Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org. I'm Ian Masters,

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

We'll begin with billionaires rallying to support Trump,

with the late casino moguls wife, Miriam Adelson,

poised to drop $100 million or more this week

as Wall Street's Schwartzman, Ackman and Peltz,

who condemned the insurrectionist in chief after

January the 6th line up to line Trump's pockets.

Joining us to discuss the cynicism and short-sightedness of the oligarchs pitching in to

buy the next election is Chuck Collins, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he directs the program on inequality and co-edits, Inequality.org.

He is the author born on third base, a 1% of makes the case for tackling inequality, is inequality in America irreversible?

And his latest book, The Wealth Hoarders, How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions.

Then we'll assess the upcoming peace conference in Switzerland to end the war in Ukraine

that China will not attend because Russia won't go, and now Saudi Arabia will not attend because

China isn't going.

Joining us is Aram Shabanian, the Open Source Information Gathering manager at New Lines Institute.

He recently taught in nonproliferation and terrorism studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, where his research is focused on the Cold War and contemporary histories of Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Then finally we look into the landslide victory of Claudia Shinbaum,

who captured Mexico's presidency by a 58% to 30% margin,

while her party, Morena, appears to have a veto-proof majority in both chambers.

Joining us to discuss what he sees as a further destruction of Mexico's institutional machinery

by the populist policies of Lopez-Obrador and Morena is Emiliano Polo, who is a Mexican lawyer

...