Tangle

Today's topic contains descriptions of sexual assault and language that may be inappropriate for some readers. Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll. On Tuesday, a federal jury in Manhattan found former President Donald Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll and ordered him to pay $5 million in damages. The jury ruling was the result of a civil trial in which the wri...

North Carolina's Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the North Carolina Supreme Court sided with Republicans in three major rulings: upholding the state's voter ID law, throwing out a previous ruling against gerrymandered voting maps, and overruling lower court decisions that felons have the right to vote. The ruling on the gerrymandered legislative maps will likely have a national impact,...

Jordan Neely's death. On Monday afternoon, Neely was aboard a subway train in New York City when he began shouting at other passengers and "acting erratically," according to witnesses. Another passenger on the train, identified as 24-year-old Marine veteran Daniel Penny, came up behind Neely and put him in a chokehold, while two other passengers helped Penny restrain Neely. After sev...

The Chevron deference. On Monday, the Supreme Court said it would reconsider the so-called Chevron deference, a 1984 precedent that conservatives argue gives too much power to federal regulators. The precedent directs courts to defer to a federal agency's legal interpretation when Congress has left statutory language ambiguous. You can read today's podcast ⁠here⁠ , our latest YouTube video...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The 89-year-old senator has served in the Senate for more than 30 years, making her the longest-serving woman in U.S. Senate history. Last year, The New York Times  reported  that Feinstein was struggling "to recall the names of colleagues, frequently has little recollection of meetings or telephone conversations, and at times walks around in a state of befuddlem...

Supreme Court ethics. In the last few weeks, calls for a Supreme Court code of conduct have grown louder. On Wednesday, Senators Angus King (I-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) introduced legislation that would require the court to appoint an official to examine conflicts and public complaints. The bill, the  Supreme Court Code of Conduct Act , was hailed as bipartisan because King caucuses with Democ...

The debt ceiling. On Wednesday, House Republicans narrowly passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling to $31.4 trillion while cutting spending and rolling back key parts of President Biden's agenda. The bill, dubbed the “Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023,” passed by a 217-215 vote and has no chance of becoming law in the Democratically-controlled Senate. Instead, it is designed to force Biden to nego...

Michael Morell. Last week, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanding more answers about the public letter signed by 51 intelligence operatives who dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as likely "Russian disinformation." We've covered the Hunter Biden laptop story several times in Tangle...

Biden 2024. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden officially announced his plan to run for president in 2024, setting up a potential 2020 rematch with likely Republican nominee and former president Donald Trump. That would be the first time the same nominees faced each other in back-to-back elections since Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson in 1956, and the first time a president has been challeng...

Tucker Carlson. On Monday, Fox News announced it was parting ways with Tucker Carlson, its most popular primetime host and one of the most influential voices in conservative politics. The network released a  curt statement  saying they had "agreed to part ways" and thanked Carlson for "his service to the network." A rotating cast of Fox News personalities will take over the slo...

The Supreme Court's mifepristone order. On Friday night, the Supreme Court granted a request from the Biden administration and a drug manufacturer to put a Texas judge's ruling on hold that would have suspended the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the abortion drug mifepristone,  SCOTUSblog reported . We covered Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's ruling  in a previous edition of T...

Evan Gershkovich. On Tuesday, a Russian court upheld the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested while reporting last month under accusations of of espionage. Both the U.S. and The Wall Street Journal strongly deny the allegations, and have designated Gershkovich as wrongfully detained. Gershkovich, a 31-year-old American citizen, is being held in prison pendin...

The Fox-Dominion settlement. On Tuesday, Fox News  agreed to pay  Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to settle their defamation lawsuit and avoid a trial, marking the  largest ever  defamation settlement in U.S. history. The voting machine company had sued Fox News for $1.6 billion, arguing that Fox damaged its reputation by airing libelous theories that its equipment had switched votes from D...

Bud Light. Last week, one of America's most iconic beer brands became the center of a culture war controversy after it partnered with a transgender influencer named Dylan Mulvaney. Bud Light sent Mulvaney custom beer cans with an image of her on them, and she then posted a video of herself online celebrating March Madness and her "first year of womanhood." You can read today's po...

Jack Teixeira. On Thursday, the 21-year-old U.S. Air National Guardsman was arrested by the FBI for allegedly leaking classified military documents in what is believed to be the most serious security breach since the publication of more than 700,000 documents by WikiLeaks in 2010. Federal agents arrested Teixeira at his home in Massachusetts. The arrest came just a week after the leaks became wide...

Tennessee’s legislators. On Wednesday, Tennessee lawmaker Justine Pearson was reinstated to the state House after a unanimous vote from the Shelby County Board of Commissioners. Pearson was the second of two Democrats to get voted back into office after being expelled by Tennessee state Republicans for leading a gun control protest that spilled into the state capitol and disrupted proceedings. You...

Please, help us out by watching this trailer for the new Tangle YouTube channel! Support us with a subscription here or give a gift subscription here . Sign up for a subscription at our "Thank you" tier here . You can read today's "Have a Nice Day" story here . Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Zosha Warpeha. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. ...

Last month, a trove of about 100 pages of classified documents began appearing on Discord, an app for group discussions. But in recent weeks, the same documents spread across Twitter, 4chan, and Telegram, raising awareness about their contents and what U.S. officials have now described as a "massive" and consequential intelligence leak. You can read today's podcast here , today’s “Un...

On Friday, mifepristone, the most commonly used method of abortion in the United States, was thrown into legal ambiguity after conflicting court rulings from two federal judges. In Texas, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk suspended federal approval of the drug, which first cleared the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000. Less than an hour later, U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice, an Ob...

Yesterday, former President Donald Trump was arraigned and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg unsealed his  indictment  and  statement of facts  in the case. At Tangle, we're taking a break for Passover, Easter, Ramadan, and Congress's two-week recess and will be back on Tuesday, April 11th. Today’s clickables: Quick Hits (12:03), Today’s Story (3:51), Right’s Take (6:16), Left’s Take...

On Tuesday, voters in Wisconsin will vote in an election that could impact not just abortion rights in Wisconsin and the split in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but also the future of the state’s elections and even presidential elections in the U.S. more broadly. You can read today's podcast here , today’s “Under the Radar” story here , and today’s “Have A Nice Day” story here .  Today’s clickab...

In mid-March, we covered the "imminent" Trump indictment after the former president said he was going to be arrested in the coming days. It took nearly two weeks, but on Thursday, a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump for his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels. You can find a full timeline of the story to this point here. You can read today's podcast here , t...

On Friday, House Republicans passed an education bill focused on "parental rights" in the classroom, making a major political statement as one of their first acts with a House majority. The bill, titled the Parents Bill of Rights, passed in a 213-208 vote with five Republicans and all Democrats voting against it. Plus, a question about Biden's gaffes.  You can read today's podcas...

Earlier this month, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed HB1410, known as the "Youth Hiring Act of 2023." Most controversially, the bill allows teenagers under the age of 16 to start a job without getting a work permit through the Arkansas Department of Labor and Licensing. Also, a reader asks about the topics I don't like writing about. You can read today's podcast here ,...

On Monday, weeks of protests in Israel hit a fever pitch as hundreds of thousands of residents took to the streets in Tel Aviv immediately after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister for opposing his proposed judicial reforms. You can read today's podcast here , today’s “Under the Radar” story here (paywall) and today’s “Have a nice day” story here .  Today’s clickables:...