Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news. We'll begin

with paralysis at home while war rages abroad as House Republicans who have been wrangling behind

closed doors prepared a vote on the House floor for a new speaker on Tuesday at noon. Joining

us to discuss whether Jim Jordan will fall short like Steve Scalise did as the

date for a government shutdown fast approaches is Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public

affairs at Princeton University, whose recent books include fault lines, Burning Down the House,

Newt Gingrich, the fall of a speaker and the rise of the

new Republican Party, Myth America, historians take on the biggest legends and lies about our past,

and the presidency of Donald J. Trump, a first historical assessment.

The co-host of the Politics and Polls podcast and a CNN political analyst. We'll discuss his latest

article at CNN. Jim Jordan sums up what's wrong with the House GOP. Then we'll look into the results

of Sunday's election in Poland, which saw the right-wing law and justice party fail to get a third

term as the centrist civic platform led by former European Council President

Donald Tusk is poised to form a new government. Joining us to discuss this welcome reversal of

democratic backsliding in Eastern Europe is Jan Kubik, a professor of political science at Rutgers

University and professor at the University College, London.

His books include The Power of Symbols Against the Symbols of Power, Post-Communism from Within,

Social Justice, Mobilization and Hedgemany, and 20 years after communism, the politics of memory and

commemoration. Then finally we will assess whether the reactionary forces in Guatemala,

led by the corrupt outgoing president and his crooked attorney general,

backed by the military oligarchs, drug cartels, and vigilantes,

...