Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at background briefing. I'm Ian Masters,

and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the vandalism underway at the White House, where the East Wing is being

torn down to build a vanity project for Trump, a $250 million ballroom gilded with garish

gold and glittering chandeliers at a time when Washington's government workers are not being

paid as Trump splurges with

Mary Antoinette-like indulgence, while his minions, Christy Noem and her boyfriend, Corey Lewandowski,

gift themselves with Gulfstream jets at the taxpayer's expense.

Joining us is David K. Johnston, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and

a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and bestselling author of the making of Donald

Trump. A 13-year veteran of the New York Times, he won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting

that uncovered loopholes and inequities in the US tax code, and he's uncovered so many

tax charges that he's been called the de facto

tax enforcement officer of the United States. His latest book is The Big Cheat, how Donald Trump

fleeced America and enriched himself and his family, and he's also the co-founder of DCReport.org.

Then we'll examine the cases being overturned on appeal to allow Trump to proceed with deploying troops to Portland and Chicago over the objections of the state governors and what it means for blue states to have the military and ice at polling stations next November.

Joining us is James Zarin, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of

New York, and the host of the critically acclaimed television talk show conversations with Jim

Zarin, which airs on PBS. He's the author of supremely partisan, how royal politics

tips are scaled in the United States Supreme Court, and played him in chief, a portrait of Donald Trump in

3,500 lawsuits.

He's a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly, where his latest article is Family Feud,

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