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

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

We will begin ahead of this evening's critical press conference.

President Biden is holding at the end of the NATO summit,

as calls for him to step down, intensify,

and attention is turning to Vice President Harris as an alternative to run against Trump.

Meanwhile, anxious democratic lawmakers watched the polls head in the wrong direction,

while donors start to hold back and fundraising starts to dry up.

We will speak with someone who knows Kamala Harris well, and is alarmed as many are,

that while bedwetting and pearl clutching is increasing

divisions amongst Democrats, Republicans are doubling down in support of Trump, who could grow

horns and hooves and be even more popular among Christian nationalists as his outrageous lies and

rhetorical lunacy amps up on the campaign trail.

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

editor of the Sacramento B and the San Francisco Examiner.

He currently writes the Frame Lab newsletter on Substack and regularly contributes to the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications,

and he was formerly the press secretary to Governor Jerry Brown and Kamala Harris when she was the Attorney General of California.

Then we'd examine the emergence of a so-called reformist president in Iran,

Masoud Peschkian, and speak with Arash Azizi, a senior fellow at the Center for

the Middle Eastern Global Order, and a former senior lecturer at Clemson University. He is an historian

of the 20th century social and political movements,

with a particular focus on global socialism. His latest book is What Iranians Want,

...