Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at backgroundbriefing.org, I'm Ian Masters,

and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news. We'll begin with the Trump-Musk presidency's steamroller of reactionary initiatives,

flattening the Democrats and intimidating the press into treating a sociopathic felon

as a legitimate leader. We'll discuss a manifesto of persistence, that is resistance,

in order to stand up to the firehose

of unpopular outrages Trump is inflicting on the land as he frees thugs and vandals and drug kingpins.

Joining us is Gil Duran, a San Francisco journalist who previously served as editorial page editor

of the Sacramento B and the San Francisco

Examiner. He currently writes the Frame Lab newsletter on Substac and regularly contributors to the San

Francisco Chronicle and other publications. He served as press secretary for Kamala Harris when she was

the Attorney General of California and we'll discuss his article with George

Lekoff at Frame Lab, Woody's New Year's resolutions, and ours.

Then with Trump threatening to sanction Putin unless he comes to the negotiating table,

then addressing Davos today, calling on OPEC to lower oil prices to force Russia into ending its war on Ukraine.

We'll speak with George Beebe, the Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible

Stakecraft. He served in government for nearly 25 years, including as Director of Russia

Analysis at the CIA and as a White House advisor on Russia

matters for Vice President Dick Cheney.

His latest book is The Russia Trap, How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral

Into Nuclear Catastrophe.

Then finally we'll look into the tech industrial complexes plans to capture the

defense budget with Silicon Valley

...