Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 247 at background briefing. I'm Ian Masters,

and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the casual cruelty of Trump's tour today of the so-called alligator alcatraz immigration detention camp in the Florida Everglades, where he joked, quote,

we're going to teach them how to run away from an alligator if they escape prison.

Joining us to discuss the enormous influx of money for ICE and DHS in the big, beautiful

bill that just passed the Senate is Will Bunch, the National Opinion columnist for the

Philadelphia Inquirer and the author of several books including The Backlash, Right Wing Radicals,

Paranoia Politics and Hydeaf Huxters in the Age of Obama and the author of several books, including The Backlash, Right Wing Radicals, Paranoia Politics,

and Hydeaf Huxters 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 a Pulitzer Prize for Spot News reporting

with the New York Newsday staff.

We will discuss his latest article at the

Philadelphia Inquirer inside Trump's 75 billion ICE Gulag nightmare. Then we'll look into the

massive transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest Americans in the bill that just

required Vice President Vance to cast a tie-breaking vote,

which will make average Americans poorer, sicker, less educated, paying more for electricity

and breathing dirtier air as climate change is accelerated.

Joining us is James Thurber, the University Distinguished Professor of Government and founder and former

director of the Centre for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University

in Washington, D.C. He's the author of numerous books and more than 80 articles and chapters

on Congress, interest groups and lobbying, and campaigns and elections, and is the author of

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