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 begin with a political scandal described as worse than Watergate and Iran-Contra combined,

that he's not being covered by the American press, and speak with David Adler, general coordinator of the Progressive International.

He recently served as a foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders in his campaign for

US President, policy director for the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, and the co-founder

of its Green New Deal for Europe campaign.

He recently helped organize a global sumud flotilla to Gaza leading to his arrest and detention in a prison camp in the

Nakhav Desert by Israel and also recently organized the Newester America, flotilla and

International Coalition that delivered humanitarian aid by air land and sea to Havana, Cuba on

March 21st. He is a contributor to a new investigation by the Research Consortium

on the Reactionary International Hondurasgate inside the Reactionary International's Latin American

operation. Then with Trump's endorsement today of the Christian Crook, Texas Attorney General

Paxton over Senator Cornyn, we'll look into how this is good news for James Tala Rico's

US Senate campaign and speak with Jeremy Surrey, who holds the Mac Brown Distinguished

Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin,

where he is a professor of history and public affairs. He's the co-host of the podcast. This is

Democracy and the author and editor of a number of books, including The Impossible Presidency,

The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office, and most recently Civil War by other means,

America's long and unfinished fight for democracy. And he has an article that he substack democracy of hope, redistricting

madness, gerrymandering rigs elections by redrawing district lines, but higher turnout can still

break the maps politicians draw to cheat.

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