Tangle

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,...

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 amendme...

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 Ukr...

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...

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 tho...

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....

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 informati...

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...

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 a...

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...

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...

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...

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 N...

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...

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...

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'...

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...

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 wh...

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 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-Khorasa...

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 Su...

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 In...

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...

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 , o...

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...