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 the competition for the vote of American workers, with Biden on the picket line with striking UAW workers, and Trump at a non-union venue appealing to UAW members past and present.

Joining us is Kate Andreas, a professor of law at Columbia Law School, whose scholarship

probes the failures of U.S. law to protect workers' rights, examines the efforts of historical and

contemporary worker movements to transform legal structures, and analyzes how labor law and

constitutional governance might be reformed to enable greater political and economic

democracy. Previously, she worked for several years as an organizer with the Service Employees

International Union, clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the United States Supreme Court,

served as an associate counsel and special assistant to President Barack Obama and as chief of staff

in the White House Council's office and served on President Biden's presidential commission

on the Supreme Court. Then we look into the current rise in anti-Semitism and the role that

conspiracy theories play in our politics and speak with Mike Rothschild,

a journalist and conspiracy theory expert whose work has examined scams, frauds, moral panic,

conspiracy theories, and how their impact has gone from the online world into everyday life.

He has testified to Congress on the threat of election disinformation and is the author of

The Storm Is Upon Us, how QAnon became a movement, cult and conspiracy theory of everything.

And his latest book, Just Out is Jewish Space Lasers, The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy

theories. Then finally, with the State Department revealing that 60,000 of its emails were hacked,

along with the emails of the Secretary of Commerce,

we will assess the state of the government's cybersecurity with Dr. Herb Lynn,

a senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International

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