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'll begin with today's Juneteenth holiday and examine the legacy of racism in Texas since Juneteenth celebrates the freeing of slaves in Texas, who were cynically and cruelly

and cruelly kept in slavery in Texas well after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Joining us is Melanie Price,

endowed professor of political science

at Prairie View A&M University in Texas.

She is the author of The Race Whisperer,

Barack Obama and the political uses of race

and dreaming blackness,

Black nationalism and African-American public opinion,

and we'll discuss a latest poll

that shows a sharp increase in support from black voters for Trump, up from 7% to 21%, and a decrease

in support for Biden down from 86% to 70%. Then we'll speak with an historian of Abraham Lincoln, the founder of the Republican

Party, to assess Trump's capture of the party on display last week on Capitol Hill,

as Speaker Johnson and Minority Leader McConnell groveled before the insurrectionist who directed

the January 6th attack on their capital workplace.

We'll discuss how, in the entire history of the Congress,

there's never been such a scene of wholesale self-abasement,

humiliation and degradation, in spite of a deadly duel in the early 19th century,

and the shocking caning on the floor of the Senate in 1865 by a South Carolina congressman of the abolitionist senator Charles Sumner as he sat at his desk. Joining us is

Sidney Blumenthal, the former assistant and senior advisor to President Bill Clinton and

...