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

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

We'll begin with the Trump-controlled United States Senate,

elevating Emil Bovey to the Court of Appeals and possibly onto the Supreme Court,

and assess the extent to which Trump has successfully weaponized the law

by using extreme maneuvers to keep on unqualified ideologues as U.S.

Attorneys.

Joining us is Owen Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at UC Berkeley, who frequently argues cases before the highest courts, including the Supreme Court.

His books include the conservative assault on the Constitution, the case against

the Supreme Court, free speech on campus, and presumed guilty how the Supreme Court empowered

the police and subverted civil rights. And his latest book is No Democracy Lasts Forever.

Then we'll examine the good and the bad of having an amateur in the Oval Office

and how Trump's government by stunt with the presidency following an unscripted reality TV show

is impacting our foreign policy and speak with Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at the American

Stacroup Program at theua Endowment for International Peace.

He's the author of Tomorrow, The World, the birth of U.S. global supremacy,

and we'll discuss his article at the New York Times.

Trump is a situational man in a structural bind.

Then finally, with the Senate using an arcane move to make the Epstein

files public as the Republican Stonewall, slavishly protecting their dear leader,

we'll speak with Sidney Blumenthal, the former assistant and senior advisor to President

Bill Clinton and senior advisor to Hillary Clinton. He has been a national staff reporter for the Washington Post,

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