Tangle - Republican gerrymandering in Texas, and Democrats' response.

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

On Sunday, a group of Democratic lawmakers in Texas left the state to deny the Republican-controlled state House the quorum necessary to vote on a new congressional map designed to give the GOP five additional seats in the U.S. House next year. In late July, President Donald Trump spearheaded the plan to redraw Texas’s Congressional map, years in advance of the typical decennial redistricting.Tangle LIVE tickets are available!We’re excited to announce that our third installment of Tangle Live will be held on October 24, 2025, at the Irvine Barclay Theatre in Irvine, California. If you’re in the area (or want to make the trip), we’d love to have you join Isaac and the team for a night of spirited discussion, live Q&A, and opportunities to meet the team in person. You can read more about the event and purchase tickets here.Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.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 gerrymandering? Let us know!Disagree? That's okay. My opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.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 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, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is sponsored by the OCS summer pre-roll sale. Sometimes, when you roll your own joint, things can turn out a little differently than what you expected. Maybe it's a little too loose. Maybe it's a little too flimsy. Or maybe it's a little too covered in dirt because your best friend distracted you and you dropped it on the ground. There's a million ways to roll a joint wrong, but there's one roll that's always perfect. The pre-roll. Shop the summer pre-roll and infuse pre-roll sale today at OCS.ca and participating retailers.

Say hello savings and goodbye worries with Freedom Mobile. Get 60 gigs to use in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico for just $39 bucks a month. Plus get a one-time use of five gigs of Rome Beyond data. Conditions apply, details at freedommobile.com. Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses. Only in theaters August 29. From the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things comes The Roses. Starring Academy Award winner Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch,

Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, and Allison Janney, a hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses only in theaters August 29. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and today is August 5th, Tuesday, and that means it is our six-year

anniversary of our first ever public newsletter. I got a lot to say about what has happened in the last year with Tangle and what's coming in the next year, including some changes right around the corner that I'm really excited about. And I'll tell you more about them on Friday. How about that? We're going to release a special podcast. I'm going to give an update about where we are at, kind of state of the union of Tangle and some stuff coming down the pike. But suffice it to say, I sent that first official public newsletter to about 130 people. And today's newsletter is going to go out to over 400,000 people. This podcast will be downloaded 10 or 20,000 times probably. It's amazing

what's happened in the last six years. I'm so grateful for it and for you and this amazing audience. So thank you guys for being here. More to say soon. With that, I'm going to send it over to Will for today's main story on the Texas, California redistricting fight, and I'll be back from my take. Thanks, Isaac. All right, let's move into today's quick hits. Number one, the European Union announced it will pause its planned retaliatory tariffs on the United States for six months while it seeks to formalize a trade deal with the Trump administration. Number two, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government voted unanimously to fire

Attorney General Ghali Bahrava Miarah, who is prosecuted in the ongoing corruption case against Netanyahu. the Israeli Supreme Court issued an injunction blocking the move after the decision. Separately, Netanyahu reportedly plans to solicit support from his cabinet for a plan to fully occupy the Gaza Strip. Number three, special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to travel to Russia this week to pursue a deal to end the war in Ukraine. President Donald Trump's 10-day deadline to reach an agreement,

which he set last week, is set to expire on Friday. Number four, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the Justice Department to open a grand jury investigation into Obama administration officials handling of intelligence about Russian interference in the 2016 election. And finally, number five, Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, announced her candidacy for governor of South Carolina. Well, the Republicans in Texas are trying very hard to add the five seats that Donald Trump very specifically requested. And so five seats in Texas is a lot of seats. You know, the balance of power in the House is three right now. So five would be, would five additional Republican seats would be really, would be really important. And it would also really impact the way that districts are drawn inside of Texas.

we have primaries coming up, right? Elections are always happening in this state. And so the fact that lines are being redrawn in the middle of a cycle is really difficult for election administrators to cope with on top of everything else that Texas is asking them to do. On Sunday, a group of Democratic lawmakers in Texas left the state to deny the Republican-controlled state house the quorum necessary to vote on a new congressional map

designed to give the GOP five additional seats in the U.S. House next year. In late July, President Donald Trump spearheaded the plan to redraw Texas's congressional map years in advance of the typical redistricting, which takes place every 10 years. In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is considering a special election this November to ask California voters to approve a redistricting plan that would aim to benefit Democrats in the House. Several other state governments have also started to consider early redistricting. In modern U.S. history, redistricting occurs every 10 years to ensure proportional representation following population shifts reported by the most recent census. In most states, the legislature directly controls

the redrawing of state and federal legislative districts, though some have empowered independent commissions to do so. In Texas, the State House Redistricting Committee released its proposed redo of the map on Wednesday, and a House panel advanced the map on Saturday, setting up a floorboat for its approval before the Democrats left the state. In California, Governor Newsom must call a statewide special election to ask voters to approve a bipartisan citizen commission to redraw the state's map. Now, Texas Republicans proposed map would redraw district lines in five districts currently held by Democrats, theoretically making them more favorable to Republicans by putting more Democratic voters into urban districts that are already safely Democratic. Furthermore, the new map would

increase the number of majority Hispanic districts, likely responding to Republicans' improved standing with the demographic group in recent years. Texas state rep Todd Hunter, a Republican, said the new districts were drawn, quote, based on political performance. On Monday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, said he will begin a process to remove Democratic lawmakers from office if they do not return to the state to take part in the House's business. Abbott's ability to take this step is unclear, But the governor cited a 2021 opinion by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that stated, quote, a district court may make a determination that a legislator has forfeited his or her office due to abandonment and can remove the legislator from office, end quote.

Separately, the state house voted on Monday to issue civil arrest warrants for Democrats who fled the state. State House Democratic leader Gene Wu said he did not know how long the group would remain absent, but that they, quote, will do whatever. it takes to stop the bill. Separately, in California, Governor Newsom faces a tight timeline to initiate redistricting in time for the 26 midterm elections. State law requires county elections offices to send a mail ballot to every registered voter one month before election day. So those materials must be prepared by late September to be considered in a special election this November. The state legislature is also in recess until August 18th, and any ballot measure must win a two-thirds

majority in both chambers to make it to a public vote. Governor Newsom has argued that California Democrats must, quote, fight fire with fire in response to Texas Republicans' redistricting efforts. Quote, they're doing a midterm rejection of objectivity and independence. An act we could criticize from the sideline or an act we can respond to in kind, Newsom said. Today we'll share arguments from the right and left on the potential redistricting plans. Then Isaac gives his take. We'll be right back after this quick break. This episode is sponsored by the OCS summer pre-roll sale. Sometimes when you roll your own joint, things can turn out a little differently than what you expected.

Maybe it's a little too loose. Maybe it's a little too flimsy. Or maybe it's a little too covered in dirt because your best friend distracted you and you dropped it on the ground. There's a million ways to roll a joint wrong, but there's one role that's always perfect, the pre-roll. Shop the summer pre-roll and infuse pre-roll sale today at OCS.C.C.A. and participating retailers. Say hello savings and goodbye worries with Freedom Mobile. Get 60 gigs to use in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico for just $39 a month. Plus get a one-time use of five gigs of roam beyond data. Conditions apply, details at

freedommobile.com. Here's what the right is saying. The right mostly supports the effort in Texas, saying that Republicans are only adopting Democrats' tactics. Some say Democrats' prospects in the House are dim even if California and others succeed with their own redistricting. Others question Texas State Democrats' decision to flee the state. In PJ Media, Matt Margolis wrote, Democrats were never against partisan gerrymandering. The moment Texas made its move, Democrats in blue states started scrambling to redraw their

own maps, some even looking to override their supposedly sacred independent commissions. So much for their high-minded rhetoric. Texas didn't just redraw lines. It exposed the left's dirty little secret. Democrats hate gerrymandering only when they're not the ones doing it, Margolis said. That high ground vanishes the moment Democrats get the pen. when Republicans redraw lines, it's a, quote, crisis. When Democrats do it in places such as Illinois or New York, it's rebranded as a noble fight for representation. In recent years, Democratic lawmakers in New York, Maryland, and Illinois have aggressively redrawn congressional maps to favor their party, often sidestepping legal norms, Margolis wrote. In New York, Democrats bypassed an independent commission and passed a mid-decade map that the state's highest court struck down as unconstitutional. Maryland's legislature overrode a veto to push a map aimed at eliminating the state's lone GOP's seat,

which a judge labeled extreme partisan gerrymandering. Illinois Democrats moved early to lock in a heavily favorable map. These cases reveal a clear pattern of Democrats manipulating redistricting to secure political advantage for their party in Congress. In hot air, Ed Morrissey argued Dems will lose the redistricting war with the GOP. Democrats have total control in fewer states, but those tend to be the most populous, New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland mainly. That offers Democrats a chance to squeeze on more seats, at least theoretically, Morrissey said. In practice, though, Democrats may have already beaten themselves.

Most blue states forced redistricting into the hands of supposedly nonpartisan commissions, which means the fight could be over in the redistricting war before Democrats can even take the field. In most of these states, including California, Colorado, and New Jersey, changes to the state constitution would have to go to the voters first. New York actually tried this in 2022 and got shot down in court over their absurdly gerrymandered map. None of these efforts would finish up in time to help out in 2026, with the possible exception of New Jersey, which has a regularly scheduled general election this November, Morris, he wrote.

The biggest problem for Democrats is time in a different context. The states they want to redistrict are bleeding, voters to red states over economic and cultural differences. Even if they successfully squeeze a half dozen seats or a dozen seats through these efforts for the 26th election, and I doubt they'd outdo the GOP still, they will lose that much or more in 2023 after the next census. In the Fort Worth Star Telegram, Ryan J. Rusick criticized Democrats fleeing Texas over redistricting. Trump does not want to see his final two years in office thwarted and investigated by a Democratic majority. So he demands creative cartography to forge five more districts likely to elect Republicans.

Texas Republicans are happy to help, even if it means using outdated population data, wiping out black and Hispanic lawmakers, and worst of all, doing it in the middle of the decade, absent a court order, Rusick said. It's so egregious, Democrats say, that they had to leave the state to prevent a House quorum and thus a vote Monday on the new maps. Here's the problem. It's super important to them as politicians, to their amped up base voters and donors, and to the National Party, and just about no one else cares. Schlepping to Chicago, Boston, and Albany, New York will probably grind the gears in Austin enough to force a second special session, assuming the lawmakers can afford to stay there.

It will cost them, though. Democrats have lost the moral high ground when it comes to the other important business of the state, Rusik wrote. Texas must respond to the failures of the hill country floods, but the quorum break prevents that too. Had they stayed, they could have railed against Republicans prioritizing the congressional power play before passing a single bill to help flood victims or prevent future tragedies. Now, they bear the blame. Now, here's the blame. what the left is saying. The left strongly opposes Texas's redistricting effort, but many caution

that Democrats should not follow suit. Some push back on claims that Democratic gerrymandering is as bad as Republican efforts. Others suggest the move by Texas Republicans could backfire. The Washington Post editorial board explored how GOP gerrymandering in Texas could spiral into partisan warfare. Advancing technology enables redistricting with a precision that the founders could never have dreamed of. Splicing and dicing the electorate in this way after every election reduces the number of truly competitive seats, which leads lawmakers to worry more about the primary challengers than the general election. The board wrote, efforts to redraw congressional district maps are especially troubling this year, five years before the end of the decade, when redistricting

is supposed to happen. Although it's true that plenty of states have reworked. their maps mid-decade, they've typically done so after a court ruling required the change. The GOP's power play invites Democratic-controlled states to further weaponize their own congressional maps. Former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke said, we have to be absolutely ruthless about getting back in power. So yes, in California, in Illinois, in New York, wherever we have the trifecta power, we have to use that to its absolute extent, the board noted. These are dangerous words that Democrats need to resist. Yes, in the short term,

responding in-kind to Republican gerrymandering might preserve Congress's balance of power, but it would be a disservice to voters in the long run. In CNN, Aaron Blake wrote, no, both sides don't gerrymander the same. Republicans pretty clearly benefit more from gerrymandering, and there's an increasingly strong case to be made that they go further and using the tools available to them.

Gambits like what Texas is doing are rare, and it's been Republicans who have led the charge, Blake said. A big reason more maps appear to have a GOP bias is that Republicans simply get more opportunities to gerrymander. They have full control of more states because they hold the trifecta of the governor's mansion and both chambers of the state legislature. In the most recent round of post-census redistricting,

Republicans controlled the drawing of 177 districts, estimates on this very slightly, compared to just 49 for Democrats. The reason Texas is so controversial isn't just that Republicans are drawing such a slanted map. It's mostly when they have chosen to do it. We have seen three or four modern attempts like this at mid-decade redistricting, Blake wrote. The GOP did this in Texas and Colorado in 2003, though the Colorado map was struck down, and in Georgia in 2005.

They also redrew the maps in North Carolina in 2023. Indeed, Republicans seem to be leaning in on a mid-decade redistricting arms race, knowing they have superior capabilities and can take things further, just like they have before. In the Houston Chronicle, Michael Lee said Texas's redistricting puts Washington, D.C.,

over the rights of Texans. In 2019, when the Supreme Court said federal courts might not set limits on partisan gerrymandering, some wondered how bad it could get. Texas is about to provide an answer, and it's not good. Republicans are doing everything possible

to help politicians pick their voters rather than the other way around, putting requests from Washington, D.C. over the rights of Texans, Lee wrote. The Texas map already rates as one of the country's most extreme gerrymanders. Republicans are virtually assured winning two-thirds of the state's seats, even though Democrats now regularly win around 45% of the vote in statewide elections. But gerrymanders this aggressive are not without risks. For starters, maximizing seats will, by necessity, mean making safe GOP seats less safe. as map drawers spread reliably Republican voters among more districts to knock off Democrats. That move could easily backfire with Texas's rapid growth and changing demographics, Lee said.

Just consider last decade's map. More than half a dozen Republican districts that seemed rock solid at the start of the decade became highly competitive by the end. District populations diversified so quickly and white suburban voters shifted so sharply towards Democrats after 2016 that the districts became a nightmare. for Republicans. All right, that is it for what the right and left are saying. I will pass it back over to Isaac for his take and the reader question.

All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So I spend every day of my life reading about the biggest political controversies in the world, trying to make sense of them, and then writing about them for this newsletter. And of all the issues we cover, I think gerrymandering is one of the top three most critical political issues in America. It legitimately impacts nearly every other modern political issue in the country and is a genuine scandal every time a state legislature takes part in it. Imagine for a moment that your neighborhood was deciding whether to allow the construction of a new 10-story apartment building. A city council member comes to your house and tells you that they are going to

base their decision on a survey of the 100 adults who live in the neighborhood. If more people vote to support than against, they'll begin construction immediately. You vote against the construction of the building because it would be right next to your house. The city council says the neighborhood approve the building and construction will move forward. Then, after the survey is over, you find out that the city council actually pulled 25 people from your neighborhood and 75 people from the next neighborhood over, knowing they'd get the result they wanted if they conducted the poll that way. you'd be enraged, and you'd have every right to be. That is, in effect, what gerrymandering is for all Americans.

Instead of us choosing our representatives by vote, our two major political parties are choosing the voters they want. They are not doing this in dimly lit back rooms, huddled over binders or voting records. They are doing it in broad daylight, using sophisticated computer systems to draw up the perfect serpentine, totally self-motivated maps so they can get exactly the voters they want

within the lines they like in order to maximize their political representation at the state and national levels. The process is surgical, scientific, and nearly perfected. Most Americans probably don't spend much time thinking about this issue. After all, why would they? Health care, immigration, inflation, and crime all have direct effects on their actual lives. But gerrymandering supersedes them all by attacking our principle of self-governance, the very fundamental question of representation. Who are the people in office trying to solve our problems? In 2024, about 87% of the entire House of Representatives was decided by primary voters, meaning close to nine and ten House races were non-competitive after the primaries. The Democrat who wins the primary race in, say, California's 12th

district, which is plus 39 for Democrats, will go on to win the general election every time. That incentivizes candidates to focus on winning the Democratic primary, which means, playing to the party's fringes, which means a less moderate and more polarized Congress when it happens in district after district. And this is happening in nearly nine out of ten House races in America, as well as many mayoral, gubernatorial, and Senate races, resulting in a less representative government and a less participatory electoral system, since everyone knows which political party will win the election before it even happens. I've written before about the groups like Unite America and Fair Vote working to solve this problem by pushing for ballot

measures to introduce open primaries and ranked choice voting across the country. While I do not endorse candidates, I strongly support these organizational efforts, and frankly, I think it's a travesty that so many Americans are comfortable settling for the system we currently have. As I wrote in 2022, gerrymandering is a bipartisan crisis. While today's stories about Trump and Republicans further degrading democratic norms in Texas, Democrats were the ones sparing little opportunity to change the maps in their favor in 2022. You can trace this tit-for-tat back decades. However, both parties do not share an equal portion of the blame

in this race to the bottom. Democrats, to their credit, have proposed, introduced, and even passed legislation to limit or end-jerrymandering, often replacing partisan map drawers with independent redistricting commissions across the country. Similar efforts from the right have been far narrower and garnered far less support. These quote-unquote non-partisan commission

aren't perfect, obviously, and they don't solve the problem on their own. Fully fixing our system requires additional electoral reforms like open primaries and ranked choice voting, which we talked about last year. Unfortunately, the Texas escalation is quickly evaporating whatever momentum from the left that had existed to push for a better system. As New York Governor Kathy Hochel expressed this week, I'm tired of fighting this fight with my hand tied behind my back. In other words, the situation is already bad, but President Trump just made it

a whole lot worse. By pushing for a new map in Texas outside the 10-year census cycle, by overtly framing the redraws and attempt to protect the Republican House majority, and by ignoring threats from Democrats to respond, Trump has effectively opened a new frontier in the bipartisan war against fair representation. He is doing this because Republicans are in a much more advantageous position than Democrats. Democrats will lose in arms race because they've mostly gerrymandered as far as they can go unless they end up undoing state constitutions across the country, and because Republicans have full control of more state legislatures. Kudos, at least to Representative Kevin Kiley, the Republican from California, who responded to all

this by introducing a bill to block all 50 states from gerrymandering ahead of the 2026 midterms. Kylie is almost certainly motivated by the fact he'll lose his Senate seat if Democrats draw new maps in California, but I couldn't care less. He is doing the right thing, regardless of his own motivations, and I think anyone who views gerrymandering, as the crisis it is, should get behind his charge. For now, I'll offer this potentially controversial take. I'm glad to see Texas Democrats fleeing the state and grinding the legislature to a whole. I think this issue is important enough to justify the spectacle and dire enough to go to the absolute maximum to try to slow the process down. If Governor Abbott wants

to try to punish them, he can go right ahead. But if Democrats in Texas can force everyone to press pause, think about what they are doing and draw the nation's eyes to this scandalous power grab. That's a good thing. And if they can somehow manage to kill this effort by Trump and Republicans altogether, thereby keeping California and New York and other Democratic states from undoing years of the right reforms, they'll have my lasting gratitude. For all those reasons, I'm rooting for them. Not out of any preference for one party or support for or opposition to any one politician, but because gerrymandering is that big of a crisis with that much potential to get a lot worse that I'd support just about any political maneuver from any politician to stand in

its way. We'll be right back after this quick break. This episode is sponsored by the OCS summer pre-roll sale. Sometimes when you roll your own joint, things can turn out a little differently. than what you expected. Maybe it's a little too loose. Maybe it's a little too flimsy. Or maybe it's a little too covered in dirt because your best friend distracted you and you dropped it on the ground. There's a million ways to roll a joint wrong. But there's one role that's always perfect. The pre-roll. Shop the summer pre-roll and infused pre-roll sale today at OCS.orgia and participating retailers. Say hello savings and goodbye worries with Freedom Mobile. Get 60 gigs to use in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico for just $39 a month. Plus, get a one-time use of five gigs of roam beyond data. Conditions apply, details at freedommobile.com. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answer.

This one's from Kate in Cascade, Colorado. Kate said, I haven't seen anywhere a history of the rescissions process, specifically what problem it was intended to resolve. It was created in 1974. But that have been a change in response to something Nixon did. I'm just not sure I see why Congress would appropriate funds and then unappropriate them. Maybe wartime? Great question.

Love the history, lessons here that this kind of makes available to us. So in 1974, Congress passed the Empowerment Control Act, also known as the ICA, to close a loophole for executive funding power called impoundment. Before the ICA, presidents could impound Congressional Appropriate funds without approval from Congress for their withholdings, a power used by president since Thomas Jefferson. The impoundment process wasn't enshrined in the Constitution. Rather, it was justified as an extension of the Take Care Clause that allows the executive to decide how to best execute laws enacted by Congress. Through the early 20th century, presidents used the impoundment power

based on the understanding that the total funds appropriated by Congress were available for use, but not mandatory. Presidents could withhold funds if they felt that the particular purpose of the appropriations had already been fulfilled or become unnecessary, and saving on use funds would be more efficient. While presidents used their impoundment power throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, impoundments reached their peak under Richard Nixon, who impounded billions of dollars and gutted entire programs. Congress argued that this impeded the congressional power of the purse, and in response, enacted the ICA to better define the president's power of empowerment. The ICA created two distinct uses of that power. Deferrals were the president delayed.

is the use of the funds but intends to spend them before their expiration and rescissions where the president formally requests Congress to cancel a certain budget authority. This created the rescissions process we just witnessed in Congress. All right, that is it for your questions answered today. I'm going to send it back to Will for the rest of the pod, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac.

All right, jumping back in with. our under-the-radar story for today. In May, senior White House advisor Stephen Miller said the White House had set a goal for immigration and customs enforcement officers to arrest 3,000 or more immigrants per day. However, on Wednesday, a Justice Department attorney said in court that no such quota had ever been given, suggesting the claim stemmed from, quote, anonymous reports in newspapers. The comment came as the Justice Department attempts to defend the administration's deportation agenda in courts across the country. and several judges have already cited the 3,000 arrests goal in rulings against the administration.

Those judges have held that the appearance of an arrest quota raises constitutional questions about whether law enforcement is improperly detaining people to attempt to meet enforcement goals. Politico has the story, and you can find the link in today's show notes. Now on to today's numbers. The number of members in the Texas House of Representatives is 150. The number of members that must be present to establish a quorum is 100. The number of Democrats in the Texas House is 62. The confirmed number of State House Democrats who have left the state to attempt to block the redistricting bill is 51.

The daily fine for Texas lawmakers who abscond from the legislature is $500. Texas State Legislature's monthly salary is $600. The percentage of U.S. adults who said they were satisfied with how redistricting was handled in their state was 19%. And the percentage who said they were dissatisfied was 24%. And that's according to a January 2022 Pew Research poll about the most recent redistricting process. From that poll, the percentage of U.S. adults who said they had heard nothing at all about the redistricting process in their state was 41%. And finally, here's our have a nice day story. In 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that the United States

generated 66 million tons of food waste, and about 60% of that waste ended up in landfills. A pair of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology are developing a creative solution to minimize the impact of that food waste, designing a 3D printer that converts food scraps into coasters, cups, and other everyday kitchen items. The invention adds to the growing portfolio of use cases for 3D printers with applications across medicine, construction, and food. Popular Science has the story, and you can find it in today's show notes. All right, that is it for today's edition. Thanks everybody for listening. We are excited to be back with another edition tomorrow. Until then, have a great day. Our executive editor and founder

is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Woll. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari White. with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saw, Lindsay Canuth, and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at reetangle.com. summer pre-roll sale. Sometimes when you roll your own joint, things can turn out a little differently

than what you expect it. Maybe it's a little too loose. Maybe it's a little too flimsy. Or maybe it's a little too covered in dirt because your best friend distracted you and you dropped it on the ground. There's a million ways to roll a joint wrong, but there's one role that's always perfect.

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