-loving anti-government-Qan-conspiracy crackpot, Kash Patel, to head the FBI as the dumbest of the self-inflicted wounds the Trump-wrecking crew is doing to weaken America,

accelerating its collapse as a world power,

as an upholder of the rule of law, and as a beacon of democracy.

Joining us is Ryan Cooper, managing editor at the American Prospect.

He is the co-host of the Left Anchor podcast, as well as the author of How Are You Going to Pay for

that, Smart Answers to the Dumbest

Questions in Politics. And his latest article at the American prospect we will discuss is

Musk and Trump are causing the dumbest imperial collapse in history. Then we'll examine the crushing

of the federal workforce by Musk and Trump that will at worst reduce government spending by 1% to find the trillions of cuts needed to offset the Trump tax cuts to the super wealthy, needed to offset the Trump tax cuts to the super wealthy permanent.

Joining us is Eric Blank, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, an organizing

trainer in the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, author of Red State Revolt,

the teacher strike wave and working class politics, and director of the worker-to-worker

collaborative. His latest book is We Are the Union,

how worker-to-worker organizing is revitalizing labor and winning big. Then finally we will speak with

Eric Baker, a lecturer in the history of science at Harvard University. His writing has appeared

in Harper's N-plus-1, The Baffler, Jewish Current and the Drift, where he is associate editor.

His new book, Just Out, is Making Your Own Job, How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America.

We'll discuss the successor to the industrious work ethic, the entrepreneurial work ethic, exemplified by Musk, and the fraud of the

can-do power of positive thinking as we head into an era of techno-surfdom.

And before we begin in this new year of 2025, with half of the country hoping for the best,

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