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 a pending escalation of strikes on the hooties following the last one

that was the subject of a signal group chat among the top Trump officials,

revealing war plans and leading to concerns about the amateurism and incompetence of Team

Trump and their ability to keep secrets and execute

foreign and defense policy professionally. Joining us is Dr. Anel Sheeline, a research fellow

at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute

for Public Policy, and an expert on religious and political authority in the Middle East

and North Africa. She has worked as a journalist in Egypt and Yemen and served for a year as a

foreign affairs officer at the Office of Near Eastern Affairs in the Department of State's Bureau

of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor until recently resigning over U.S. policy on the war in Gaza.

We will discuss her article at Responsible Statecraft.

Trump appears all in for Netanyahu's political survival.

Then we'll look into RFK Jr's cuts to Health and Human Services,

axing 10,000 employees on top of the 10,000 already cut,

along with the Trump administration,

pulling the U.S. out of Gavi,

a program that vaccinates children across the world in poor countries,

where diseases that result in pandemics often originate from.

Joining us is Thomas Boyke, director of the Global Health Program and Senior Fellow for Global

Health Economics and Development at the Council and Foreign Relations.

...