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 the shameless display of Republican fealty to billionaires,

with Senator Lindsay Graham and Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee,

blocking efforts to have Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo testify about lavish and unreported gifts

to justices Thomas and Alito.

Joining us is Lisa Graves, the executive director of the new corporate watchdog group

True North Research. She has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal

government, as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, as Chief

Council for nominations on the Senate

Judiciary Committee, and as a Deputy Chief of the Article III Judges Division for the

U.S. courts.

Then we'll get a preview of Wednesday's meeting between President Biden and China's Xi Jinping at

the APEC summit just underway in San Francisco, Joining us to discuss what can be done to reverse the

downward spiral of relations between the world's two largest economies is Oval Schell, who was formerly

the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley,

and he's currently the Arthur Ross Director of the Asia Society Center Centre for U.S. China Relations.

His books include Mandate of Heaven, the legacy of Tiananmen Square and the next generation

of China's leaders, wealth and power, China's long march to the 21st century, and most recently

my old home, a novel of exile. Then finally we'll get a local perspective on Joe Manchin,

who has already sabotaged Biden's legislative agenda, and now having left the Senate, has

undermined the Democrats' slim majority, and is poised to end Biden's presidency by likely running

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