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'll begin with House Democrats releasing incriminating emails from Epstein,

expressing surprise that Trump has not been tied to his and Maxwell's sex trafficking victims,

one of whom Epstein said Trump spent hours with at his house.

While going on to describe Trump in a 2018 email to Larry Summers as

borderline insane. In response, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee just released 23,000

pages of documents from the Epstein estate. We will discuss how the real smoking gun yet to be fired is Epstein's

ties to Israeli intelligence. Is Nina Burley, a senior editor at the New Republic, best-selling

author, documentary producer, and publisher of the Substack American Freak Show? A professor

at New York University's Arthur J. Carter Journalism Institute, she's

written seven books, the latest of which include golden handcuffs, the secret history of Trump's

women, and she has a new novel, Zero Visibility Possible. She's the producer of a documentary

series on Apple TV, Epstein's Shadow. Then we'll look into the migration of big tech from Silicon Valley to Texas, where the demand

for electricity from giant AI and crypto server farms is driving up electricity prices for Texans,

as well as the fusion of techno-fascism and Christofascism with Elon Musk's Monarcho-capitalism

embracing the Christian nationalism of Petro-Baptists.

Joining us is Fred Turner, the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication

at Stanford University.

He's the author or co-author of five books, including Seeing Silicon Valley,

Life Inside of Fraying America,

and from counterculture to cyberculture, Stuart Brand, the Whole Earth Network,

...