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 turning of the tide as Biden, who has been written off by the press

and pollsters as too old and losing badly to Trump, made a fiery State of the Union speech

that confronted the Republicans head on and made a strong case for how the president is

nothing like his disastrous

predecessor. Joining us is Harold Meyerson, one of the nation's best known progressive columnists

and editor-at-large of the American Prospect. He also writes regularly about California politics

for the Los Angeles Times and other national publications, and we will discuss his

latest article at the American prospect, the strategic shouting of Biden's state of the union.

Then we'll assess the impact of Biden's confrontation with the reactionary Supreme Court,

whose justices faced his onslaught against the Dobbs decision, and speak with Moira Donigan,

a writer in residence at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University.

Her work has appeared in the London Review of Books, Book Forum, and the Paris Review,

and she's a columnist at The Guardian, and we will discuss her latest article, Biden's State of

the Union, raucous, strident, and insistently optimistic,

and how malign foreign actors, Putin, Orban, and Netanyahu are working to bring Trump back.

Then finally, we'll examine the state of war between Ukraine and Russia and rumors of peace

and assess what a truce or armistice might look like. Joining us is Michael Kimmage, a professor of history and assess what a truce or armistice might look like.

Joining us is Michael Kimmage, a professor of history and department chair at the Catholic

University of America, chair of the Canon Institute Advisory Council, and a fellow

with the German Marshall Fund.

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