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 another US Senator being assaulted by ICE and DHS thugs.

This time, New Jersey Senator Andy Kim, who was pepper sprayed on Monday after visiting a detention facility with New Jersey's governor.

They were responding to inmates' protests against lack of medical care and inedible food,

but clearly ICE and Stephen Miller, who is pulling the strings, wants to signal that Trump's private army,

which has murdered U.S. citizens in the streets, is above the law law and critics in Congress are roadkill.

Joining us is Catherine Hawkins, a senior legal analyst at the project on government oversight,

focusing on accountability for ICE and Customs and Border Protection and other law enforcement agencies in border communities,

as well as additional immigration,

law enforcement accountability, national security and human rights issues.

She was one of the leading experts on the United States government's use of torture after

September the 11th and was previously a policy council and investigator for the Constitution

Project and a National Security

Fellow for Open the Government.

Then we'll examine the California crack-up as both the governor's race and the race for

Mayor of Los Angeles could end up with Republican Fox News and Reality TV political

gadflies coming out on top in the bluest state in the Union.

Joining us is Harold Myerson, one of the nation's best known progressive colonists and editor-at-large

of the American Prospect. He's also been a Washington Post columnist and executive editor of the

LA Weekly, and we will discuss his article at the American

prospect, Tom Steyer's Problem. Then finally we'll assess the rise of progressive populism in

...