A couple of weeks ago, we sent Tangle News YouTube and podcast editor Jon Lall to the home of former Representative Ken Buck (R-CO). Buck, who recently retired from the House of Representatives, was enjoying his first few days of free time since leaving Congress. Long known as one of the most outspoken members of his party, Buck had been making waves in the news for criticizing the state of Congress, referring to his former colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene as "Moscow Marjorie," and bre...
Apr 26, 2024•39 min
The homelessness case before the Supreme Court. During oral arguments on Monday, the Supreme Court seemed divided on City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case about local and state restrictions on people camping and sleeping in public places. You can read today's podcast here , our “Under the Radar” story here and today’s “Have a nice day” story here . Watch our latest YouTube video, an interview with Edwin Raymond. He is a recently retired NYPD lieutenant, civil-rights activist and a...
Apr 25, 2024•29 min
Campus protests. Over the last week, protests on elite college campuses over Israel’s war in Gaza have boiled over, with hundreds of students arrested or suspended, and clashes between protestors and counter-protestors hitting a fever pitch. You can read today's podcast here , our “Under the Radar” story here and today’s “Have a nice day” story here . Watch our latest YouTube video, an interview with Edwin Raymond. He is a recently retired NYPD lieutenant, civil-rights activist and...
Apr 24, 2024•31 min
FISA reauthorization. On Saturday night, President Biden signed legislation reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the controversial warrantless surveillance program whose renewal had been held up by bipartisan concerns. Minutes after it lapsed at midnight on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced a deal to vote on a package of amendments to the House-passed bill to reauthorize the FISA. The Senate approved the reauthorization 60-34....
Apr 23, 2024•29 min
The House foreign aid and TikTok bills. On Saturday, the House of Representatives passed three separate foreign aid bills for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, totaling $95 billion. The House also passed a bill that will ban TikTok from app stores if ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns it, does not sell the app to a U.S. company and also allows the potential transfer of seized Russian assets to Ukraine. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) helped usher the package across the finish line despite thre...
Apr 22, 2024•30 min
House Speaker Mike Johnson. In a closed-door meeting of Republican legislators on Monday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced a new plan for voting on foreign aid that will split the $95 billion foreign aid package passed by the Senate into four different bills. The House would then vote on the bills funding Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan separately, with a fourth bill addressing other Republican priorities and sources of funding for the aid. The move comes in response to pressure fa...
Apr 21, 2024•25 min
Every now and again, we have so many reader questions in the backlog that we decide to devote a full edition to address them. Today is one of those days. I love reader mailbag editions because they give us a chance to cover a variety of topics in one newsletter. It can also be fun to answer questions that are a little more personal, or a little outside our standard U.S. politics realm (we love those kinds of questions, so don’t be shy !). In today’s edition, we’ll be tackling a wide range of top...
Apr 19, 2024•29 min
In episode 2 , The Undecideds primarily talk about Trump’s legal troubles. How do they feel about his alleged crimes? How would him being convicted - or exonerated - change the way they vote? What about his claims he should have immunity as president? You’ll hear how they consider these major themes of the race, and also what they made of Haley dropping out and Biden’s State of the Union Address. Each episode we’ll focus on a different storyline from the race, and hear how these undecided voters...
Apr 18, 2024•53 min
Donald Trump's trial. On Monday, jury selection began in Manhattan for former President Donald Trump's trial for allegedly falsifying business records, commonly referred to as the "hush money" case. The allegations brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg are that Trump orchestrated a scheme to influence the 2016 election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him and suppressing its publication, then covering his tracks by illegally falsifying busin...
Apr 16, 2024•28 min
Iran's attack on Israel. On Saturday, Iran launched 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles toward Israel. Iran had been promising the attack for two weeks since Israel’s bombing of an Iranian consulate building in Syria that killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including two generals. Despite years of Iran's proxies attacking Israel in a wide-reaching shadow war, Iran had never launched a direct attack on Israel until this weekend’s mi...
Apr 15, 2024•32 min
Isaac and Ari talk about Isaac’s recent trip to Bali, Biden’s new student debt forgiveness plan, a pro-Palestine protest at dinner event for UC Berkeley students, and whether Justice Sotomayor should retire. Plus, Ari finally has a grievance that Isaac agrees with. Watch our latest YouTube video, an interview with Edwin Raymond. He is a recently retired NYPD lieutenant, civil-rights activist and author of the riveting new memoir An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight to Change Policing in America. You ca...
Apr 14, 2024•1 hr 27 min
The economy. In the last week, the government made two big announcements on the economy. First, on Friday, the Department of Labor reported that the economy added 303,000 jobs in March, though full-time unemployment decreased slightly. The total jobs added far surpassed economists' predictions that roughly 200,000 jobs would be added. Additionally, unemployment held steady at 3.8%, continuing the labor market’s hot hiring streak. You can read today's podcast here , our “Under the ...
Apr 11, 2024•30 min
President Biden's new student loan cancellation plan. On Monday, President Biden unveiled a new plan that could erase some or all of the college loans for up to 30 million borrowers . The plan comes less than a year after the Supreme Court blocked a broader effort that would have forgiven an average of $20,000 for roughly 40 million Americans. Today, around 43 million Americans own about $1.7 trillion in student loan debt, or an average of just over $39,500 per borrower. You can read today&#...
Apr 10, 2024•27 min
Trump's abortion position. On Monday, former President Donald Trump released a four-minute video announcing his position on abortion. Trump, who teased the announcement over the weekend, appeared to endorse the current state of abortion law, implying it will continue to be left up to the states in the post-Roe era while declining to endorse any national limit on abortion. In March, Trump's campaign floated a national 15-week ban. You can read today's podcast here , our “Under ...
Apr 09, 2024•26 min
The latest on the war in Gaza. This Sunday marked six months since Hamas's attack in Israel on October 7, and the semi-anniversary comes at a major inflection point in the resulting war. In late March, the Biden administration had signed off on billions of dollars of bombs and jet transfers to Israel. But in a tense phone call on Thursday, President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that future U.S. military support for Israel would depend on the implementation of new step...
Apr 08, 2024•28 min
Zach Shrewsbury is a Marine Corps veteran, the grandson of a coal miner, a working-class Democrat, a father, and a proud West Virginian progressive candidate running for US Senate. He talked with Isaac about his background, community organizing efforts, "people first" policy priorities, and his embrace of the socialist label. Shrewsbury also talks about his military experience and how it informs his pro-peace foreign policy views and his thoughts on departing Senator Joe Manchin's ...
Apr 05, 2024•22 min
The Florida abortion rulings. On Monday, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the ruling of the First District Appeals Court that the state’s abortion restriction does not violate the Florida constituiton’s Privacy Clause. The 6-1 majority decision upholds a state law passed in 2022 to ban any abortion before 15 weeks of pregnancy, and also triggers a stricter 6-week abortion ban passed last spring to be put into effect on May 1. In a separate 4-3 decision , the state court ruled that a constituti...
Apr 04, 2024•28 min
RFK Jr.’s pick for vice president. On Tuesday, March 26, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his running mate in his independent bid for president: Nicole Shanahan, a 38-year-old attorney from California. Kennedy’s decision followed weeks of speculation about his VP shortlist, which reportedly included NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura (I). You can read today's podcast here , our “Under the Radar” story here and today’s “Have a nice day” story here ....
Apr 03, 2024•28 min
The bridge collapse in Baltimore. On Tuesday, March 26, a cargo ship lost power as it was leaving the Port of Baltimore and allided with Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing a portion of it to collapse . The allision killed two construction workers on the bridge, while four others are missing and presumed dead , and halted vessel traffic in and out of the Port of Baltimore. The operators of the ship, named the Dali , issued a mayday call moments before impact, allowing law enforcement t...
Apr 02, 2024•28 min
As we head into the Easter and Passover season, with Ramadan already here, and with many colleges and organizations observing spring break in various ways, we're giving the team a few days off. We'll be back in your inbox on Tuesday, April 2nd. In the meantime, we also know some of you re receiving Tangle for the first time today while others are new, or may want some content to consume while we're gone. To that end, we've pulled together some of our best stuff from the newslette...
Mar 27, 2024•6 min
Violence and unrest in Haiti. Over the past week, more than 230 U.S. citizens have been evacuated from Haiti as a gang-led rebellion continues to surge through the Caribbean nation. In a briefing last Monday , March 18, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Vedant Patel called the situation “one of the most dire humanitarian situations in the world,” saying that "gang violence continues to make the security situation in Haiti untenable, and it is a region that demands our attention.” On Sunday...
Mar 26, 2024•28 min
The terrorist attack in Russia. On Friday night, four gunmen stormed Crocus City Hall, a concert venue outside Moscow, killing over 130 people and wounding over 100, according to Russia's top security agency. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, posting videos from cell phone footage one of the shooters took during the violence. U.S. officials said the Islamic State-Khorasan , the group known as ISIS-K (based in Afghanistan), carried out the attack. U.S. officials had als...
Mar 25, 2024•29 min
On today’s podcast, Isaac and Ari talk about their State of the Union bets, NCAA brackets and Caitlin Clark, Simon Rosenberg - the Democratic strategist and why I can't stop reading him, where we were in March of 2020 and why the media coverage of Trump still sucks. Plus, as always, our Airing of Grievances. You can watch our latest YouTube video, The Zionist Case for a Ceasefire, here . On Sunday, we released Episode 1 of our first ever limited podcast series: The Undecideds . We're fol...
Mar 24, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Few people have had a closer look at the inner workings of our government than Andy Slavitt. In 2013, Slavitt oversaw the turnaround of healthcare.gov after its disastrous rollout. He then worked as Acting Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) under President Barack Obama, which meant he was overseeing the Children's Health Insurance Program and the Health Insurance Marketplace, as well. In January of 2021, he was brought into the Biden administration as a ...
Mar 22, 2024•52 min
The 32-hour workweek. Last Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a bill to federally mandate a 32-hour workweek. Sanders’s bill is the Senate companion to a bill introduced by Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) in the House, the Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act , which would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to reduce the standard workweek from 40 hours to 32, lowering the maximum hours threshold for overtime pay for non-exempt employees. Those exempt would include computer professionals, farmworke...
Mar 21, 2024•26 min
The Supreme Court's social media case. On Monday, the Supreme Court seemed likely to side with the Biden administration in Murthy v. Missouri, a dispute between the administration and two Republican-led states (as well as five social media users) over how the federal government can combat misinformation on topics like Covid-19 or election fraud. You can read today's podcast here , our “Under the Radar” story here and today’s “Have a nice day” story here . You can watch our lat...
Mar 20, 2024•27 min
Sen. Chuck Schumer and Benjamin Netanyahu. On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called on Israel to hold new elections and described Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Schumer, the first Jewish Senate majority leader, a longtime supporter of Israel and the highest-ranking Jewish official in the U.S., broke from a longstanding precedent for elected officials and heavily criticized Netanyahu in a 40-minute Senate speech. You can read t...
Mar 19, 2024•27 min
The Georgia election interference case. Last week, there were two major developments in the 2020 election interference case in Georgia. First, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee dismissed six counts in the sprawling indictment against former President Donald Trump and 14 co-defendants, including three counts specific to Trump. You can read today's podcast here , our “Under the Radar” story here and today’s “Have a nice day” story here . On Sunday, we released Episode ...
Mar 18, 2024•27 min
On our premiere episode , we will meet our five undecided voters. Handpicked by the team at Tangle, these voters — from Florida, Ohio, California, Arizona and Pennsylvania — will answer questions about their upbringing, their beliefs, the biggest stories from the campaign trail, what stories are resonating, who they are voting for and why — all up to and then through election day. Each episode we’ll focus on a different storyline from the race, and hear how these undecided voters are thinking ab...
Mar 17, 2024•1 hr 12 min
On today’s episode, Isaac talks with Evan Roth-Smith. Evan Roth Smith is a campaign consultant and pollster whose work includes federal, state, and local races, international opinion research, and independent expenditures and nonprofit advisory. He is a founding partner of Slingshot Strategies , a New York City-based political consulting firm providing communications, polling, and advisory expertise. He is also the coauthor of Putin's Master Plan (2016), a book on Russian foreign policy ambi...
Mar 15, 2024•44 min
