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 with today's public testimony from Jack Smith, who House Republicans tried to discredit while Trump called him a, quote, deranged animal, but Smith made it clear that he will not be intimidated.

Joining us is Lisa Graves, one of the nation's foremost experts on the right-wing influence on the

United States Supreme Court and other levels of power.

She leads True North Research and co-hosts Legal AF and has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government,

as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, as Chief Counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee,

and as a deputy chief of the Article III Judges Division for the U.S. Courts. And she's the author of the new book, Without Precedent, How Chief Justice Roberts and His accomplices rewrote the Constitution and dismantled our rights.

Then we'll assess the latest polls from Times, CNN, and The Economist U.Gov that find support for Trump from young Americans has done a U-turn, and the same conditions that drag down Biden to defeat are now a weighing on Trump.

We will speak with Joseph Lowndes, a professor of political science at Hunter College and the

director of public policy program at the Roosevelt House at the City University of New York.

An expert on conservatism, the Tea Party, Social Movements, the GOP, race and elections.

He's the author of From the New Deal to the New Right, Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism,

and the co-author of Producers, Parasites, Patriots,

race, and the new right-wing politics of precarity.

Then finally, with the Democratic House and Senate leaders

unwilling to go to the mat to reform ICE,

we will speak with Will Bunch, national opinion columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and author of several books,

including The Backlash, Right Wing Radicals, Paranoia Politics and High-Deaf Huxlers in the Age of Obama,

and The Burn Identity, a search for Bernie Sanders and The New American Dream.

He has won numerous journalism awards and shared the Pulitzer Prize,

and we will discuss his latest article at the Philadelphia Inquirer,

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