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 growing concern about the lack of qualifications for Trump's key cabinet picks as we learned that the testimony by an alleged victim of underage sex with Matt Gates

and her friend before the House Ethics Committee has been hacked

and that the committee has circulated the unreleased report

to all of its members in spite of the good Christian House Speaker Mike Johnson wanting to bury it.

Joining us to discuss mounting pressure on Republican senators to do their job of vetting Trump's nominees

is Ryan Cooper, managing editor at the American

Prospect, who is the co-host of the Left Anchor podcast, as well as the author of How Are You Going to

Pay for that Smart Answers to the Dumbest Questions in Politics.

We'll discuss his latest article at the American Prospect.

Trump wants a cabinet of feral lunatics will Senate Republicans

stop him. Then will assess whether attention focused on Trump's unqualified and dangerous

choices of Gates, Hegset and Gabbard will allow RFK Jr. to slip by and get Senate confirmation

as many Republican senators make supportive comments,

in spite of manifest evidence that Kennedy is a conspiratorial crank, whose family name

gives him a sense of entitlement to deny science with devastating consequences from anyone

who might follow his crackpot theories.

Joining us is Lawrence Goston,

director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and University professor at Georgetown University.

He directs the World Health Organization Center on National and Global Health Law

and serves on the National Cancer Advisory Board and is the

...