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 outrageous anti-democratic display of authoritarian political thuggery

underway by the Republicans who would rather cheat than compete,

and thanks to John Roberts' Supreme Court, are being rescued from an electoral wipeout

as they rush with unseemly haste to rig the voting maps

with flagrant gerrymanders so that they might end up holding the House and the Senate in November

before one vote is cast.

Joining us is David Daly, the author of Anti-Democratic, Inside the Rights 50-year plot to control American

elections, as well as the national bestseller Rat Eft, while your vote doesn't count,

which has been credited for kick-starting the national movement to reform redistricting.

He is the former editor-in-chief of Ceylon, and he has an article at Ceylon we'll discuss,

this was John Roberts' plan all along.

Then we'll get an update on the Trump Xi summit underway and speak with Victor Shee,

director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego.

He has published widely on the politics of Chinese banking policies,

fiscal policies and exchange rates, and he has done a study on how the coalition formation strategies

of the founding leaders had a profound impact on the evolution of the Chinese Communist Party,

as well as having constructed a large database on biographical information of elites in China.

His latest book is Coalitions of the Week, Elite Politics in China, from Mao's stratagem to the rise of Xi.

Then finally we'll examine how a generation of overqualified young Americans with degrees and shackled

with college debt who are working in the gig economy are moving to the left politically

and what impact that will have on our politics in the future.

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