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

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

with a shocking but not surprising revelation that Supreme Court Justice Alito flew the

insurrectionist flag at his home a few days before Biden's inauguration and 11 days after the

January 6th insurrection. We'll discuss the party of law and orders embrace of

insurrection that started with Trump but spread to the House with Speaker Mike Johnson

and now has infected the Supreme Court since it is now evident that the wives of both

Justice Thomas and Alito supported the insurrection and believed Trump's big lie that the 2020

election was stolen. Joining us is Caroline Fredrickson, a visiting professor of Georgetown

law and a strategic counselor on democracy and power at the Open Markets Institute.

She served as the director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office and during the Clinton

administration as special assistant to the president for legislative affairs. In 2021, she was

appointed a member of President Biden's commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.

The President Emeritus of the American Constitution Society, her books include The Democracy

Fix, How to Win the Fight for Fair

Rules and Fair Courts, and Fair Elections, and her latest, the Supreme Court, the

Supreme Power, the danger posed by the Supreme Court in the United States and what to do

about it. Then we'll look into the electoral consequences of the chilling action by Texas Governor Abbott,

who overturned the conviction of a racist murderer who shot dead a Black Lives Matter protester

in cold blood, a case that was championed by Tucker Carlson, who implied that the victim,

a white protester, was a traitor to his race and deserved to be killed.

Joining us is Matt Engel, who directs the Texas Democratic Trust and the Lone Star Project,

...