Tangle - Suspension of the rules. - Isaac, Ari and Kmele chat about Republicans standing up to Trump, Los Angeles mayoral election and a literal horror story unfolding at the border.

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Coming up on todays episode of Suspension of the Rules, are Republicans maybe finally standing up to President Trump? We get into the L.A. mayoral race and Spencer Pratt as well as a literal horror story unfolding at the border followed by our grievances where we say good bye to Ari's favorite sandwich shop. It's a good one!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 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: Isaac Saul and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Jon Lall.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Coming up, Republicans finally maybe stand up to Donald Trump. We talk about Spencer Pratt in L.A. A literal horror story unfolding on the border. And we mourn the loss of Ari's favorite sandwich shop. It's a very good episode. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the suspension of the rules podcast. This is a politics talk show where we kind of break the rules of normal,

terrible pun entry that exists basically everywhere else. look. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, executive editor of Tangle News. I'm here with Camille Foster, our editor at large, and Ari Weitzman, our man... I just intimidate you so much, I know. We might as well leave that in. And Ari Weitzman, our managing editor

of Tangle. I was going to make a joke about how Camille's life is ruined because OKC's not in the finals and he sucks and when the Niamas's League, New York Knicks basketball tonight, but now I stumbled over my opening words, so I look and sound like a fool, and I don't really know where to go.

Camille, opening, opening, take it, say something. You got them on the ropes. I can't, I can't. I'm still, I'm smarting from the OKC loss. I am a little sad about it, but it was a great series, and I'm confident this is going to be a good finals, and I am going to say Spurs and Six. I can't wait. I can't wait for the Knicks to win.

and I put it to part, participate in the civil disobedience in New York City that takes place after. Oh, I know. I will be out in the streets, looting stores, burning buildings, flipping cars over.

You will see me on CBS News. It's going to be awesome. Make an example of you. Yeah, exactly. All right, well, listen, there's a lot of stuff going on. I'm really excited for today's show. I'm stoked to talk about

some of what's happening in California and specifically Los Angeles, I'm very, very interested in a weird, disgusting story about an insect that I'm not looking forward to talking about, but also looking forward to talking about, which we're going to get to in a little bit. But I think at the top here, we have to talk about what's going on in the White House

with the president of the United States. There's been a very interesting sort of sea chain in my view in the last week or so, and it looks like Republicans displaying some kind of backbone, maybe actually acting on their real instincts and true feelings about some of the stuff the president is doing. And I'm very interested in this space. I've been predicting a little bit outwardly

that something like this was coming after what we've seen the president do with regards to Republican senators and challenging them and forcing them into retirement or out of their seats. And it seems like maybe, just maybe, they had a little bit too much and finally pushback.

We got the Trump anti-weaponization fund, which we talked about a bit on the show last week, universally panned on the left and drew some very mixed reactions on the right. I think a lot of people understood that this was a kind of politically toxic thing to build and create. And then something interesting happened,

which is a lot of Republicans came out and said, this is a poison pill. We have a reconciliation bill to get through the Senate, and we can't do it with this anti-weaponization fund in it. There was a lawsuit, a court ruling, that basically put the weaponization fund on hold, which typically is the kind of thing the administration loves. They appreciate the fight.

They'll go to the mat with certain federal courts, run it up the ladder, see if they can get a W at the Supreme Court. And instead, the Trump administration just said, we're going to abide by the court ruling and kind of folded their hand, which I think was rightly interpreted by most people as the Senate and Republicans in the Senate specifically forcing the Trump administration to back down. So I want to start with you guys here. I mean, meaningful moment, question mark. Do you feel like this matters at all?

and what do you make of it? And I guess maybe a question about the premise of my framing, which is, do you think that's a fair summary of what just happened? And if not, how would you describe it? And I'll come to you first, Camille. I'm curious to hear what you're thinking. I think the framing is mostly fair. I mean, there's certainly some question as to whether or not the administration

would have actually gone to bat for this. I mean, the president had already settled this. And there was some consternation. expressed by Republicans reportedly. I imagine that there was actually more happening behind the scenes than we even saw. So it certainly seems to me that they didn't just decide, the Justice Department didn't just decide, oh, we're going to abide by the courts,

that the administration was kind of happy to take a knee on this one and move on to fight for some other things. This was a decidedly unpopular thing for them to do from the start. It was pretty audacious. We talked about this at length during a previous recording. And it would have been pretty unprecedented. There wasn't much in the way of clear parameters for who would be eligible for these funds or what the decision making would be like.

There was nothing with respect to kind of transparency here. So it is certainly a win to see this go away for anyone who cares about good governance and ensuring that there isn't a bunch of just kind of transparent impropriety in government. I do think that, and we can talk a little bit about this, I suspect as we go on, but the fact that the president just nominated a new DNI head, and that that seems to be something that's fairly controversial. Maybe the fight that they just had here with the anti-weaponization fund is something that is perhaps an indication of what's likely to happen going forward.

You're already seeing, as you mentioned, Isaac, some Republicans start to pipe up and express concern. in particular, John Thune, who when I hear John Thune expressed concern about this as the Senate Majority Leader, my suspicion is that he isn't only speaking for himself. He's speaking on behalf of plenty of other Republican senators who might be concerned and don't also want to speak out. So we'll see if this trend continues going forward. You know, I think there's going to be a lot to talk about with the nomination for the new head of the DNI. So let's keep that door kind of closed for now. while we talk about the anti-weaponization fund.

The thing that's interesting to me, and I agree with Camille, about the fact that it is interesting and notable that Thune is making a statement that's not ambiguous. It's oppositional to this. And it's not the only one, again, not going to open the door about the DNI just yet, but we will probably go there.

This is still kind of an open issue to me, because the only edit that I would really add to what you gave Isaac to give the summary of this is the $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund wasn't just a completed out of whole cloth Trump invention. It was a settlement from a lawsuit that Trump brought as a private citizen

for $10 billion to the IRS for alleged leaks of his tax returns. And he settled that with himself through the Justice Department for a fund, for a number that he sort of made up to match like 1776. So to say that was blocked temporarily or what a court challenged it and he's saying, okay, we won't go through with that for now if the court says we can't,

does by no means put this issue to bed. It's still a lawsuit Trump brought as a private citizen to the government while he's heading the Justice Department through a very tightly coupled relationship. So it's something that's still ongoing. I am happy. I think we should mostly, all of us, really be happy that this is something that wouldn't happen. It's the taxpayers paying out a fund that would have very loose oversight. So it's good that this is not happening, but it's not happening for now.

And I think to say it's indicative of Republican senators showing this is a red line and we're going to push back. I don't know. I think we've seen that they have a red line, which is, okay, that's a little too much for us in terms of what we can swallow to our constituencies or to what the economy might be able to take. like re-tariffs here. You can see a similar reaction to global reciprocal tariffs. I think Republican senators have shown that they have opinions about some of the things the president is doing unilaterally, where I'm still not seeing backbone is push back directly to them in primary challenges.

That season's kind of over for now. But this year, it's like indicative of a line that I think already exists. And maybe we're just seeing how it's defined a little bit more. Yeah, I mean, Senator Ted Cruz told NBC News that more than half of the Republican Conference was against the anti-weaponization fund and were willing to team up Democrats to block it as they tried to get the funding through Congress, which, I mean, to me, is just a remarkable statement.

Well, there's a couple, I mean, one way is, oh, my God, there were like half of the Republican senators were about to support this thing, which feels totally insane. But in this era, to have that kind of break from the president does feel pretty remarkable. And it kind of got me thinking about other examples of President Trump, quote, unquote, backing down in this manner where he was sufficiently wrangled by his own caucus, which I feel like is increasingly rare. And I wrote down a few before we got into this. I think Liberation Day tariffs are one where there was clear division and it was obvious to the president.

He had to do all of this by executive fiat because Republicans weren't going to get on board. with it, which ended up costing him a lot of the terrorists because he had to go through court and the Supreme Court ruled against them. These trade courts ruled against them. But even that is like it's not, it wasn't like a direct chat, like the tariffs weren't in a bill that came before Congress and they shut them down. There's the Canada Steel Aluminum tariffs, which is like a more specific example that I could find where Trump actually had some policy, some legislation that they wanted to push through, that they were really putting some political will behind, and Republicans stopped him. Firing Jerome Powell, he couldn't really muster any support for that from

Republicans. There were some people who sort of paid lip service to it, but there was nothing where it was like clear Republicans were going to back him on that. That's kind of it. I mean, the, the doge, there were elements of the doge stuff where it felt like the administration lost Republicans in the Senate. I remember one of the things I wrote down was that there was like the dramatic email of, you know, the weekly email mandate.

And then there were members of the administration who basically said like, we're not going to do this, you know, like heads of the FBI. I think even Cash Patel said, I'm not going to make everybody at the FBI do this. And the way that that, you know, thing that Elon Musk was trying to push died is a bunch of other Trump appointees and heads of agencies in the federal government said we're not going to abide by this. But that wasn't directly

Trump. I mean, that was really coming from Doge, which was coming from Trump. And there was kind of this secondary layer where it didn't feel like it was something Trump was really interested in. I don't know if you guys have anything that comes to mind, but it feels pretty notable that those are the best examples I could come up with. And they all feel kind of. I don't know, flimsy. None of them quite as weighty as this one in terms of what we've seen in the second Trump administration. So, yeah, I don't know. A, does that matter? And B, do you feel like maybe there are examples that I'm not thinking of that you would put on the board as well? I mean, I think clearly the president crossed the particular kind of threshold here.

Because I would agree that this doesn't really have a precedent during the second term in terms of Republicans actually really pushing back in a meaningful way and getting a concession here. I mean, we saw some of this begin to happen with the Iran war powers talk and concern about the vote actually coming to the floor and there being a lot of opposition to it. But clearly some Republicans who would have supported that effort and were publicly supporting that effort. I suppose around like the Ukraine peace plan, there were certainly some some difficulty within the party. But again, nothing really rises to the level of what we've seen here.

At least, again, some of it is very public. Again, one has to imagine there's plenty of things happening behind the scenes. And I do think that it isn't unrelated to the fact that the president's poll numbers are sort of tanking. And that they, while he has been able to score some particular victories during the primaries, as we talked about last week, he's done that, endorsing candidates who, in many instances, congressional leadership said, could you please not do this? Maybe you stick with our guy, and he went the other way. I think he's definitely created some headwinds that he's going to have

to contend with going forward. And the thing that I think is different with this case compared to the other ones that you've raised. And I agree, like Camille, there's the hemming and hauling over potential war actions, if we can call them that, that weren't quite as directly oppositional to a specific policy. And the other examples are our money. It's like you just don't fuck with the money. If you're going to do something that's going to tank the economy, people are going to raise flags about it,

and then eventually you're going to have to back down if, you know, you're wrong, which in the case of the tariffs, I think the president was convinced enough that eventually over time that, you know, having to go through the courts if Congress isn't going to be on board, he's not going to continue to fight that fight. The thing that's different about this is it's not fucking with the money.

It's something different. I mean, $1.776 billion is a lot, but it's not, this is economy-altering going to be the thing that breaks the camels back for a deficit that much of a lot. But the thing that's different about it to me, and this is where I will open that door back again to D&I, Bill Pulte,

is it's just that bad. out of an idea, I think. Like, this anti-weaponization fund, like, was so unpopular and for good reason that I think it is a little bit of a canary in the coal mine to me that Republican senators are saying, they're crying over this one. Similarly to what we're seeing, as you presaged a little bit there, Camille, with John Thune, and his statements about Bill Pulte being nominated from a position of leaning a not very much thought of financial regulation agency with.

the federal government to director of national intelligence. That is also a bad idea. And it's just like full stop. Like, no, don't do that. And when you see people within the party that you're used to, like maybe giving a good spin on things and then walking away saying, I can't spend this one, this is bad, it does indicate maybe something different is happening.

Something that I've said before to both of you, I think off camera is one point is interesting, two points is aligned, three points is a trend. So right now we have two data points. If there's a third, that's a trend. And so right now I kind of, I'm lukewarm to say that I agree with Isaac on something. But I'm with you. I think this is something where I'm like, this is kind of interesting now.

And I'm a little curious to see what happens next. I'll just re-up my theory that I was pushing out all last week. And I'm going to attach myself to and hug tightly now. watching the way this week started, which is Trump blew up his Senate majority by forcing Bill Cassidy out and by primaring John Cornyn with Ken Paxson and thumbing the scale there. I mean, you now have Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Tom Tillis, John Cornyn, and Bill Cassidy, who are all basically swing votes when you have a 53 to 47 seat majority. And now, by the way, John Thune is, you know, the Senate Majority Leader is standing up and criticizing Trump in an open way that we really just have not seen him do.

And that feels significant to me. And I think this is going to be a story that matters in the months between now and the general election in November, which, yeah, it's six months away. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that's supposed to happen this summer and early fall. There's a lot of big policy debates that Republicans are trying to push through. on the legislative side, including all this ICE funding and DHS funding. And I don't think Trump is going into it with the strongest hand. So I'm really curious to see how that plays out. All right. We're going to take a quick commercial break.

And when we come back, I'm introducing a new segment that I'm going to call a 90s horror movie or real life. And you're not going to like the answer. We'll be right back after this quick. break. All right, we're back and I am here to deliver some really terrible news to you guys, which is this week, everybody is going to learn about a thing called screw worm. Now, screw worm to me is literally something that sounds fresh out of a 1990s horror movie. And that's why I'm calling this segment 90s horror movie a real life. And that's why I also have to deliver the bad news that screw worm is real life. And that's why I also have to deliver the bad news that screw worm is

real life. And I think this is going to be a really big story. I know a tiny, teeny bit about this because I've spent a lot of time in Texas and, you know, talk to farmers and ranchers and been on the border and it's something that comes up in Mexico. And it's a parasite, basically a fly, that lays eggs inside the open wounds of animals and sometimes people. And we eradicated. And we eradicated this thing. We eradicated it in the 1960s in the United States. And over the last year or so, there have been alarms being sounded,

mostly by state and national politicians near the border in Texas, saying screw worm is getting closer. There have been little flare-ups. There was an outbreak in Panama and Costa Rica that started in 2023. It's now spread, through every country in Central America and into Mexico,

thousands of animal cases have been reported. And as we were sort of sounding alarm about this thing, you know, politicians have basically been ignoring it, thinking that it's going to go away. It has not gone away. And rather than being a few thousand miles from the border, we now have cases popping up at the border, a mile from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Again, I just want to reiterate, this is a creature that lays eggs and open loons or orifices, like the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. And once those eggs hatched, the larva, they eat living tissue and flesh. This is not a pleasant thing. And there's basically going to be a, if this outbreak hits the United States, which feels pretty much guaranteed now, there's going to be a monster disruption to the cattle industry.

which is the meat industry. At a time when I think prices for red meat, if you've been in the grocery store recently, have already been sort of skyrocketing. And that was something that happened under Joe Biden, came down a little bit, has ramp back up under Trump for all sorts of energy-related reasons.

Farmers in our country are already kind of backs against the wall, climate change, you know, tariffs. There's a number of issues that I feel like they're facing. This is like a right upper cut. in the farming cattle industry in the United States. And I hear these stories pop up. You know, like we had like monkey pox. And everybody talked about it was kind of like,

is this going to be a huge deal? And I was like, it's not going to be a huge deal. It went away. Like those kinds of things happen. This is a story that I feel like very few people are talking about that I think is going to be a very big deal. So I don't know. I wanted to dedicate a terrifying segment to it

and make sure everybody knew about screw worm because if you don't know, don't know about this. I mean, you should know about it. There's a, there's a larva egg laying fly that's going to find your open wounds or eyes or mouth and then eat your flesh. And I figure it, I had a platform and I should help you. Thank you. Thank you for the qualification. It's going to happen. You're, you're dead already, basically. The game is over. I don't, I don't even know. Human risk. The first confirmed case of a

New World screw worm infestation in a human in the United States has already been recorded, a traveler who had returned to Maryland from El Salvador. Health officials say the person recovered. I don't believe that. Probably dead somewhere. And investigators found no evidence of transmission to other people or animals. I think you may be getting a little high on your supply. Not to say that this isn't going to be a huge thing, but that we've seen outbreaks with

like measles where like that's a huge deal. Small, like, not smallpox, but it's like it. A rash. Something's come up. Something's come up. But those outbreaks get contained. It's not that they're a big deal when they happen. It's just that, you know, it doesn't necessarily,

the fact of something that's getting closer and closer to the border doesn't necessarily mean that when it sneaks through, it's going to be, it's going to go everywhere and we're all going to get it. If nature is also just scary, so when you read about these things, it sounds really gnarly, but it doesn't necessarily mean the worst case is going to come to pass. Here's what I'll say. There's some testing happening in Texas, I believe today. And the testing is on a bunch of samples to figure out if we have our first cases of screw worm in the United States.

If they come back positive, which I'm pretty sure they're going to, I think this will be a big story the rest of the week. Maybe by the time this podcast comes out on Thursday morning or Thursday afternoon. in. And I think we're going to be dealing with this for a little bit. I'm just put my steak in the ground before it's the new hot, cool thing everybody's talking about. I was the guy who told you screw worm was a big deal. We'll check back in in a couple months. I hope I'm wrong. I'm not rooting for this. But I've got the hebi-jibis and the jitters a little bit. And yeah, I just think it's going to be a big story. Camille, any reassuring thoughts you have for our audience now that I've injected as much fear as possible

to the story? I always want to urge calm in a circumstance like this. We don't know, Isaac. We can imagine that things may happen, but, you know, potentially is the important word here. I do think it's interesting that there's this narrative online about Doge cuts and how they may or may not be related to this most recent outbreak of screw room.

And it does appear that, there is some funding related to surveillance that was cut, but it also appears, as you mentioned, Isaac, that we were seeing this kind of pestilence inch its way north and it was happening in 2024. There is questions, I think, that are worthwhile with respect to like what kind of mitigation steps could have been taken in, say, 2024 or 2025 that perhaps were not taken. And it does appear that there were some things that were suggested and recommended in terms of kind of expanding the corridor that they're using to try and police the movement of these flies. But, you know, one hopes for a good outcome.

And beyond that, fortunately, we've got all sorts of other things that we can eat. Hopefully, you're prepared to get all of your protein from the soybeans. Yeah, I was going to, I once made a joke about vegetarians in the newsletter, and it didn't go well for me. There were a lot of upset commentators. So I won't do that. I'll bite my tongue here about the layup vegetarian joke you just handed me. Look, I think the Doge criticisms are interesting.

I'm not at all buying into, like it's not like something I'm buying wholesale. I think, yeah, it seems like there's an easy relationship to draw between the fact one of the agencies responsible for monitoring this sort of thing faced a bunch of cuts and layoffs from Doge. And then not long after that, we have the thing arrive. At the same time, I just read a story this morning about how the Department of Agriculture has this team that's like the pest team. They're like responsible for keeping these sorts of things out of our farmlands and, you know, country basically. And they themselves at their office have a bedbug infestation in Washington, D.C., which is one of the all-time great stories ever in politics. the irony, as I think somebody said, the irony is lost on nobody in the office. So, you know, you could be the pest control department of agriculture people and still have a bedbug outbreak.

It doesn't mean that they're capable of stopping this sort of thing from getting to the United States. But, you know, the Doge impacts are things that we're going to be dealing with for a long time. I think the story there is the USAID stuff and a lot of the deaths that we've seen overseas as a result of funding being removed. and we won't really know the scale of, you know, how badly those cuts impacted us. But as this becomes a big story, which I do think it's going to, I am certain that people are going to be pointing their finger at Doge.

And that'll be another debate that we have to have. All right, I don't want to spend too much time on the flesh-eating flies that are now, you know, passing through Texas. Don't worry about that. I'm sure it's not going to be a big deal at all. I do want to spend some more time talking about what I think might be the most interesting story

in politics this week, which is Spencer Pratt's rise in the Los Angeles mayoral race. We just checked before we hopped on the show. He appears headed for a runoff with Karen Bass. He is, I mean, we basically had a two-person race this morning. Last night it felt like we weren't really sure where it was going to be, but he just closed ground on Karen Bass. I think she had 34% of the vote. He had 30% of the vote last week.

all, it's this multi-member, multi-party open race. So now they're going to go to a runoff in November since none of them got 50% of the vote. We talked to John Law, our producer, who's sitting backstage right now, L.A. native for, well, not L.A. native, I guess, but lived in L.A. for many years. He, like me, has been talking to people in Los Angeles, typical kind of liberal Democratic voters who are given this guy a real look. It does not seem like a layup for Karen Bass, despite the fact I think it's like a four-to-one advantage

Democrats have over Republicans in this election. For those not in the know, just a quick rundown on Spencer Brett. He's a former reality television star, which is a big part of the story, a big part of how he's being framed as unqualified and unsirious. He's staked out the kind of,

a Republican Party ticket position. He's running as a Republican, but he is saying explicitly on the campaign trail that he has a nonpartisan political approach. A lot of it, and I mean a lot of it, is about homelessness in Los Angeles. It's about vagrancy, drug use. He is suggesting that homelessness is a choice. The people who live there don't need housing, they need treatment. He's voted the idea of mandatory drug treatment for people on the streets. He's saying that that day one, week one, he's going to clear out all the encampments in Los Angeles. There will be a zero tolerance policy that the people who are on the streets of Los Angeles are going to be forced into treatment or some kind of shelters,

and they're not going to be allowed to sit out on the street and use drugs or whatever. He's broadly accusing all the homeless people in Los Angeles of doing. He said the NGOs in Los Angeles are evil, that they are taking taxpayer dollars and donations and money and basically using that money to, facilitate the deaths of a bunch of people in Los Angeles and in Los Angeles streets. He's running a pretty bare-knuckle campaign that circles mostly this issue and the Palisades Fire, which he lost his house in. And interestingly, this was a nugget I learned about him this week, is he's been living

in a trailer since he lost his house. He's actually recorded a bunch of social media videos from outside Karen Bass's mansion saying, you know, this is them. me. I think he used the Kendrick Lamar, like, not one of us song as a theme song in some of us. Not like us. Yeah, a theme song in one of us, not one of us. I'm merging the, yeah, whatever. He's as a theme song in some of his social media content, it's an effective strategy. Camille, I know you're skeptical about the success of somebody like Spencer Pratt in this election. So maybe I'll come to you first and then very interested to hear Ari, former Californian's thoughts.

I know you're there now, Camille, but on how this kind of like homelessness, vagrancy issue might resonate. You don't see a path for him in the general election. Tell me why and some reflections on the candidacy so far. Yeah, I mean, just looking at the poll results, you've got the number one, Karen Bass, 34.8, the number three vote getter had 22.3 is the Democratic Socialist candidate and Spencer Pratt has 30.4. So I just don't imagine he's going to be able to pick up enough support

from the people who voted for essentially the other Democrats to actually win this race. I do think that the race is interesting, you know, and if it's a mono-a-mono contest, then maybe it's possible he eats one out that he's able to kind of secure enough attention for himself, and point to enough of the dysfunction, the really chronic dysfunction in L.A.

If you've visited L.A. in recent years, you've seen it for yourself. So I think there's a heck of a lot there to benefit from. I do also think that the fact that it's not even so much just the campaign he's running, it's kind of this organic, very, very online, meme-oriented campaign that really seems to have boosted his prospects pretty consistent. considerably. I mean, people are using AI to generate these videos that are going hugely viral on TikTok, on X, and the campaign is happy to see it. Spencer Pratt has reposted some of these videos,

but they're not responsible for authoring them. And that's certainly something that's helping to generate some energy. But it also seems like a lot of that energy is external to California. Republicans, conservatives of various stripes generally love to pile on to California for the various ways in which it gets things wrong and its political class tends to be dysfunctional in a lot of pretty substantial ways. And we saw a bit of a backlash here in San Francisco

where I'm pretty close to, not at all surprising to see upstart candidates start to gain a little bit of ground in L.A. and perhaps in the gubernatorial race, but not so much. But will this actually result in a Republican winning this race now? It's hard to imagine, hard to imagine, even one who insists that they're not particularly political. But if they were to do it, it would certainly be along the access of just serial, chronic dysfunction, homelessness, quality of life issues, things that people just want fixed.

And Karen Bass's reputation isn't terrible. great, but in a toss-up between a Democrat and Republican, I suspect she probably wins all of them. I'm going to see the California perspective to Camille here. It's been a while since I've lived in California. It was 2015 to 2019. It was the time that I spent in the Bay. And I did get somewhat familiar with the way that California talks to itself. But it's, I don't know, I might have aged out of having that perspective at this point. I know when I was there that the common refrain that you would get from the left to any criticisms about their policies,

especially regarding homelessness and vagrancy or drug use on the streets, was you have to let these policies actually have time to work. We've just implemented them. People are fighting back. We actually don't know if they're working yet. And they haven't even been implemented in the way that we want them to, which is a refrain that I think is convenient, I think. But it is to say that even if something is working to people that are open to hearing it, saying, like, I think that this is an issue, that there is drug use on the streets that should be solved, that's not going to land the same way with everybody for different reasons. And in California, there's a lot more people that have those left-leaning proclivities.

So the fact that something might be playing well online doesn't necessarily mean it's going to play well with the average voter in California. The analogy that makes sense to me is California to Texas and Spencer Pratt to Beto O'Rourke. because I remember when that campaign happened, a lot of people were like, I'm getting a lot of momentum from this. Is this the next to Obama maybe? He could potentially be the one to flip Texas and make it blue. And it did not happen.

He had a lot of buzz online, sure. And a lot of people were convincing themselves that there was actual momentum that could swing the race, but it didn't happen. What ended up happening from Beto was the, quote, Beto effect, where down-ballet races because he was running for Senate, it were able to, and it was a statewide race, were able to swing more towards the left

than what you would have expected otherwise. That's not happening here for two reasons. One, local election, a Los Angeles mayoral race, but Los Angeles is a large city, obviously, and it would comprise multiple congressional districts. Two, normally, because California recently redistricted. So the down-ballot effect, you might expect from a race with momentum like this, isn't even going to be a footnote.

My expectation is that interesting candidate, definitely going to watch the campaign, a lot of savvy things he's doing in order to draw attention to Karen Bass's failures or just controversies she's presided over as mayor. But I'm expecting that at the end of the day, it'll be a footnote in a contested race and a down-ballot effect won't even be there.

And I don't know if we'll even be remembering his name in a year. I'll actually put a calendar reminder for us for a year out to see if we can name this person a year from today. I do think there's one other kind of national political dynamic that's worth underscoring. And Politico actually had a great piece about J.D. Vance and Spencer Pratt and how there might be some kind of lessons to extrapolate from Pratt's success. Particularly just this, again, online virality, this kind of Barack Obama, Donald Trump. dynamic, the guy who wasn't part of the political machinery, who hasn't played by any of the expected rules, and who seems to defy all of that and go on to achieve some sort of popular success. And if you think about what our national politics will look like in the next three years,

like a post-Trump Republican Party, where is that new leadership likely to come from? Is it going to be someone in Congress currently whose name we already know really well? or is it likely to be someone who rises to prominence from the general populace, so to speak, who perhaps has some sort of celebrity appeal, but more than that, has some online cachet that they're able to parlay into political influence. We've got Graham Platner, who's at the moment somewhat embattled and is showing some of the potential negative consequences of trying to kind of choose this grassroots effect or at least just kind of selecting someone

who has all of the organic potential that you would like to see in a race these days, but who hasn't probably been vetted properly or hasn't been vetted properly. I do think that that dynamic and aspect of the Spencer Pratt campaign is something that is probably going to be a persistent aspect of our politics. I mean, we even see it in our journalism

to the extent you can get online you are kind of compelling and persuasive, whether or not you've had a storied career at the New York Times, at WAPO, at, you know, a local broadcaster isn't nearly as consequential with respect to whether or not you're able to garner an audience and have meaningful influence in the polity. All right, we're going to take one last break really quickly, and then when we come back, I'm going to make the case Spencer Pratt has a chance and talk a little bit of that. the politician I think I'd most compare him to. Or I think maybe there's the most parallels.

We'll be right back. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, we're back and we're talking Los Angeles mayoral race and whether we'll be able to remember Spencer Pratt's name in a year, which I think is a great challenge, Ari. I have my comp here and what I think is relevant. First of all, I should just say, I don't think he's going to win. I agree with Camille that the numbers just look a little overwhelming on paper.

What I will say is I think Karen Bass is underwhelming. And I think her tenure as mayor of Los Angeles has not been some kind of resounding success. So she's going to face enough opposition momentum that she could be a little bit in trouble. Two is I look to San Francisco where Daniel Lorry ran on a pretty similar campaign. I would say much less antagonistic. He came from a different backer. He's not a reality TV MTV guy. He's somebody who, I believe, worked at a nonprofit

explicitly focused on poverty. And then ran for mayor sort of took over after Chesa Boudin, this like, you know, what a lot of people felt was this failed progressive experiment. And he's had a lot of success. I mean, the numbers look very good in terms of him genuinely reducing overdose, deaths, homelessness, homeless encampments. His approval ratings I just saw came out. They're 74% in San

Francisco, which feels insane. I think it's early. I believe he came in office in 2025, but he's pretty quickly having the kind of impact that he said he was going to have. There are some promises unfulfilled, like the number of shelter beds and these sorts of things. But I mean, the guy had a plan. He came out. He deployed the plan. And it's working. And the quality. of life is changing for people in San Francisco meaningfully in a way that they seem like they are happy with what he's doing. Now, if you're a San Francisco listener or reader

and you disagree with that characterization, I want to hear from you. I'm very curious to hear your perspective. So write in and let us know what you think. But from an outsider perspective here on the East Coast, following the news in San Francisco, reading about his success, I've seen some of that.

If I'm a few hundred miles away in Los Angeles, and I'm making the case the voters like Spencer Pratt is. I use San Francisco as an example. Somebody came in and made the same kinds of promises I'm making, and this thing is possible. What we're talking about is possible, and we should go do it. The difference is, you know,

Spencer Pratt doesn't have the same sort of background focus on this issue that Daniel Lurie does. There are some red flags that probably feel worth calling out here. I mean, A, Spencer Pratt did like that, Alex Jones tour and talked about 9-11 being an inside job and stuff. He's addressed those comments, talked about being young and stupid and, you know, naive and that he doesn't believe those things anymore. But, like, it happened.

His sister came out against him, which, like, is always a big red flag for me. When the family members are like, no, not good, don't do this, I'm, I'm, you get my attention. It's a good way to get my attention. That worries me a little bit. And the way he talks about this stuff broadly is antagonistic in a way that I find off-putting often. You know, like homelessness is a choice, the broad brush of all these people are drug addicts. You know, these NGOs are evil.

Like NGOs might be wasteful. Specific NGOs might do bad work. I think in my experience, having written about some of them and knowing people who work for them, like most people who work at these organizations are genuinely trying to do good. They're not evil people. They have different philosophies about how to get the job done, but they're trying to do good. I think like stuff like that as if I were an L.A. voter would turn me off a little bit.

But I think he has the pulse of the resentment that a lot of people feel in major American cities when they walk around and they're seeing this sort of disorder, vagrancy, homelessness, whatever, and they feel like we're not, it's not even that we're not doing anything about us that the thing that we're doing about it can feel like actively accepting it. I don't feel like I have a really great firm position about what the right thing to do is. I used to really believe in housing first policy. I don't know how I feel about that anymore. I used to really believe in job first, employment first policies.

I've seen a lot of organizations be successful with that. But when somebody's struggling from mental health, or addiction, you can't just put them into a job. It doesn't work like that. They need the treatment. So, you know, I appreciate Pratt kind of pushing that treatment first approach in some respects. And then I'm like, well, all homeless people aren't the same, you know, people who are living on the streets. They're living there for very different reasons. Some of them are perfectly put together and have jobs and they literally just can't afford a house. Some of them are schizophrenic. Some of them are addicted to heroin. Like, you know, there's a million different reasons. unhoused ex-wives and children who leave an abusive partner.

Those kinds of stories are really common when you work in shelters. That kind of stuff can't be flattened until all these people are drug addicts. So if I were to make the case for Pratt, I would say we just had this in California. He can point to somebody. He can really channel the anger about the way things are. And maybe he flips some of those bass voters and enough of the DSA voters don't turn up that he could win a race like that. But it seems far-fetched.

So I don't know if any of that. I guess I'm curious to hear you guys' thoughts before we move on here about how he's talking about and approaching the homelessness issue. If it resonates with you, if you find it offensive, if you feel like it's too broad brush,

it's directionally right, what does that do for you when you hear him talking about this stuff in Los Angeles? I want to give Camille the last word, so I'll go quickly here. I think it's really easy to talk about the most visible aspect of the homelessness problem and the one that is most visceral, which I think is open sanitation issues. Like, yes, drugs, but I think that's the thing that most people have a visceral response

to. And I think a lot of, like, mostly it's two issues that are very closely connected, but ultimately distinct. homelessness, like you're mentioning, I still believe, is primarily a function of housing supply and then drug addiction, which is primarily a function of multiple factors, some of which could be availability of housing supply,

so they intermingle. And I do sort of grimace when politicians want to address homelessness by addressing drug addiction. I'm all in favor of a little bit more of carrot and stick approach. I know of plenty of people who have benefited more from having a cold night in a cell rather than like free needle exchanges. Not to say I'm totally against one or the other, just to say that I understand that there's a conversation to be had here. And I understand that that message appeals a lot more to a lot of people. But to say that that's going to address

homelessness, I think is something that I'm more skeptical of. Yeah. I'm with both of you, the homelessness is a fantastically complicated problem. I think talking about it, as you said, Ari, and those kind of in the most visceral ways pointing at, but is generally something that kind of raises some alarms for me. But it's also the case that that is probably the area where it's the most difficult to kind of tackle. To the extent you are a mom who finds yourself in distress with your children and don't have a place to go, there are options for you, even if they aren't particularly high quality, it's imaginable that you can overcome this. The sort of stuff that I see living outside of San Francisco and have seen over the course of the last five or six

years, that is the most grading that is the most difficult to bear are the legions, it seems, of strung out people who are just kind of nodding off midday while I'm driving through the city with my kids. And there is almost never a time when I enter the city where I don't encounter or something like that. And it is very difficult for that not to have a really meaningful impact on you. But as you pointed out, Isaac, the particular race that brought in a new regime here. And it was actually, I think you mentioned Chesa Boudin, but he was the DA and he lost in 2022. Oh, right.

Yeah. Yeah. It was London Breed who lost in 2024. But interestingly, I mean, Chesa Boudine's. legacy is so enduring that I really do think he cast a very long shadow. And so much of the dysfunction was attributed to the policies that they pursued. And as you put it, Ari as well, just this kind of acceptance of the dysfunction. I mean, they had effectively hardened all of the convenience stores and drug stores throughout the city so that you couldn't pick up anything off

of the shelves because it was all behind plexiglass. And that takes a lot of a job. And that takes a lot of adjusting to, and it gets under your skin in a way that is pretty undeniable, and that means there's going to be an opportunity to take advantage of that upset, but it's probably going to work best when it's someone from within your own party who has some credibility within the party, who can best leverage that in a place like California, where you really do have mostly a unit party for better or worse. And I do think more competition is probably beneficial in that regard, it would probably be better if someone like Spencer Pratt had more of a shot and would also be better if there was a deeper bench of talent, people who had some experience with governance,

because I agree. I think he feels like a meme candidate. And it is hard for me as someone who shares a lot of these concerns, although I don't live in L.A., certainly visited there quite a bit. And I think California and L.A. have a very similar profile in terms of the places where government has worked and hasn't worked really well recently. But you'd hope for candidates that gave you a little bit more confidence that they could actually do the job that they were being elected to do. Granted, the alternative is uniquely bad there. So I'm not sure that it's actually a worse choice,

but you would hope for better. First of all, I can't believe the Chesa Medine thing is four years ago since he was recalled. I remember writing about that for Tangle. I think we dedicated a whole addition to it, and maybe a whole podcast to it, and it feels like it was a year and a half ago somehow. So that's crazy.

And yeah, I appreciate the correction there on the DA versus the Merrill stuff. And to your point about casting a long shadow, it's incredible that in my memory, he was running for, up for a Merrill race, or like had some, enough power in San Francisco that, you know,

like that is how I think of him is like somebody who was in charge of this element of what was happening in San Francisco, which I guess is D.A. he was. But, yeah, still a crazy callback. And wild to think about where we are now compared to where we were then and just the mood and the tenor

of these elections and how they've changed. I think for better and for worse in places like, Los Angeles in San Francisco. All right. I want to be cognizant of time here, and I definitely want to get into our weekly airing of the grievances and opportunity for us to complain about the mundane things

that are happening in our lives, where we need some safe space to talk about them amongst friends. So, John, you can play the music when you're done punching your ballad for Spencer Pratt, my friend. The airing of grievances. Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal. Any volunteers to lead us off? I have one.

I'm happy to go. That just came up. It just came up? Well, it sounds like you're volunteer. It's fresh. All right. Great. I haven't led in a while, so I guess I will.

Yeah, I was home today because my son's sick. What Else is new? Never ends. Not my grievance. we were, I was working from home for the first part of the day and we had a team call earlier and I decided I'm going to get some fresh air and go outside with him. So he has this unbelievably cute routine, you know, 16 months old, comes out of the house, makes a left up the sidewalk and he walks up to this corner where there's a main drive, two lane road, you know, double yellow painted in the middle

where all the cars come in and out of town. And he just parks himself on the corner and just like points at every car that passes and he's like car car car car car truck car and he just will do that for 30 minutes he does it like four times a day um people now recognize us we'll be at like the coffee shop like is he the little boy who stands on the corner of so-and-so street and we're like yes he is um so it's a very nice cute routine today we went out and we were there and there were these three guys sitting around a little construction site you know spray painting lines on the ground i was like hey what are you guys doing and they told me that they're changing the traffic pattern of the road.

They're going to put in these concrete barriers and a sign that means that you can't turn left off the main road onto the road that we live on. So when we come in and out of town, to get back from the highway, we come down this road, we turn left on our street. And our house is the second house on the right. And now we are not going to be able to turn left there because apparently making that left turn slows down the traffic sufficiently behind. behind us that they've decided to block it. It also means when we're leaving our street and coming out, if we want to turn left, we won't be able to, we'll only be able to turn right. So they're solving a traffic pattern issue that I guess has come up in the neighborhood by effectively boxing us out of the two most common ways that we come to and leave our house, which is horrible,

horrible news for me. It pretty much means I'm going to have to pass my house, turn down a street, come around the block and come up the other way, which, you know, is fine. It's like one-way street-city living that I thought I paid hundreds of thousands of dollars and advanced my life to leave behind and leave in the past as I moved to the suburbs. And instead, it's come to revisit me. It is a tiny thing that I know is going to be so, so annoying now that I've officially made the, you know, I've like mapped the neighborhood in my head. I have my ways in and out.

I know how to navigate the neighborhood. neighborhood, and they're going to upend all of that with a single sign and some concrete in the middle of the street. So I said to the guys, that seems like a terrible plan. And they said, yeah, it's fucking crazy. It's not going to work. We just work for the city. They tell us where to put this stuff. And, you know, the guy was like, good thing about the sign is you can just pull it right out when everybody freaks out about this in a few months. Bad thing about the concrete is that's going to take a little more work. And I was like, awesome. I love local politics. So, yeah, that's my grievance for today.

And I'll keep you guys posted on when the change happens and maybe I'll be wrong and it'll actually be great. They said there's like a traffic engineer. I put that in air quotes like it's not a real thing. I'm sure it's a real thing. It's probably some expert. But I'm like, traffic engineer really? Like I can tell you right now, if I can't turn left to get on this road, it's going to be worse for me.

I don't need the traffic engineer and tell me that's better. But maybe they'll figure it out. We'll see. Wow. That's a tough one. Yeah, I think they probably have good reason to believe it's better for flows that makes the system better overall. I'm the sacrificial lamb. Right.

It's your street. I've also driven to there now from my wife's parents' house in a town that's like 15 minutes away. And that's the route is going to that street and making a left at that corner. So now I'm marginally impacted. Yep. Yeah. Your life is now a little bit worse due to this change. So we'll address, you know, but I guess that's a good, good attitude.

Yeah, we'll adjust or. It's going to be moderately inconvenient, but. Adjust or like show up to every town hall meeting and make a huge fuss, which is like my option A, obviously. I'm just like, I will be on the Zoom calls with 12 other people from the town, making this as painful for them as possible if it sucks for me. So I just, yeah. I just want you to explain it in a way that doesn't make it seem so obvious.

obvious that this is probably a fine call. Like, is in fact going to obstruct traffic, which could in fact even back up people who are planning to make that left themselves a little later. So it just depends on the time of day. Sounds like some woke bullshit to me, honestly. What if it turns out, Isaac, that a couple of local drivers just happened to be confused by the signage and ended up slowing down traffic. And you could have a compelling case to raise that the new patterns actually go worse for the system

if some people seem to be confused in such a way. That sounds credible. Maybe just one intent, like I'll just do one intentional low speed car accident and just be like, I have no idea where to go and we have to do something about this sign. And that brings the hold. I'll pay a few thousand dollars in some fender bender repairs for that at this point. That's a great idea, Ari. I'm going to take that, man.

Nope. But yeah, you're welcome, but no. All right. I've got one. I don't know if it's any good. The people who listen to this podcast, the people who subscribe to Tangle, we all have something in common.

We read a lot. And I read a lot on my Kindle app, not my actual Kindle device because I have an iPad and I install the app there. What I've discovered, however, is that the Kindle app works differently on iOS and Android.

On iOS, and I'm dyslexic, I should also acknowledge, because it's relevant to the story, I frequently buy the audiobook version and the Kindle version of books, and I will listen to them while reading them. And oftentimes, you know, kind of flip back and forth. I find that just listening to the book is not sufficient.

You've got to be able to highlight and underline. Unfortunately, the iOS app, occasionally, if you have both of these things, it sinks them, and you can use them both simultaneously. And the copy will actually move as the audiobook plays, which is very useful, and you can easily seamlessly flip between the two, from listening to reading. Great. It only works for a small selection of the books. On the Android app, however, it works for every single one of them. And it seems that this deliberate degradation of the iPhone experience

is a result of Apple's policy of trying to take money from Amazon anytime you purchase something through the app. So they just cripple the app and make the experience a little worse for me, the paying customer. Granted, I understand. Maybe don't allow me to purchase stuff through the app, but I don't understand why you have to make the experience worse for me now that I'm using it on my iPad. That absolutely sucks. And I'm disappointed now. I don't know what I can do about this. I know there are some folks from Apple who listen to the podcast because I've met some of you. I hope maybe there's someone at Amazon who listens to the podcast. And can maybe do something about this because it seems decidedly unfair.

I'm not the person who should be punished here. I purchased the book. I purchased the audio book. I do also have an Android device, which I occasionally read on. But I'd like to have an identical experience of sufficiently high quality on both of these devices. It does not seem like a lot to ask for. So I feel like Ari's Android high horse is coming. And I just like don't.

I'm just floored at the fact. that, like, you have the Kindle and you're like, but I prefer to use the other thing. It's just really funny to me. I will also say my biggest takeaway from that story is that there are people who use the Kindle app to read on an iPad,

which seems insane to me. I think that's a thing anybody does. Like, the whole point of the Kindle is to get off your screen. Yeah. Yeah, it's the lights. It's that it's like something between paper and screen. And you're complaining about your eyes being bad.

Wouldn't this be a better? right for you. I mean, they're already bad now, Ari. They're bad. You've done the damage. You might as well just keep pushing forward. Just blast these lights and my eyeballs the way I want it. Damn it. Okay. All right. I know what I'm getting Camille for Christmas this year. It's going to be a brand new Kindle. And I'm going to get him a blue light flashlight. He can shine at his eyes to replicate these people. Wow. I like that. Thank you. All right. I have one. I was going to talk about the fact that every time I watch the Pirates, they lose. time they watch. I don't. They win. But they've changed that this week. So I'm just rooting for him all the way right now. Go bucks. Go bucks. Pittsburgh got a baseball team for the

first time this year. It's great. The complaint that I have is actually really similar to yours, Isaac. It's about a local traffic issue that has had a vast impact on, I think me personally, but a lot of people. In a town that I recently moved from, Burlington, Vermont, which in a lot of ways is a beautiful and incredible city and in a lot of ways, struggles made a decision a couple years ago to revamp one of its main street areas, to make it better for pedestrians a little bit harder to navigate for vehicles and also make the parking situation not quite as clear. Okay, they put a lot of time into doing that.

And now it's done and it does feel like a little bit better of an area to be at on as a pedestrian. but there's been collateral damage, which is the local businesses in Burlington were crying for pain about this local street change on Main Street that they were told was going to be a small amount of time and ended up taking 18 months, killed foot traffic for a lot of businesses. One of which is my favorite breakfast shop for a breakfast sandwich that I've ever been to, which is called the cafe hot. And they're closing. They announced their last day was this past Sunday. We ate there. We waited in a... Nothing worse than losing that as good sandwich shop. I'm sorry. It was perfect. And those dudes were great.

Like the people who ran it were so, I felt like I had a connection with them. But every person who walked in or maybe every other, like they knew their name and they'd have an exchange. And I remember like a year ago, they were getting hit by foot traffic issues. They were closing down some of their hours. They weren't going to be open on some of the days that I was going into the city. And I actually, I really, like I really tried to do what I could. I sat in remotely. I'm not a hero on like Burlington Town Halls. I try to talk to investors to like raise a low, low interest deferred payment fund for people on Main Street with these businesses so they could try to survive what the city did to them. And it couldn't, it didn't work. They're saying it was just family issues. Like they, one of the founders wants to go back to New York City and like be there with raise a family. And it's they sound genuine. I don't want to doubt them. But I do doubt them a little bit.

They're being a little nice. And I blame the city still. I think they made a, they didn't help these businesses through an issue that took longer, that they didn't manage. And I think it's still something that we're picking up the pieces from. Even if that's not the issue, the fact that this incredibly great sandwich shop is moving out of my area

is a loss that I don't know if I'll recover from anytime soon. I got to say, gentlemen, I feel like a fascinating dynamic emerging on this national politics show where we're all getting to talk about local political issues. We've all graduated from the big city and are living in our particular towns with their particular intricacies. And I don't know. There's something here. There's some magic in the air and error. It seems to only come up in the grievances section, which is hilarious. But, you know, we're like, there's something. There's some, there's some, There's some fertile ground here, I think, for some more local political chatter that we could work into this show. So RIP, your sandwich.

Did you name the sandwich shot? Did you say what the name of it was? It's called the Cafe Hot. They've just done their last day of service this past weekend, but be on the lookout for it to recur, perhaps, in New York in the next year. Because they don't have enough. I will say good name. Cafe Hot is a good name too for a sandwich. shop. So tough breaks. All right, RIP Cafe Hot. RIP this episode, we're out of here,

gentlemen. It was good to see you. And we'll be back here next week. You guys have a good one. Later. Go Bucks. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wohlp. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canoeh and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced

by Diet 75. To run more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at reetangle.com.