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 the 34 felony convictions against Donald Trump and a repeat of his

ability to create an alternative reality and to get at least a third of the country to believe in,

which was that the last election was rigged and he actually won.

Now he's got Maga World and the Trump GOP believing that the last election was rigged and he actually won. Now he's got Maga World and the Trump

GOP believing that the trial he just lost was rigged and he is an innocent victim of an evil

witch hunt by a demonic judge. Joining us to discuss the spineless toadying and moral cowardice

of top Republicans like House Speaker Johnson, who already have shown

they don't believe in democracy and now apparently don't believe in the rule of law is

Sophia Rosenfeld, the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History and Chair of the Department of

History at the University of Pennsylvania. She teaches European and American intellectual and

cultural history with a special emphasis on the Enlightenment, the Transatlantic Age of

Revolutions, and the legacy of the 18th century for modern democracy, and is the author of

common sense, a political history, democracy and truth, the short history, and the forthcoming,

the age of choice, a history of freedom in modern life.

Then we'll examine the peace proposal to end the war in Gaza, President Biden announced

on Friday that he supports, along with Israel, although Prime Minister Netanyahu subsequently

made clear that there

would be no ceasefire until Israel had achieved its military goals. Joining us is Jennifer Lowenstein,

a professor and former director of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

She lived in Israel in her childhood. Her father played in the Israel Philharmonic

...