Tangle - PREVIEW - The Sunday Podcast: Ari and Jon discuss DOGE, Dems, and dynamics.

Episode Date: February 23, 2025

In today's episode, Managing Editor Ari Weitzman and Executive Producer Jon Lall discuss various themes surrounding political dynamics, feedback on the podcast, and the implications of Elon Musk's actions with Doge. They talk about the challenges within the Democratic Party, the quest for authenticity in politics, and the complexities of government efficiency.Ari then speaks with Ray Brescia, a law professor and author, about the legal implications of Elon Musk's involvement with the government, particularly through the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). They discuss the legality of Musk's actions, privacy rights concerning data access, the limitations on government funding and agency operations, and the implications of civil service protections.Finally, Ari and Jon play a game of Super PAC or 'The West Wing' episode. And last but not least, the Airing of Grievances.This is a preview of today's special edition that is available in full and ad-free for our premium podcast subscribers. If you'd like to complete this episode and receive Sunday editions, exclusive interviews, bonus content, and more, head over to ReadTangle.com and sign up for a membership.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 ReadTangle.com to sign up! You can also give the gift of a Tangle podcast subscription by clicking here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was hosted by Ari Weitzman and Jon Lall and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and Jon Lall. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Hunter Casperson, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Our logo was created by Magdalena Bokowa, Head of Partnerships and Socials.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Welcome home, my boy. He's now streaming on AirMount Plus. He is much more impressive than the hedgehog I fought previously.

Dude, I'm standing right here. Sonic the Hedgehog 3, now streaming on Paramount+. Poo-thoria. That feeling you get once you've finally pooped. Using the power of natural Senna from the Senna plant to promote bowel movement, Senocot laxative gently relieves occasional constipation, typically in 6 to 12 hours. If it is hard to pass, try senocot S. It uses natural senna plus a stool softener to help you achieve pooforia. Coming up, John joins me on the pod so we can talk about fraud and doge, false equivalency

and doge, legality and doge, and then some things that aren't doge. John's going to talk about Democrats. We're going to talk a little bit more about our grievances, then we're going to get out of here. I sit down with Ray Brescia, law professor. We learn a lot, we talk a lot, we laugh and cry. It's a good one. From executive producer, Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place

where you can get perspectives from across the political. John, help me out. How would, how do you say this? I'm here with John Law today, our executive producer, and he's got the script down much better than I have. Why don't you do the intro for us, bud? Really? It's okay. That's an honor.

I'd love to. 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. I am very, very honored to be co-hosting today's episode with the brilliant and illustrious Ari Weitzman, our managing editor. Who often is able to speak, but sometimes isn't. So I did this purposefully to warm the seat up for John, because I am moving into the

co-hosting chair and left the co-hosting chair for Will, who is at Hamilton College today, his alma mater, giving a talk about Tangle. And he's out of that chair and we've had a bit of a rotating cast. So stepping from behind the mic to in front of it is our executive producer, who, I mean, I feel like the hard part of recording a podcast is when you actually have to do the sound editing yourself. I could not imagine listening to my own voice and cutting it up. I end like I'm so, so I really admire that you're able to do that because I would just be nuts with self-consciousness.

They're there. Honestly, there is a degree to which, you know, I'm going to be more critical of myself and even that, like how many ums and ahs I might say and the continuity of the flow and keeping it going. That sort of thing always kind of sits with me. I'm like, I want to make sure it sounds right. And this will be a conversation I want to get into later. But also now that we're getting these podcasts survey responses and I'm seeing some of the feedback, it's very interesting.

And shout out by the way to everybody, we've gotten over a thousand responses on that podcast survey. So thank you all so, so much for participating in that and sharing your likes, dislikes, your feelings on the podcast so far and what you'd like to see more of from us. That's really, really helpful information we're going to go over. We're going to comb over it and make sure that we really understand what it is that

you want to see more of going forward. Feedback is a gift. Criticism too, though often a tough gift to receive. I think with you, the feedback we get a lot is his voice is AI. He's not real. You're literally so good of a speaker most of the time on the podcast that people don't believe you're a person. So maybe it's nice to have you put in some ums and ahs and laughs. Like it'll humanize the robot a bit.

Right. Yeah. I'm like, I'm not sure how to take it on the one hand, but I'm like, you put in some ums and uhs and laughs. Like it'll humanize the robot a bit. Yeah, I'm like, I'm not sure how to take it on the one hand. I'm like, it feels a little weird to be called robotic. There was like a couple, not very many, but a couple of comments that were like, it sounds a bit monotonous. And I'm like, I don't want to be too technical, but monotonous would be like very straight toned, robotic, no dynamics whatsoever. So I get it though, that there are definitely people who,

when you hear them speak, have a certain, a certain timbre to their voice. And so when they're speaking, their dynamics feel a lot more present and the emphasis on certain things feels a lot more emphatic. So that totally makes sense. But I think, you know, for someone like you and I'm thinking someone like me, where our voices are maybe a little bit deeper, some of the tone of or some of the dynamics and the emphasis and the feeling maybe gets a feels a little bit less strong, for lack of a better term.

Which I get, that can happen. Just because the range in the voice is more limited? Exactly. And when there's a higher pitch, I think people honestly, just coming from a musician's perspective, people honestly usually associate higher pitches with more emotion. So the higher the notes go, the more emotional it feels. Well, as you've no doubt gathered by now, this is a politics podcast where we talk about sound design and vocal timbre and really whatever else is on our minds. One of the things that's true at Tangle is that we are a news company that tries to provide

straight news from across the political spectrum, giving you opinions from everywhere, giving you our own. Part of our values is that we're people and we want to try to show what our biases and our personalities are so you understand that if there's something you're hearing from us that feels biased, it's probably because it is in some way. You get to know us and know what those biases are. Part of us being human means that we're going to have conversations about things that are interesting to us.

Another part of it is that we're going to be a little, for lack of a better word, triggered sometimes by things in the news. So the thing that I wanted to start with today, John, to talk to you about is a couple of false framings that I'm hearing a lot with Elon Musk and Doge. We're going to have a guest on today later, Ray Brescia, who is a professor of law at Albany, but he's going to help us shake out some of the legality, illegality of it. But apart from that, a thing that we've talked about just before I get into some of these false framings is that DOGE is often not actually effective at doing the thing it says it wants to do, which is cutting fraud, waste, and just spending in general. Federal budget is measured in the

trillions. If you're grinding for two weeks, cutting every budget contract and employee that you can find and you can get to two billion, which is a huge number, that is one seventh thousandth of federal spending. And that is not where the main game is. Also, as we're going to talk about later, may may be illegal, so it may have to be rolled back and may be reaching the limit of its power already. And conflict of interest, not helping with popularity, not helping to make the government more efficient, lots of things we can level at it, but may not be illegal. So that's kind of the first thing that I want to start complaining about is that I've found as somebody who's writing a lot of opinion pieces in the past couple weeks that when I go and I criticize something

about this administration, which has been happening a lot and that's somewhat normal when we cover administrations, we want to use a critical lens when we're examining the powers that be, when I end up very critical of things that are happening in this administration, if I stop short of saying some key term or shibboleth that people on the left want me to use, I'm not doing it severely enough. I'm not going far enough. And with Trump and foreign policy, that term I learned is chaotic. If I don't say Trump is chaotic, I'm not a good critic, apparently. I don't think Trump's chaotic. I think not a good critic, apparently. I don't think Trump's chaotic. I think

he has a different pattern. And then I think that reads as chaos. But I think it's once you get to know the pattern, patterns by definition aren't chaos. They're patterns. It's just a different pattern. With Musk and Doge, that shibboleth seems to be illegal. You have to say this is against the law. It's illegal. And we don't know that it is. There are court cases right now that are going through challenges. There are temporary injunctions that are looking into whether or not Musk and Doge are violating privacy laws and accessing data from the Treasury Department, Social Security Administration, if they're violating civil servants' rights by firing or in the future maybe reclassifying them so that they can be fired, those things are being worked out and we actually don't know if those are

illegal. So when I say I don't think it's illegal or I don't know that it's illegal, I'm getting pilloried from the left because of it and that doesn't feel fair. But I can say 99 words that are critical about Musk that are saying, like, he doesn't know what he's doing or it's not helpful. All the things I already said at the top of the show, but I'm saying, I don't think it's illegal, and that's all people here. And I'm annoyed about that.

And I'm telling you that so you can hear me so I can feel better. Yeah, I mean, I understand there's a lot of outrage right now. It was obviously a very divisive election and Musk is unelected, right? So at best he's considered like a senior advisor to the president. So him coming in and making sweeping cuts to programs is going to feel very threatening and pretty emotional, I think, across the board. But to your point, it was what he is doing illegal. Obviously, I'm not a lawyer and people much smarter than me are debating this right now. This just popped into my head and I just want to frame this around this same thing, which is like regardless of how I feel about it,

I just want to point out that there was a similar argument, I think, with Biden and student debt relief. How legal is this? On the right, that was a really huge point of contention. The framing was that one generation had worked really, really hard to pay off their student loan debt while a younger generation was going to have their student loan debt completely removed at the cost of the taxpayer who had already paid off their student loan debt. Being outraged by that and wanting to see that go through the process is the right thing, right? Like testing its legality and that sort of thing. It's not going to be necessarily that everybody's going to embrace these ideas. But whether or not they're illegal or not is not

something you can just blanketly throw around and just say, this is illegal because it's happening don't like it. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. Poo-thoria. That feeling you get once you've finally pooped. Using the power of natural Sena from the Sena plant to promote bowel movement Senocot laxative gently relieves occasional constipation typically in 6 to 12 hours if it is hard to pass try Senocot S it uses natural Sena plus a stool softener to help you achieve pooforia with the Fizz loyalty program

you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca.

And that's also a good point about how tolerant we are of whether or not those laws are being tested because when Biden issued his first blanket student loan forgiveness under the Heroes Act saying that this is evoked during or invoked during a federal emergency during COVID, then I can forgive loans. And that was a 9-11 era law that he attempted to justify in this case. The right said, that's not legal, that's unconstitutional, that's a huge breach of federal power. The left was like, maybe, I mean, we'll see. But a little more tolerant because that's something not everybody on the left surely, but more people on the left were everybody on the left, surely, but more people on the left were more interested in that as a policy. Fewer people on the left are interested as a policy in cunning USAID or downsizing

the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That doesn't mean that we know that it's illegal. And to your point, if you throw the same argument back to people on the right and say, we were really concerned that Biden might have been acting illegally, the right thing to do was go through the courts to figure that out. It's the same thing here. Maybe you don't like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I happen to like it.

I think that its governance structure can be challenged, but it's not unconstitutional. It's been challenged before and the courts found it to be constitutional. So does Musk coming in and firing people, and does Russell Vought at the Office of Management and Budget, does his asking for zero dollars from the Fed, does that violate a law? I honestly am not sure. I think that that's happened before in 2018.

Mick Mulvaney asked for $0 for the Consumer Financial Production Bureau. It operated on a shoestring budget for a bit, but I don't think that it was illegal. So there is precedent for things that we do not like happening that aren't necessarily illegal. That said, I know I'm talking a lot,

but the next thing that I want to bring up is the framing on the left, or sorry, is the framing on the right that I hear about Doge, which is its purpose is to cut fraud waste, make the government more efficient. If we criticize it for not cutting the right waste or finding enough waste to cut, or not really finding fraud because so far it doesn't look like it's uncovered any fraud in the receipts that it's shown, or actually be cut or say that it's actually cutting things that's making the government more inefficient, then I'm not against those principles.

I'm against whether or not it's executing them. And it's not a very good argument to say, criticizing Doge is criticizing efficiency. I'm on your side here. I want efficiency. I want the agency that is looking to make the government more efficient to just do it right. We should want that.

And it's pretty frustrating when you're making criticisms about Doge and you're told you're on the side of government inefficiency. Listen to what we're saying. That's not true. Yeah. The process of government in general is pretty slow. The process of the tech industry is, or at least the motto of the tech industry, right, is move fast and break things. So these are two diametrically opposed ideas, the way government actually runs versus the way the tech industry runs. You have a tech industry giant trying to lead a government program. Of course, there's going to be that, you know, competitive- Lava hitting the ocean.

Right. There's going to be a lot of people who are upset one way or the other. As far as whether or not it's a redundant program or office, I mean, it kind of seems like it is. I think the numbers so far have been inaccurate at best. They mistook something, a program that was $8 billion and it was actually $8 million. Yeah, it doesn't seem like it's doing much that sufficient at all. Just creating more of the thing that they're accusing the government of having too much of already, which is bureaucracy.

It's going to take more than three weeks, but obviously, huge sweeping cuts that come really fast, really quick are going to be alarming. I don't think there's anything wrong with calling out just how alarming it is, but whether we're conflating alarming and illegal, it is concerning that this unelected billionaire with an enormous amount of power and the ear of the president is calling a lot of shots and affecting a lot of lives. But is all of that illegal? I guess we'll find out.

And I think that's something that we're going to find a little bit more about here today. I'm going to be sitting down with Ray Brescia, who's the associate dean law professor at the Albany Law School. And I'm going to ask him him straight first question, is Doge doing anything illegal? And I want to hear what he has to say. And then after that, we'll come back and we'll talk about it. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. at phys.ca. Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Welcome home, my boy. He's now streaming on Paramount+. He is much more impressive than the hedgehog I fought previously. Dude, I'm standing right here. Sonic the Hedgehog 3, now streaming on Paramount+. So joining us today on the Sunday podcast is Ray Brescia. Ray is an associate dean and

law professor at the Albany Law School. He's the author of several books and scholarly articles, including his new book, The Private Is Political Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism. You might have seen or heard from him as a contributor on MSNBC and the Daily Beast. He has written a lot recently about Elon Musk and Doge and the Trump administration, Donald Trump and his court cases before that, and some Supreme Court cases that have touched both Donald Trump and other aspects of the political system because it is more than Donald Trump actually, it turns out. Ray Brescia, how are you doing today? Thanks for joining us.

I'm doing great. Thank you for inviting me as I'm looking forward to the conversation. Oh, me too. I suspect that I might learn a bit more from it than you, but I'll do my best to prod and push and see if we can get somewhere knowing that I'm going to be fighting uphill here as somebody without a legal background. Just trying to ask some probing questions about some things that you've written about starting with Elon Musk and Doge. Because one of the things that we've seen at Tangle is that we have a lot of criticisms about Musk's involvement in the government

and the Department of Government Efficiency in general, a lot of them about enormous conflicts of interest, ethical concerns, his ability to do things that are going to be helpful or practical, a lot of the budget cuts we don't think are going to be sustainable or even effective, but that's aside from the legal argument. So my big question that I want to spend a lot of time on is what is Musk doing or what is Doge doing that you think is illegal and why? Well, it's hard to say because we don't really know all that they're doing. We don't know the scope of their access. We don't even know the nature of this entity. It is not clear that if we're going to stand on ceremony on creating a federal department, it's not clear that that is something

that a president can do without congressional approval or without funding that is set by Congress. So we don't even know sort of existentially the legality of the system, of this entity, whatever it may be. Certainly you could go down the line and point to a lot of very serious questions about their actions, right? The extent to which they are laying off individuals with civil service protections, the extent to which they are supposedly firing people who can only be fired for cause when there is no cause. With eliminating, attempting, I should say, to eliminate USAID. They can't do that, right? USAID. They can't do that, right?

So let's move on to the conflicts of interest. The Musk suite of companies all have extensive business dealings with the federal government. And a lot of the activities, as has been publicly reported, I have no way to independently confirm this, a lot of the activities seem to be with respect to government agencies that directly regulate Musk companies. I can't imagine a clearer conflict of interest. So from the existence of DOGE to the firing of people with protections to the conflicts of interest, and then finally, the extensive access that individuals appear to be getting to very sensitive private information about

individuals and companies is just breathtaking. So those who may ask, well, what is Doge doing that's illegal? I would turn that question on its head and ask, what are they doing that's illegal? I would turn that question on its head and ask, what are they doing that's legal? What is the legal justification? What is the legal basis for what they are doing? There was a representation made in court a day or so ago, I believe, that Elon Musk has no government role, is not a government employee. I really just want to know what are they doing that's legal? I think that that's a legitimate question.

Yeah, and that's something that I'm gonna keep the burden of proof on you here, because I think I don't have the ability to parse out where the law stands and where it is and isn't. But I wanna go through, because you listed four or five things there with them relative like ease and recall. So starting maybe from the top of the things that you were starting or the things that you listed, which is the existence of Doge.

So it calls itself, the name of it is the Department of Government Efficiency, but it's not really a government department. It's a collection of contractors organized under the digital service, as I understand it. That's where a lot of the contractors are based out of. Similarly, Obama founded the digital service as a way to try to resolve issues with the rollout of healthcare.gov. It's sort of been part of the federal branch

sense. So the question could become, and this is what I'll put to you, if the digital service is constitutional, then why can't Trump classify people in some way within it to also have access to some aspects of government data with any purview, but in this case to be able to report on costs that the government could save or potential waste? I think that's a legitimate question. I would like to see the order. I would like to see the regulations that authorize the Department of Government

Efficiency to work in this way under that umbrella. We recently had another instance, another case in court where one of the judges questioned whether Musk needed to be confirmed by the Senate, given that he has such a significant role to play. One of the arguments, and he's been given sweeping powers. People have called him, I'm repeating what other people have said, they've called him a co-president, they called him assistant president, right? These are some of the questions that people have raised. And recall that one of the arguments of Donald Trump was that the special prosecutor, Jack Smith, his appointment as a special prosecutor was unconstitutional because it wasn't confirmed by the Senate.

So who has more, who comparing the authority that Jack Smith had to, and any special prosecutor has to what appears to be the ability to, you know, peek under the hood and get involved in the activities of every virtually every branch of government. And make sweeping decisions. Hey everybody, this is John, executive producer of YouTube and podcast content, and co-host of The Daily Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this preview of our Sunday podcast with Ari and Isaac. We are now offering this podcast exclusively to our premium podcast members, along with our ad-free Daily Podcast, Friday editions, in-depth interviews, upcoming

new podcast series, bonus content, and much more. If you want to receive all that and give your support to help grow Tangle Media, please go to ReadTangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, a podcast membership, or a discounted bundle membership, which gets you both access to the premium newsletter and the premium podcast. If it's not the right time for you to sign up, please don't worry. Our ad-supported daily podcast isn't going anywhere. But if it is in your ability to support by signing up for a membership, we would greatly appreciate it.

And we're really excited to share all of our premium offerings with you. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Wall signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Take care. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kadak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was

designed by Magdalena Bacopa, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. You're not with Fizz. Switch today.

Conditions apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Welcome home, my boy. Is now streaming on Paramount+. He is much more impressive than the hedgehog I fought previously. Dude, I'm standing right here. Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

Now streaming on Paramount+. Poo-for-ya. That feeling you get once you've finally pooped. Using the power of Natural Sena from the Sena plant to promote bowel movement, Senocot laxative gently relieves occasional constipation, typically in 6 to 12 hours. If it is hard to pass, try Senocot S. It uses natural Sena plus a stool softener to help you achieve pooforia.