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 the recent gathering of the far right in Madrid ahead of the European elections,

at which one of the attendees, Marine Le Pen, who was ahead in the polls in France, spoke,

along with Italy's Maloney, Hungary's Orban and Argentina's Milay.

We'll discuss the attacks on Spain's socialist leader Pedro Sanchez

and socialism itself, which Malay described as, quote,

the cancer of humanity.

Let's not let the dark, black, satanic, disgusting, atrocious, carcinogenic side, which is socialism defeat us.

Joining us from Madrid is Toby Miller, a professor of journalism at the University de Computense de Madrid in Spain,

as well as a research professor of the graduate division at the University of California.

His most recent books

are a COVID charter, a better world, violence, the persistence of violence, Colombian popular culture,

and how green is your smartphone. Then with Louisiana's statehouse passing a bill that

classifies abortion pills as controlled substances like fentanyl,

we will look into how a 1873 law on the books, the Comstock Act, is being dusted off by

Republicans to ban abortion pills and even birth control pills, and speak with Eleanor Cooney,

the author of the internationally best-selling Tang

trilogy, as well as the critically acclaimed memoir, Death in Slow Motion.

She ghost wrote for Frank G. Ford, the explosive memoir of the Iraq War, Midnight in Samara,

and has an article at Mother Jones, we will discuss. A nationwide abortion ban could really happen.

You can thank Anthony Comstock's suitcase full of dildos.

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