On Saturday, the U.S. embassy in Ukraine requested the evacuation of all non-essential staff, including families of U.S. diplomats. The moves come in response to a Russian troop build up along Ukraine's border and intelligence reports that Russia is planning an invasion. Russia has so far denied such plans. You can read today's podcast here . You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor...
Jan 25, 2022•24 min
Democrats say the threat to voting rights is a big enough deal that abolishing the filibuster for major legislation — or at least tweaking it temporarily to push through a voting rights bill — is a worthy cause. Last week, 48 out of 50 Senate Democrats voted to change the rules to push forward a voting rights bill. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Friday Democrats "made progress" on a voting rights bill and a filibuster rules change to pass it. But Sens. Joe Manchin and Kysten Sinema...
Jan 24, 2022•25 min
Every day, Tangle readers write in with questions. And at least once a week, I get a reader question about term limits for Congress. Do I support them? Do I think they would work? Why don't we have them? Today we sat down with Nick Tomboulides, the Executive Director of U.S. Term Limits and one of the leading experts on term limits in the United States. You might recognize Nick from his 2019 Congressional testimony, which went viral, where he testified before the Senate and told them exactly why...
Jan 23, 2022•42 min
One year ago today, President Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States of America. Today, we review where things are. You can read today's podcast here . You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangl...
Jan 20, 2022•33 min
On Saturday, four people — including a rabbi — were taken hostage inside Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. The small city of 26,000 people is just north of Fort Worth. A 44-year-old British man named Malik Faisal Akram was later identified by the FBI as the hostage taker. You can read today's podcast here . You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for t...
Jan 19, 2022•20 min
Momentum to reform the Electoral Count Act is growing in both Republican and Democratic circles, a change some say would help avoid the chaos of January 6 and ambiguity about how presidential elections are decided in the U.S. You can read today's podcast here . You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited ...
Jan 18, 2022•22 min
Starting next year, 800,000 legal permanent residents will be eligible to vote in New York City, despite not being citizens. The measure applies to legal residents, including those with green cards, and Dreamers who were brought here illegally as children under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). These residents will not be allowed to vote in state or federal elections, but will be allowed to vote in citywide contests. You can read today's podcast here . You can subscribe to Tangle by...
Jan 13, 2022•21 min
On Friday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases: The first was the National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor , which is a challenge to the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-test mandate that was instituted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The mandate requires employees at companies of at least 100 people to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or be tested weekly and wear masks while in the workplace. The rule impacted about two-thir...
Jan 12, 2022•23 min
If you've been reading the news recently, you have probably stumbled across some stories about Kazakhstan. The country is currently in the midst of civil unrest that has left at least 164 people dead, and more than 5,800 civilians detained. Today, we breakdown what's going on. You can read today's podcast here . You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, ...
Jan 11, 2022•22 min
On Friday, the latest jobs report was released, giving one final look at the state of the economy as we head into 2022. The report's numbers drew both celebration and disappointment in certain quarters, with a mixed bag of data on where things stand. You can read today's podcast here . You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction...
Jan 10, 2022•22 min
Isaac sits down with former presidential and New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang. They discuss his new third-party, what he thinks will happen in 2024, and why Democrats are in trouble. You can read a transcript of this conversation here . You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Mag...
Jan 07, 2022•41 min
Well... Covid-19 upended my travel plans. The result is I am on an airplane today, as is my podcast editor, so we don't have anyone to produce our reading of today's newsletter. You can go read it for yourself here if you want, though. We apologize for the inconvenience, and we'll be back tomorrow with our Andrew Yang interview! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jan 06, 2022•1 min
At the end of the year, the child tax credit legislation that provided monthly checks that were going out to millions of parents — which Democrats passed last year — lapsed. Party leaders had expected to pass a temporary or permanent expansion of the CTC in the Build Back Better legislation, but that bill was effectively killed last month when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who Democrats needed to pass the legislation, announced he was not going to vote for the nearly $2 trillion bill. You can read to...
Jan 05, 2022•24 min
On December 27, President Biden signed the NDAA for fiscal year 2022 into law. The bill, which authorized $768.2 billion of spending in 2022, passed the House and Senate with overwhelming majorities (88-11 in the Senate, 363-70 in the House), with Republicans outnumbering Democrats in support in both chambers despite being in the minority. Each year, the NDAA is considered a "must-pass" bill, as it is one of the only pieces of annual legislation that never seems to fail. It has become law every ...
Jan 04, 2022•25 min
You can read today's podcast here . You can take the poll about Tangle we mentioned in today's podcast here . Shortly before Christmas break, Business Insider published a series that found 52 members of Congress and 182 senior-level staffers had violated the STOCK Act, which requires members and their familiey members to publicly disclose sales or purchases of individual stocks, bonds and commodity futures within 45 days of their actions. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), whose husba...
Jan 03, 2022•24 min
A quick heads up that this is our last podcast until January 3rd. Today's episode is about the House committee investigating the riots at the Capitol in Washington D.C. on January 6th, which voted to hold former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress over his refusal to cooperate with the probe. The full House voted on the measure, which passed bywith a 222-to-208 vote, with just two Republicans — Reps. Liz Cheney (WY) and Adam Kinzinger (IL) — voting “yes" with Democrats. The...
Dec 22, 2021•26 min
On today's Tangle podcast, we sit down with Clint Watts, a counterterrorism expert who studies Russian misinformation and used to serve in the FBI. Watts has testified before Congress and is considering one of the leading experts on Russian misinformation. You can read the transcript of this conversation here . You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, a...
Dec 21, 2021•48 min
Isaac tells the tale of his Covid-19 diagnosis. You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/s...
Dec 21, 2021•37 min
Yesterday, the West Virginia Democrat went on Fox News Sunday and all but ended the negotiations over President Biden's $1.7 trillion social spending and climate change bill plan, dubbed Build Back Better (BBB). Speaking with Bret Baier, Manchin cited rising inflation, the national debt, and the latest Covid-19 variant, and said "I can't go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia, I can't vote for it. And I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can't. I've tri...
Dec 20, 2021•24 min
Trevor is on the mic today to pass along a note from Isaac, and give you the quick hits of the day. You can read today's podcast here . You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast wa...
Dec 15, 2021•7 min
On Friday, a British court ruled that Assange could be extradited to the U.S. to face charges under the Espionage Act for his role in publishing classified military and diplomatic cables. These charges are tied directly to a U.S. indictment against Assange for helping former Army analyst Chelsea Manning leak thousands of U.S. military reports on Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as American diplomatic cables. Assange was initially charged with conspiracy to hack a computer to disclose classified inf...
Dec 14, 2021•26 min
This week is crunch time for President Joe Biden and Democrats, who are hoping to push through Biden's $1.7 trillion social spending and climate change package before Christmas. Democrats are using a Senate process called reconciliation to pass this bill, so they don't need a single Republican vote to push it through. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), a longtime holdout, would not commit to voting for the bill earlier this month, but Congressional insiders say she is privately on board (and is support...
Dec 13, 2021•25 min
Last week, news outlets in the U.S. began reporting that intelligence officials had determined Vladimir Putin was considering a "military action" in Ukraine — possibly an invasion — that could begin as early as 2022. The intelligence finding estimated Russia was planning to deploy as many as 175,000 troops and almost half of them were already present along Ukraine's border. In response, President Joe Biden pledged to make it "very, very difficult" for Putin to take any military action, and then ...
Dec 09, 2021•24 min
Last week, a 15-year-old boy named Ethan Crumbley was charged with murder and terrorism for a shooting that killed four students and injured several more at Oxford High School in Michigan. Then on Friday, prosecutors took the unusual step of also charging Ethan's parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, with involuntary manslaughter. Karen McDonald, prosecutor for Oakland County, Michigan, says the Crumbleys committed "egregious" acts that contributed to the mass shooting, including buying Ethan th...
Dec 08, 2021•25 min
Yesterday, the Biden administration confirmed that it will not be sending the president or any other official U.S. government delegation to the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. The move is designed as a protest against China's ongoing human rights abuses, and is a notable snub given the Chinese government’s hopes to use the Olympics to enhance its public standing. But the boycott by officials will not affect the ability of any U.S. athletes to participate in the games. You can read today's n...
Dec 07, 2021•22 min
Every now and then, I like to put together a newsletter of reader feedback on a specific edition. I do this for a few reasons: One, I think it's really interesting to let Tangle readers see the kinds of emails and replies I get. Two, I think it's important to keep sharing the opinions and views of people who aren't me. And three, I think it's important to share those opinions even — and especially — if they are ideas I didn't think of, or don't agree with, or otherwise feel like they add somethi...
Dec 06, 2021•30 min
Mississippi’s abortion law. Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , the case regarding a law enacted in 2018 by the Mississippi legislature that banned abortions if the "probable gestational age of the unborn human" was more than 15 weeks. The law had narrow exceptions for medical emergencies and severe fetal abnormalities, but no exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. In case you missed it, we published a lengthy newslett...
Dec 02, 2021•27 min
On Monday, Jack Dorsey announced he was stepping down as CEO of Twitter, the social media website he co-founded in 2006. He is going to be replaced by Parag Agrawal, the company's chief technology officer who started at Twitter as an engineer and has been working on technologies associated with cryptocurrencies. Why it matters: Twitter is one of the most important meeting places for political minds and discourse, and has played a huge role in the political world over the last five years. Former ...
Dec 01, 2021•23 min
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the two Supreme Court rulings that have mostly defined the Constitutional right to abortion in the United States. If the state of Mississippi wins the case, depending on the nature of the justices’ ruling, it could effectively end the Constitutional right to abortion and pass the job of regulation over to the states, man...
Nov 30, 2021•26 min
Over the weekend, several countries around the world implemented new Covid-19 travel restrictions over fears of the newest variant, despite little knowledge of how contagious it is or where exactly it is present. Omicron was first detected in South Africa, which has one of the most sophisticated screening systems in the world (it's a presumption to say it "originated" there — more likely, they were just the first to discover it). Australia, Belgium, Botswana, Britain, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong...
Nov 29, 2021•24 min
