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 a do-nothing legislative branch deliberately crippled by Trump,

who has his lackeys in the Senate like Ted Cruz and in the House like the new speaker,

Mike Johnson, killing a deal on the border on Trump's orders to hurt Biden

while impeaching the head of Department of Homeland

Security as theater and distraction, leading one to wonder whether there is such a thing as

the national interest anymore in the GOP. Joining us is Caroline Fredrickson, a visiting professor

Georgetown Law and a strategic counselor on democracy and power at the Open Markets Institute.

She served as the director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office and during the Clinton administration as special assistant to the president for legislative affairs.

In 2021, she was appointed a member of the President's Commission on the Supreme Court of

the United States. The President-Ameritor of the American Constitution Society, her books include

The Democracy Fix, How to Win the Fight for Fair Rules, Fair Courts and Fair Elections,

and we will discuss her article at the Washington Monthly, Elon Musk's War on the New Deal

and Democracy.

Then we look into how the sick and distorted end-time's theology of Christian Zionism

is driving U.S. support for Israel's war on Gaza, because in the evangelical Christian worldview,

the 1948 creation of Israel was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy,

making Palestinians the enemies of God, since they are the enemies of Israel. Joining us is Jonathan

Kutub, who is an international human rights attorney, co-founder of the Palestinian Human Rights

Group Al-Hak, and co-founder of

non-violence international. A Palestinian who grew up as a conservative evangelical Christian

...