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

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

We'll begin on this one-year anniversary of the return of Trump,

which sounds like the title of a cheesy horror movie,

but unfortunately is proving to be the horrific reality of what we are enduring today.

Joining us is May Nye, an historian of immigration to the United States and how it impacts

domestic politics, as Trump uses the border issue as a weapon against his political enemies

by unleashing his private army of ice thugs on democratic cities and states, with the likelihood

that they will be used to intimidate Democratic voters in the

November midterm elections.

She is a professor of history and long family professor of Asian American studies at Columbia

University, illegal in a political story and interested in questions of immigration, citizenship,

and nationalism.

She is the author of impossible subjects, illegal aliens Illegal Aliens in the Making of Modern America,

The Lucky Ones, One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America,

and The latest book is The Chinese Question,

The Gold Rushes and Global Politics.

Then we'll speak with Paul Pillar,

the Director of Graduate Studies at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University.

He had a 28-year career in the United States Intelligence Community, in which his last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near Eastern South Asia,

and is the author of Terrorism and U.S. foreign policy, negotiating peace, war termination

as a bargaining process, and why America misunderstands the world.

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