Tangle - Biden’s last week as president.

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

During the final days of his presidency, former President Joe Biden issued several executive orders on major domestic and international issues. Additionally, he commuted the senten...ces of nearly 2,500 criminal defendants — a single-day record — and granted sweeping pardons to members of his family and other political figures. Biden’s last actions prompted debate over his legacy and the limits of presidential power as President Donald Trump begins his second term. Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.Take the survey: What do you think of Biden’s last-day pardons? Let us know! 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 edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:01:32 or visit connexontario.ca Please play responsibly From executive producer Isaac, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of our take. My name is John Lahl. I am the executive producer for podcasts and YouTube, and I am one of a few people who will be filling in for Isaac while he is on paternity leave.
Starting point is 00:02:17 Shout out to our founder, Isaac, his amazing wife, Phoebe, and their brilliant and beautiful son. Wishing them nothing but love and joy during this miraculous time. Isaac, we miss you brother, but we will talk to you soon. Enjoy this time, man. It goes by way too fast. Today we are going to be talking about President Joe Biden's final days in office, some of
Starting point is 00:02:39 the executive orders he's been issuing, and the controversial pardons that he's made for members of Congress and his own family. Before we get started, a quick note here. We are hiring. We are looking for a sales rep who can help us secure advertising partnerships and help scale Tangle's business revenue. This is a remote role, but preference will be given to candidates who are in the Philadelphia area.
Starting point is 00:03:04 You can read more about the position and how to apply with a link in today's episode description. Alright, with that out of the way, let's jump into today's quick hits. First up, Attorneys General from 18 states filed a lawsuit to block President Donald Trump's executive action ending birthright citizenship, arguing the order violates the 14th Amendment. Four additional states also filed a separate lawsuit challenging the action. Number 2. Israeli security forces launched a major raid described as a counter-terrorism operation
Starting point is 00:03:42 in the West Bank, killing at least nine Palestinians, according to Palestinian health services. Separately, Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Hersey Halevi and the head of the IDF Southern Command, Yaron Finkelman, announced their resignations, citing a failure to prevent the October 7 attacks. Number 3. President Trump announced that he granted a pardon to Ross Ulbricht, founder of the online marketplace Silk Road, who had been sentenced to life in prison for distributing narcotics
Starting point is 00:04:12 through the site. 4. Multiple wildfires broke out in San Diego County, prompting evacuation orders for some residents. The Lilac Fire, the largest of the blazes, grew to 85 acres and was 50% contained as of Tuesday evening. Separately, a severe and rare winter storm hit southern U.S. states, prompting the first-ever blizzard warning to the Gulf Coast.
Starting point is 00:04:36 And number 5. President Trump announced a joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle to build artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. The companies are expected to commit $500 billion to the project, called Stargate, over the next four years. Once again, the breaking news we are following for you this morning with just hours to go in his term.
Starting point is 00:05:08 President Biden issuing pardons or pre pardons, I guess you could say for General Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci and all Congress members and staff who served on the January 6th select committee. That includes witnesses who also testified against President Trump lawmakers on Capitol Hill reacting Senator Eric Schmidt saying this the guy who claimed he would protect norms continues to bulldoze them and the Constitution until the bitter end. Breaking news Kristen I believe you just received a text from the president
Starting point is 00:05:42 himself with his reaction to President Biden's the president elect himself with a reaction to the Biden pardon. I did I just received a text from the president himself with his reaction to president Biden's the president elect himself with a reaction to the Biden pardon idea that I just received a text from president-elect Donald Trump. He says this quote, it is disgraceful. Many are guilty of all caps, major crimes, DJT. So this is coming in just right now. And it echoes some of the backlash that we are hearing from Republicans, some of his Republican allies essentially saying these pardons by President Biden of the January 6th committee. Remember, President-elect Trump told me when I interviewed him in December, they should all go to jail.
Starting point is 00:06:13 During the final days of his presidency, former President Joe Biden issued several executive orders on major domestic and international issues. Additionally, he commuted the sentences of nearly 2,500 criminal defendants, a single-day record, and granted sweeping pardons to members of his family and other political figures. Biden's last actions prompted debate over his legacy and the limits of presidential power as President Donald Trump begins his second term. Perhaps most notably, Biden issued pardons for his family members and political figures in the final hours of his term. The family pardons were announced with minutes remaining.
Starting point is 00:06:51 The former president justified the move as a preemptive measure against unrelenting attacks and threats targeting his family, which he said would not end after leaving office. None of the pardons' family members have been charged with any crimes, but President Trump and some congressional Republicans had vowed to go after Biden and his family during the presidential campaign. In December, Biden also issued a full and unconditional pardon of his son, Hunter, who had been convicted on felony gun charges and pleaded guilty to felony tax offenses. On Monday, Biden also pardoned others he said were likely to be subject to investigations during the Trump administration,
Starting point is 00:07:29 Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark A. Milley, and members of the House January 6th Committee, its staff, and police officers who testified before the committee. I believe in the rule of law, and I am optimistic that the strength of our legal institutions will ultimately prevail over politics," Biden wrote in the rule of law, and I am optimistic that the strength of our legal institutions will ultimately prevail over politics," Biden wrote in the statement. But these are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot, in good conscience, do nothing." President Trump called the pardons unfortunate.
Starting point is 00:07:56 In addition to these pardons, Biden commuted the life sentence of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted in 1977 for killing two federal Bureau of Investigation agents in South Dakota. Peltier, 80, will spend the remainder of his life sentenced in home confinement. Separately, Biden issued a slew of executive orders in his final weeks, banning new oil and gas drilling in over 625 million acres of U.S. coastal waters, removing Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, establishing new rules for how artificial intelligence chips and models can be shared with foreign countries, canceling student loans for more than 150,000 borrowers,
Starting point is 00:08:37 and extending deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of people from Sudan, Ukraine, El Salvador, and Venezuela. President Trump criticized these moves, suggesting he would reverse many of them once in office. On Monday, Trump rescinded 78 Biden-era executive actions, including some from Biden's final weeks. Finally, Biden delivered a farewell address from the Oval Office last Wednesday, focusing much of the speech on the threat posed by a tech-industrial complex and associated risks of budding oligarchy. Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling
Starting point is 00:09:14 the abuse of power, Biden said. We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families, and our very democracy from the abuse of power. Today, we'll explore arguments about Biden's final actions as president with views from children, our families, and our very democracy from the abuse of power. Today we'll explore arguments about Biden's final actions as president with views from the left and the right, and then managing editor Ari Weitzman will give his take. We'll be right back after this quick break. New year, new me. Season is here and honestly, we're already over it.
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Starting point is 00:10:39 every day. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario gambling problem call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires played by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded or 11 p.m. Eastern. Research and supply. See full terms at canada.casino.fandio.com. Please play responsibly. All right, first let's start with some agreements. The left and the right both criticized Biden's final pardons, arguing they set a poor precedent for the country. Writers on both sides also worry that the pardons will encourage further presidential
Starting point is 00:11:14 abuses of power. All right, let's move on to what the left is saying. The left is skeptical of Biden's final pardons, but many say we should heed the warning of his farewell address. Some worry that the pardons will neutralize Democrats' credibility to oppose Trump's actions. Others say Trump's pardons for January 6th defendants are far more egregious. In the American Prospect, Harold Meyerson wrote about Biden's cautionary farewell. President Biden's closing act has seen a flurry of administrative rulings, executive orders,
Starting point is 00:11:44 pardons, and commutations. He's canceled more student debt loan, taken federal convicts off death row, subjected Ozempic and Wigovi to price negotiations with Medicare, and declared the Equal Rights Amendment to be ratified, Meyerson said. Few presidential closing acts, however, penetrate the nation's collective memory. The only two closings that even students of history remember, I suspect, are the farewell addresses of George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower, and only because of some warnings they sounded that occupied a couple of paragraphs within much larger texts.
Starting point is 00:12:16 Biden's farewell address could well join that company. As with the goodbyes of George Washington and Ike, Joe's farewell will be remembered for its explicit warning about the growth of an American oligarchy," Meyerson wrote. Biden's warnings against the threat posed by great wealth, Eisenhower's warnings against the military-industrial complex and the rise of the tech elite, and Washington's warnings against an intolerant factionalism and entanglements with foreign powers can all be literally and justly applied to Elon Musk The nightmare oligarchy that descends on us today has been foreseen by America's leaders for a very long time in
Starting point is 00:12:52 Huffington Post Paul Blumenthal and Igor Bobbitt said Joe Biden makes one last bad decision in issuing preemptive pardons for members of the January 6th committee Former military leaders and government officials and family members, now ex-president Joe Biden made one final terrible decision, Blumenthal and Bobbitt wrote. None of these people are under investigation for committing crimes, nor is there any evidence that they committed any crimes.
Starting point is 00:13:17 These appear to be purely prophylactic pardons meant to protect these individuals from the threat of investigations launched by President Donald Trump, who had promised vengeance through investigation and prosecution against all of the pardoned individuals. Trump will no doubt use these pardons as justification to issue his own set of pardons to allies and cronies. He considered at the end of his first term issuing preemptive pardons to lawmakers and
Starting point is 00:13:42 others who helped him in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Now, with the blessing of the Supreme Court with immunity from prosecution for official acts and Biden's precedent, Trump can order administration officials, staff, Border Patrol, or members of the military to break the law and receive a get-out-of-jail-free pardon. Biden left the Democrats to face the easy taunt of hypocrisy if they choose to protest. In New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore argued, the Biden and Trump pardons are not all the same. Biden pardoned people who, as far as we know, haven't committed crimes, in this last-minute wave, that is. An earlier pardon for convicted
Starting point is 00:14:20 felon Hunter Biden is a different matter. Biden's list was comprised of people Trump targeted by name for investigation and prosecution during his 2024 campaign, Kilroy wrote. Meanwhile, Trump opened the prison doors and expunged the record for insurrectionists who, whatever you think of them and their actions, did enjoy due process in facing accountability for the events of January 6th. The 47th president may understandably rage that the 46th has kept him from embarking on the full vengeance tour he seemed to contemplate in calling for a special prosecutor to go after Biden and his family and in describing members of the January 6th investigative committee as traitors. But the idea that Biden's pardons were as audacious as Trump's is itself pretty audacious.
Starting point is 00:15:08 Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right is critical of Biden's final acts as president, particularly the last minute pardons and executive orders. Some say the pardons only make Biden and his family look more guilty. Others suggest both Biden and Trump have abandoned any pretense of executive restraint. The New York Post editorial board wrote, "'Joe Biden exits stage ultra left.'
Starting point is 00:15:43 Joe Biden left office as he governed in a flurry of self-serving political activity that helps his inner circle and harms the nation he swore to protect and defend. Yes, in this literal last hour of his presidency, Joe let brother Jim, sister-in-law Sarah, sister Valerie, brother-in-law John, and brother Frank off the hook for any crimes they might have committed while working in the family influence-peddling shop, the board said. Those thunderous warnings delivered by national dems about Trump pardoning his family as he left office?
Starting point is 00:16:15 Pure projection. In the weeks before leaving office, Biden executed an 11th-hour student debt wipeout, a $4.28 billion handout to the affluent paid for by the poor. With an executive order sealing off millions of acres from exploration, he tried to make permanent his chokehold on American energy, a gift to his party's Green New Deal wing, at the expense of everyday Americans, the board wrote. He commuted the prison sentences of killers and sex fiends to score points with the all-laws-are-racist
Starting point is 00:16:47 crowd, the victims' families be damned. He let terrorists out of Gepmo, took Cuba off of a list of state sponsors of terror, and on and on and on. In the Hill, Jonathan Turley called the pardons the final corruption of Joe Biden. With record low polling and widely viewed as a failed president, Biden completed his one man race to the bottom of ethics by assuring preemptive pardons to members
Starting point is 00:17:12 of his own family, Turley said. The pardons were timed to guarantee that the media would not focus on yet another unethical act by this president. He need not have worried. For four years, the media worked tirelessly to deny or deflect the corruption scandal surrounding the Biden family.
Starting point is 00:17:29 Once he was forced out of the presidential race, Biden was freed up to sign a pardon for any and all crimes committed over a 10-year period by his son. He insisted that he really hadn't been lying. He claimed that no ordinary person would have been tried for his son's crimes, Turley wrote. However, the latest family pardon shatters even that rationalization. These Bidens are not even charged with any crimes, but Biden wanted to give them cover for any possible prosecution for anything. It was the ultimate sign of contempt for the intelligence of the American public and the
Starting point is 00:18:00 integrity of his office. In the Washington Post, Jason Willick said, Biden and Trump race to the bottom on presidential pardons. The rationale for these all-encompassing pardons is the fear that Trump's administration will seek retribution against political adversaries. That's a possibility, of course. Law enforcement independence from politics has always been a comforting myth because federal law enforcement is part of the executive branch that elected presidents control, and Trump seems less interested than
Starting point is 00:18:29 most presidents in maintaining that myth," Willig wrote. The specter that Trump would use executive power in an aggressively partisan way was thus a license for Biden to do the same. One possibility is that the abuse of the pardon power will lead to efforts to circumvent it. At the end of Trump's first term, reports circulated that he was considering preemptive pardons of the kind Biden just issued, Willick said. But the root of the problem isn't the scope of the pardon power, it's the collapse of restraint on the exercise of executive power in general.
Starting point is 00:19:01 And as with all norm spirals, it's hard to predict what the next turn will bring. All right, let's head over to Ari for his take. Let's clear the air by acknowledging the obvious context. Joe Biden is not president any longer. Donald Trump is. On his first day in office, Donald Trump issued a slew of executive orders that give us important clues about what we can expect from federal law enforcement and the Republican-led Congress in the coming weeks.
Starting point is 00:19:41 We'll give those actions their due coverage in a full newsletter tomorrow. We're also not reviewing Biden's full presidency today. That's coming Friday. Today, we're focusing on what the outgoing president did in his last days in office, since it can be easy to overlook these big moves in the wake of a changing administration. Biden made several major moves prior to his exit,
Starting point is 00:20:00 issuing executive orders ranging from the symbolic to the sweeping, before approving another round of mass commutations and issuing blanket pardons for some members of his administration and his family. Let's start with the executive orders. Loan forgiveness first. Biden may not have achieved the large-scale loan forgiveness he sought while in office, but forgiving the loans for 150,000 borrowers, many of whom had been defrauded, was another
Starting point is 00:20:22 step in that direction for him. Personally, I think this more targeted approach is a much better strategy. It's less expensive, less regressive of a benefit, and focuses the relief on the people who need it the most. I wish he'd pursued this approach from the beginning. The rest of these actions were mostly toothless proclamations that Trump started to undo moments after settling into the Oval Office. It was like spilling a glass of milk in front of a Zamboni. The immigration protections, they're already facing a tidal wave of executive actions, the Cuba reclassifications already been reversed.
Starting point is 00:20:55 And the drilling protections have also been undone, though that decision will head to court and could prove much stickier. Meanwhile, declaring the Equal Rights Amendment to be law is a purely symbolic move made meaningless by the fact that he did it on his way out prove much stickier. Meanwhile, declaring the Equal Rights Amendment to be law is a purely symbolic move made meaningless by the fact that he did it on his way out the door instead of any time over the last four years. As the Sacramento Bee's Robin Eppley put it, Biden should have declared it National Ice Cream Day while he was at it. As for the blanket pardons, I think there are two ways to look at them, and neither is pretty. First, you can look at the list of names and assume collusion. At the surface level, it's pretty easy to see. General Mark Milley, Anthony
Starting point is 00:21:29 Fauci, the nine members of the J-6 committee, those who testified before it, and five members of Biden's family are all pardoned for any nonviolent offense going back to 2014. What could Biden possibly be pardoning those people for doing while he was vice president during the Obama administration? Republicans have been wanting to investigate that whole list of people for years, and a sweeping pardon implies that they could have been on to something. Then there's the opposite viewpoint. Republicans have been wanting to investigate that whole list of people for years, yes,
Starting point is 00:22:02 but purely for political reasons, and a sweeping pardon is the only way to prevent the inevitable witch hunt from coming. Why even wait to see what Trump's justice department might dig up to justify disrupting the lives of their about political enemies out of a need for vengeance as Trump promised to do on the campaign trail. If you look past the surface level, it's easy to see that all of the names on Biden's pardon list are just the top names on the list of enemies from within from the Republicans. So let's assume the best and say that this was just a defensive move, which for the record, I think it was. Joe Biden probably did not treasonously collude with China or Ukraine
Starting point is 00:22:37 to enrich his family through his son Hunter. Dr. Fauci probably didn't commit crimes in recommending strict federal vaccination policies or covering up the origins of COVID-19. And General Milley probably did not treasonously collude with Chinese officials. That's a far cry from saying any of those parties is above reproach. It's just to say that if there had been federal trials, I would bet money on all of them being exonerated. Even seeing all of that, these pardons are still a terrible last move for the Biden administration.
Starting point is 00:23:08 Not just because they close off a major pathway to determining whether wrongdoing occurred, but because they escalated the use of a new major weapon in the partisan arms race. Blanket pardons for everyone I know, for as far back as I can justify. These pardons add another link in the chain that's dragging our politics downward. Biden issues blanket pardons because Trump says he'll get retribution for being unfairly persecuted, because Democrats opened investigations into him
Starting point is 00:23:34 for trying to subvert an election, which came after years of Trump feeling aggrieved by claims of Russian collusion that did not hold up in court. After Trump campaigned to lock up Hillary Clinton, who used a private email server and on and on, you can blame any one of those people for their links in the chain.
Starting point is 00:23:52 And you should, absolutely, please do that. But none of the actions that preceded Biden's decision excuses it. In fact, it's a sterling illustration of unintended consequences on both sides of this action. On the front side, Trump winning an election and then investigating Biden was always going to be in play with Biden breaking precedent to look into Trump's alleged misconduct. We've been pretty on board with both the investigation into Trump and the investigation into Hunter
Starting point is 00:24:19 Biden with Isaac supporting an investigate the powerful ethic for all our government officials. However, Biden seems totally willing to make Trump and his associates prove their innocence in court, but unwilling to subject his to the same standard. But much more worrisome are the consequences on the back side. What's to stop Trump from issuing mass parties for everyone in his administration before he leaves office? Why wouldn't high ranking Trump officials now feel emboldened to act with impunity,
Starting point is 00:24:48 securing the belief that Trump will cover their backs on his way out? For all the talk of Trump as a norm breaker, it's Biden who has opened the door to sweeping pardons for friends, family, and allies. Now Trump just has to walk through it. No one summed this up better than Jason Willick, who we quoted under what the writer is saying. He compared the new precedent of last minute pardons to the one Biden's Justice Department was arguing against Trump in the immunity case.
Starting point is 00:25:13 As Willick said, the DOJ warned of the presidential immunity case with reason that a Supreme Court ruling creating presidential immunity would make presidents more willing to push the boundaries of the law. Biden's pardons will now have the same effect, but on a larger scale," Willick wrote. Now the president's political friends from the highest reaches of the Pentagon to congressional staff will know that they are eligible to be immunized for whatever they did in office before power changes hands." End quote. When Biden issued his first blanket 10-year pardon for a son Hunter in December, we called it an astonishing and sweeping protection
Starting point is 00:25:47 Now Biden has issued about a dozen such pardons as much as I nodded along when Jason Willock wrote that power is mostly Curred by personal restraint. I just don't think a president should be able to wield this kind of clemency power Pardons have their place and Biden's commutations for 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses is a far more defensible use of clemency. Much like Isaac, I'm very sympathetic to the idea that holding a person in prison for decades, especially for nonviolent crimes, is counterproductive both for them and society at large. But blanket pardons are something else altogether.
Starting point is 00:26:23 It's a tool far too ripe for corruption to serve any value, and I hope some bold legislator takes up the cause to try to curtail that power as soon as possible. So, for Biden, it's an irresponsible, entuous term. And when you zoom out, the picture of our national politics in general is not a pretty sight. Retribution and protections all the way down, with no end in sight. Retribution and protections all the way down with no end in sight. We'll be right back after this quick break. In case nobody's told you, weight loss goes beyond the old, just eat less and move more narrative, and that's where Felix comes in. Felix is redefining weight loss for Canadians with a smarter more personalized approach to help you crush your health goals.
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Starting point is 00:28:01 See full terms at canada.casino.fandio.com. Please play responsibly. Cari from Minneapolis, Minnesota asked, any chance you could tackle Musk's overt slash inadvertent Seagale salute wave at the inauguration? I hope it's an enthusiastic but awkward guy celebrating, but does it matter if it was inadvertent, if people who want to believe it was a special message to them believe it was on purpose? Also, how could it really be inadvertent? For me, I'd file it under Musk is awkward.
Starting point is 00:28:36 And I think that the natism of the salute was inadvertent. Importantly, I don't just think Musk is awkward. I think he's consistently awkward to the point where it's almost hard to fathom, to the point where he could decide on the spur of the moment to mime taking his heart and throwing it to the crowd, twice, without reflecting on how the movement looked. And since we have so much footage of Elon Musk being a cringingly self-conscious performer, I can't envision him planning to make a Nazi salute without giving
Starting point is 00:29:05 off a tell of some kind while he was speaking. Like some knowing smile or strange tick. And then being able to execute that gesture perfectly, right in the gray zone between intentional and deniable. To be reductive, it's far likelier to me that Musk continued to be awkward in that he became amazingly adroit for one moment. And yes, I know people will say, but he's been a Nazi this whole time too. No, he hasn't. He has not been a literal neo-Nazi this whole time.
Starting point is 00:29:35 Just some quick background about me. My cousin was killed by a literal neo-Nazi in the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2017. I've read deep into modern anti-Semitism and neo-Naziism since then, and I've gotten pretty good at separating the wink nudge dog whistles from the awkward waves. So has the Anti-Defamation League,
Starting point is 00:29:54 who came out with a statement right after the Musk incident saying the same thing. I hope those opinions carry some weight. Now, doesn't matter if it was inadvertent? Absolutely, intent 100% matters. And neo-Nazis are innately primed to interpret anything as a secret salute to their cause, so I don't really care what they think. For anyone else who interpreted the gesture as deliberate, I can totally understand where you're coming from. I'm just not convinced. Now, it's always
Starting point is 00:30:19 possible I'm wrong about this. If Musk continues to make the gesture or express a support for neo-Nazi, white nationalist movements, I'll change my stance. If Musk continues to make the gesture or express a support for neo-Nazi white nationalist movements, I'll change my stance. But I think it's just more likely he did something weird than he did something deeply malicious. All right, I'm gonna kick it off to Jon for the rest of the podcast. Thanks Ari, here's your Under the Radar story
Starting point is 00:30:44 for today, folks. On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of Spravato, a nasal spray for adults who have a major depressive disorder that is resistant to standard treatments. The spray, developed by Johnson & Johnson, was previously cleared for use alongside an oral antidepressant, but it now becomes the first ever stand-alone therapy for treatment-resistant depression. An estimated one-third of U.S. adults with major depression have symptoms that don't respond to standard treatments, and some doctors say the nasal spray's approval will allow
Starting point is 00:31:16 for greater flexibility in treating severe cases of depression. The active ingredient in the nasal spray is esketamine, which is derived from the hallucinogenic anesthetic ketamine, and the treatment is only approved for applications in medically controlled settings. CNBC has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. Alright, next up is our numbers section. The number of pardons and commutations respectively granted by former President Joe Biden between fiscal years 2021 and 2024 is 25 and 132. The number of pardons and commutations respectively granted by Biden on December 12, 2024 is 39
Starting point is 00:32:01 and 1499, a single-day record for commutations. The number of commutations granted by Biden on January 17th, 2025 is 2,490, a single-day record. The number of pardons and commutations respectively granted by President Donald Trump during his first term is 144 and 94. The approximate number of pardons and commutations, respectively, granted by Trump on his first day of his second term is 1,514.
Starting point is 00:32:32 The percentage of Americans who say they strongly support presidential pardon power is 51%, according to a December 2024 G-Zero poll. And the percentage of Americans who say they somewhat support presidential pardon power is 38%. And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. Hurricane Helene wrecked homes, businesses, and other structures across the South. In the wake of the devastation, North Carolina resident Jake Jarvis used his skills and resources to serve his community.
Starting point is 00:33:04 Jarvis runs Precision Grading, a construction and demolition company. Since the hurricane, he's been performing much of his work pro bono, flattening formerly impassable roads, demolishing wrecked homes, and building bridges. His efforts have been funded by donations and his personal savings. Steve Freeman, the Fire Department Chief in Back Cave, North Carolina, described Jarvis as a godsend. Good News Network has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode.
Starting point is 00:33:34 As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to readtangle.com and sign up for a membership. You can also go to tanglemedia.supercast.com and sign up for a premium podcast membership, which gets you ad-free daily podcasts, Friday editions, Sunday editions, interviews, bonus content, and so much more. We'll be right back here tomorrow for Ari and the rest of the team. This is John Maul signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by Duke Thomas. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Will Kavak, Gaili Saul and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was made by Magdalena Bikova,
Starting point is 00:34:10 who is also our social media manager. The music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go check out our website at readtangle.com. That's readtangle.com. That's reedtangle.com. New year, new me, season is here and honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year. Weight loss is more than just diet and exercise. It can be about tackling genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix gets it. They connect you with licensed healthcare practitioners online who'll create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support. Start your visit today at Felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canada.
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