Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org, I'm me and Masters, and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the top priority of Mag and Mike Johnson, the new House Speaker,

wishes to serve his benefactors by cutting taxes on the rich.

Johnson's first act is to gut the IRS so they can't collect revenues from wealthy tax cheats.

In the name of reducing the deficit, House Republicans

proposed cutting the IRS by the same amount destined for Israel, which is a non-starter

with the Senate and White House, and will result in an increase in the deficit. Joining us to discuss

how this will impact the IRS and whether there is a strategy here, is

Edward McCaffrey, the Robert C. Packard trustee chair in law and a professor of law, economics,

and political science at the University of Southern California. He's the author of Fair,

Not Flat, How to Make the Tax System Better and Simpler, and the founder of the People's Tax

page.

Then we'll go to Israel to speak with Gersham Gorenberg,

an historian and journalist who has been covering Middle Eastern affairs for more than 35 years,

a columnist for The Washington Post, and a senior correspondent for the American prospect.

His books include The Unmaking of Israel, The Accidental Empire,

The End of Days, Shalom, Friend, The Life and Legacy of Yixakrabin, the winner of the National

Jewish Book Award, and most recently War of Shadows, Code Breakers, Spies, and the Secret

Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East.

He joins us to describe what he saw yesterday inside the burned and desecrated homes

in which Hamas terrorists butchered Israeli families.

Then finally we'll get an update on the $250 million fraud trial brought by the New York Attorney General, which

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