Tangle - Suspension of the rules. - Isaac, Ari and Kmele talk Trump's midterm pivot, Kash Patel controversy, Virginia redistricting, latest on Iran and more.

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

On todays episode of Suspension of the Rules, Isaac, Ari and Kmele cover a ton of the latest news. They chat about whether or not Trump is making a midterm pivot, Kash Patel controversy, the latest on Iran and the big Virginia redistricting. Last but not least, a very good grievance section. 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, is Trump making a midterm pivot? We talk about the Cash Patel controversy, the latest on Iran, and the big Virginia redistricting kerfuffle plus a very good grievances section. It's a jam-packed hour of news. You guys are going to enjoy it. It's a good one. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to suspension of the rules. This is a podcast where three guys wearing hats talk about the news.

Do you guys like that? Is that a good... That's actually pretty good. It is pretty good. It's not our worst. We all have hats on today, which is an interesting dynamic for the show. I don't really know what to make of that, but everybody's... Are you wearing a frisbee hat?

I am, yeah, low-key frisbee hat, though. Only the sharpest eye would catch it. But yeah, this is a spin-ultimate hat. They're an ultimate frisbee merchandise brand that I'm not even in I really sure still exists, but I think they do. It's just for the record. Gentlemen, there's a lot going on in the news. So everybody's going to have to put their thinking hats on today for this conversation.

I'll see myself out. We just had a big team meeting where I had to talk for 30 or 45 minutes. I didn't have to, but I did talk for 30 or 45 minutes straight. And yeah, I'm just, I'm charged up right now, man. I'm excited to be here. And there's a lot going on in the news. And I asked to start today with a topic that I actually don't think is getting enough coverage in the news, which is the president is kind of pivoting. I sense a midterms pivot happening.

And it doesn't feel to me like a lot of people are talking or acknowledging about it or acknowledging it. are acknowledging it. So I want to set the table for that conversation and then talk about my theory with you guys a little bit and get some of your feedback on it. The table set is pretty simple. Donald Trump's polling numbers are horrific. They are some of the worst polling numbers

I've ever seen for any president. He is underwater with independence. He's, according to the latest Associated Press poll, just now 31% of Republicans disapprove of his presidency, just 68% approve. Independence, he is disapprove, approved 76 to 23. Even among some of his typically strongest issues like the economy, he now has a 70 to 30 disapproved to approval rating among the total voting population. That was the firewall for President Trump for a long time, was regardless of what you thought of

his personality or, you know, maybe his immigration policies or the things he said about, you know, traditional conservative Republicans. He was always going to be really good for the economy. And people are not happy with how he is doing on the economy right now. And so a few things have happened recently that I find pretty notable. The Labor Secretary, Ashadez Arammer, just de Riemer, we talked about this for the show, Derrimer just resigned. I may mispronounce her name again before we're out of here. Attorney General Pam Bondi is out. Cash Patel, rumored to be getting fired soon. We'll see what happens.

Had this pretty damaging Atlantic article, as I want to talk a bit about. They just did CDC appointments that didn't get much attention, but were pretty normal with some people who traditionally have been kind of supportive of vaccines getting high-ranking positions. There's rumors Tulsi Gabbard is on her way out and the president's very dissatisfied with the job.

she's been doing. And then, of course, there's a question of whether Pete Hegsef survives the Iran war and whatever the results of this conflict are, which we'll talk a little bit about before you get out of here. I think it's notable that four of the president's cabinet members are seem to be getting fired or imminently will be fired just in the last few weeks. And that these little shifts like trying to put people in at the CDC who are non-controversial mainstream accepted figures, it just feels very out of step with what he'd been doing for the first year plus of his presidency.

And I guess I'm curious if you guys feel like maybe I'm reading too much into some interpersonal conflict and scandal that's resulting in people getting laid off or that there is some genuine sea change happening here that we should be keeping our eyes on? I'm pretty split. I hear the argument. I think rationally,

it's the right conclusion to draw from the evidence you see. But I'm unconvinced about a couple of things. The first is, I just don't think it will last. I think we've seen a lot of two-week horizons out of this administration so far so I could see this being a reaction

until the next thing that draws the focus. And it's hard to anticipate what that's going to be. I also think that the more one department becomes in the spotlight for a certain scandal or another. Through the weird effect of reverse polarization, the safer that person's position will be. I think there's an obvious exception that we saw with Department of Homeland Security and Christy Knoem,

but I think that got to a point of extremity. But I would think people like Scott Bessent, Cash Patel, Pete Hegza, I think they're probably safer now than they have been before. and I maybe I'm going to be wrong about that, but I think I expect the more that they're under fire, the more likely it is that they hold their position. Given that, you know, if we're talking about the CDC,

getting some normal replacements or placements on a panel, and RFK Jr. starting to get sidelined, I'm just thinking if we play that out and I imagine RFK, I don't think this is going to happen, but if I imagine RFK Jr. getting removed from his position, then the spotlight is now on Trump. And it's okay, who's the next appointee? Now is health getting better, things getting more affordable

for prescription drugs. He mentioned this before. It was a big thing coming into the new year. Now you're going to own it. And you can't really just fire the next person anymore than it becomes on you. So I think he's going to stick with his guys, I think, as much as possible.

And as much as there's a midterm reset, I think there probably is in terms of messaging. And then we'll see what the next thing is. I'd largely agree with that. I just want to say really quick, though. The Chrissy Nome thing was when I didn't even list in my, I blanked on her as I was rattling off the people, which is like, you know, the immigration enforcement,

which is Trump's core issue. I mean, that and tariffs. He's holding the best with Democrats on immigration still. 7% approval with Dems. Yeah. But broadly popular, like over 50%. But it is, I mean, that's, this, I don't know, it just feels like the first six months, the first 12 months even of Trump's presidency, all we talked about was this idea that he was unmoved by the criticism right now. It was all sycophants surrounding him. There was no backing down. He was going scorched earth. And I think all those things are still true to some degree. But this just feels like a departing. from that to start firing people in large part because of outside criticism about the job that

they're doing, which, you know, amid all the MAGA infighting, you know, I saw Tucker Carlson saying that he has this like deep regret about endorsing Trump, you know, crossing these new lines and his criticism about the president. We're watching the fractures sort of bubble up to the surface, some resignation, some in the leaks are starting in a way that they didn't really exist. the first few months we talked about Susie Wiles and what a tight ship she was running. It just, I don't know. It just feels like the polling maybe is penetrating

the thought process for them and they're making some decisions that are, to me, reflect a little bit of like, uh-oh, maybe we actually have to course correct here before the midterms a little bit. Yeah, look, I think a lot of what Ari said is accurate. The reality is that during the first Trump administration in that first two years, there was quite a bit of turnover, both in terms

of his chiefs of staff, but at other parts points in the cabinet as well. I think he may, in fact, have the record in terms of just the volume of turnover, at least as compared to his five previous predecessors. So he's kind of in competition with himself at the moment. And I do think that the dynamics of the current moment, specifically the kind of maggot infighting that we're seeing now, means that the circle, the wagons dynamic is likely to be even more consequential for just kind of keeping this core team together. You know, you used the word sycophancy earlier. Maybe we'll describe them as loyalist to be generous in the current moment.

And the reality is that with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, I mean, even J.D. Vance is still getting deployed and is being utilized. And in public, they have a very unified message. to the extent people are talking to the press, less of the leaks seem to be in the direction of kind of dishing on how terrible the president is and more on positioning themselves with respected different things that are happening. We certainly saw a lot of people who were clearly talking to the press earlier on in the Iran conflict, kind of giving some different perspectives on what people were saying behind the scenes. But there wasn't that kind of angling for position that you have

seen with certain administrations before and certainly with the first Trump administration. So in that respect, you know, it takes a while. And I think you mentioned Christy Knoem, and the things got very bad before Knoem actually managed to get herself fired. And even that termination was more of a demotion than anything else. He still managed to keep her somewhat close. So, you know, Cash with his bad news and him deciding that he's going to try and sue national media publication for saying nasty things about him. You know, that's a very true. Trumpian move, and it's something that the president may in fact respond to. And at the moment, he still seems to be in the president's good graces. I think part of the challenge here is him

finding new people to put into these positions who he trusts as much as the people who he currently trusts, who he can be confident, will do all of the things that they're doing at a moment when his grip on the party is perhaps a bit weaker than it's been historically. I mean, the reality is that, you know, when you look at what's happening from an economic standpoint, which is where, you know, the foreign policy considerations are very real, but a lot of the concern and consternation amongst voters has everything to do with kind of consumer confidence, inflation, all of these places where just these pocketbook issues continue to be a material problem for them, going into the midterms, it's kind of the worst thing you could imagine.

I know we all saw that the president is very actively trying to message around the midterms, talking about how bad it is generally for the incumbent, you know, you always lose. You lose so many. You're just going to lose a bunch during the midterms. Yeah, you are. And it's not only because this happens historically. It's also because you're not really delivering on the things that you said you would deliver on. You were supposed to get energy prices down. You were supposed to get inflation completely under control. And unfortunately, those things are kind of ticking back up in the wrong direction. Unemployment is a bit higher than it was under the last year of Biden. There are a lot of reasons for concern for this administration.

And a lot of things they need to get under control. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I, you know, somebody who considers themselves pretty politically independent. And I felt like since 2016, really since Trump came into office, my politics have always kind of circled the middle band. And I've just been fielding from our audience and from a lot of. my conservative, MAGA friends, whatever, this complaint that I've gone to the left and that I, you know, my criticism of the president has sort of, has crossed the line into being this kind of,

like, liberal hack zone. And then I see this polling come out where 76% of political independence in the United States disapprove of the job, the president's, doing, and a third of Republicans do. And I think, okay, like, that's an affirmation of what I'm feeling, because I'm watching his work and the output from the, you know, the federal executive branch on these big issues. On immigration, independence, 68% disapproved, 30% approve. On Iran, 76% of independence disapprove. On the economy, 80% of independence. disapproved. Cost of living. Eighty-seven percent of independence disapprove according to this associated press poll. It was affirming to see some of these numbers come in because I thought,

okay, I consider myself a political independent, and I do feel really strongly like the president's not delivering. And then I go see, oh, actually, most other people who kind of operate in this middle band of politics or at least believe themselves to operate there also feel that way. And I think at some point, regardless of what your forward-looking view is as the White House, which I think, you know, for President Trump is I always have 35% of the country. My base will never abandon me. I don't have another election. I'm here to break glass and, you know, make a mess and put it back together the way I want

to put it back together. That's what he ran on. That's been his politics forever. I do think at some point you have to look at these numbers that are historically bad and think we have to do something differently. What we're doing right now is not working.

And I just, I don't know what that pivot looks like in practice, but I get the sense that this movement might be the beginning of them trying to, I don't want to say moderate, because that was always the trope with Trump in his first term was like, oh, he's moderating. And then he would totally not change.

But I feel like they're trying to find a new direction to get through to voters. And it might be just putting some new faces in power and seeing how they deliver on the president's promises and communicate his message to the country. Camille, you mentioned the Cash Patel stuff. I do want to spend a little time talking about that story in particular because we didn't get a chance to talk about it on the podcast. It's probably the biggest sort of tabloidy drama story that's happened. the last week since we were on the show last. And it's related to the director of the FBI. A pretty insane story published in the Atlantic for what it's worth. I mean, I don't think I've ever really seen a news article quite like it. I was not surprised that Cash Patel did this whole

defamation lawsuit because that is the playbook now is just sue companies, media companies, who say things about you you don't like if you're in a position of power, have a bunch of money, which I don't think is good or a healthy state of things. But I will say it was pretty extraordinary. I mean, mostly, as far as I can tell, pretty much all anonymous sources, a few people on the record, but not with the most substantial allegations.

Very personal and detailed allegations about him being, you know, unconscious, drunk, not being able to wake him up from his stupers and, you know, people trying to get access to his hotel room because he's asleep inside. salacious sounding stuff that I just think in whole was a kind of story I hadn't quite read from a sophisticated news organization like The Atlantic. It wasn't their typical fare. It felt like something maybe more typical of the Daily Mail or the New York Post. But also made an impression on me. I mean, it was compelling in some way.

And I also thought, wow, this is like pretty edgy, it feels like, and a little risky that they're publishing this with, again, what seemed like mostly anonymous sources, which I totally understand who wants to go on the record about this administration right now. I was curious how the story landed with you guys, what your immediate reactions were reading it, and also what you make of the lawsuit. I mean, my quick impression is,

I don't know why we do this every time. ever win. Nobody ever wins these definition lawsuits. They keep, they just, I mean, it's, I think it's just to punish the news organizations and make them spend a bunch of money lawyering up. But I certainly don't think Cash Patel is going to win this lawsuit because I'm assuming the Atlantic had some actual sources. They didn't produce this whole cloth out of thin air. So, yeah, what did you guys make of this story? I found it quite jarring, honestly. Well, I think just to start with the lawsuit angle of it, I think it's, the story that you don't read about is the one that this impacts because it's a deterrent shot

across the bow to a lot of small medium-sized organizations. If you're going to print something with a couple sources, you better have a bunch and you better have a lot of receipts and you better do the legwork and you better have a law team entertainer to be able to afford to defend yourself until such a time as you can exonerate yourself in court. I think it's chilling. I don't know what the answer is to have that kind of background, normalization stop, but at some point, like, it's got a break. It's not a healthy process. But I was kind of similar to you where I read it and I thought this does feel a little hit piecey, a little bit like we're going after somebody for behaviors in a tabloity sense, but it is the head of

the FBI and they are trying to connect some dots that are between some things that we've been able to observe. So the lead from this piece is I think about Cash Patel's drinking, but just, and then alleged drinking and reported drinking. But I think connecting beneath that that left the bigger impression on me was this is the head of the FBI who has behavioral control issues, not being able to check his impulses when he has to message about an ongoing investigation or a manhunt. And they started with the story about him getting locked, out of his computer and he's panicking and he thinks he's getting fired.

And then his acting like that and then telling people around him like, oh man, I'm fired. Help me solve this. Get me in it here. Starts a rumor mill in the FBI which is filled with people who are really good at gathering and disseminating intelligence. And then that just like goes throughout the agency and it's almost funny to imagine it.

But the picture that they're painting of somebody who is hair trigger responding to things, not checking his impulses, and a little bit paranoid. does track with the things that we see out of him in public. So it does feel believable, and it does seem like something that I kind of want to know more about. I want to hear more about what's going on at the FBI because of it.

So in that way, it is a compelling piece of journalism. And I think it's almost a shame that we're talking so much about the drinking because of it. Not that that's not a problem, but because I think the character issues behind the scene are probably deeper and more concerning. But, yeah, I think it's... was unusual. And my hope is that we don't see more pieces like this because we do not have to, not because they're being sued and to fear because they're afraid of report on it. Yeah, $250 million lawsuit is kind of extraordinary.

I don't think Tango has that long around, I'll just say. Seems unsurious on its face. But I think the parallel you draw to his actual on the job performance and the conduct that we have seen, the controversies that he's been surrounded with, are the things that actually give this a little bit more weight, even if they're not directly related. I mean, certainly you've got the issue he created for himself when he went to the Olympics and was partying back in the back with the U.S. hockey team, the challenges he's had with respect to these flights that he's taking with his girlfriend, and things he was exceptionally vocal about before he took this job,

things that he openly condemned people using taxpayer dollars, and kind of taking advantage of their position in order to travel around in opulence. All of that looks bad for you. But when you take that and you put it alongside the issues related to the Charlie Kirk investigation and people who suggested that his insisting on being in front of the camera

was perhaps detrimental to the investigation. There have been other reports about... Yeah, not having access to the plane because he was utilizing it. Certainly the Epstein disclosures and the various statements. and misstatements about that case, I think when you take it all in aggregate,

it makes reporting like this seem quite a bit more credible. And we talked earlier, is he in, is he out? Is he likely to be gone? All of what we've just laid out there, or what I just laid out, I suppose, would be enough to get you fired under any normal circumstances. It just looks bad for the boss. But in this particular case,

I think Donald Trump needs loyal, He needs people who are willing to go to bat for him, and he doesn't want to create the appearance of him trying to get everything back on the rails. And it's much easier to push ahead, to try to ignore the scandal, to scream fake news, to have this kind of grandiose display with you having this counter lawsuit than it is to try to button things up by getting someone who is, frankly, just more responsible and respectable in that position. because, again, your first concern has to be loyalty in this administration. And that's not always going to put you in a position to find the best possible person to do the job. Yeah, and that tells the guy they hired. So it's tough to say, like, we're going to get rid of him for the behaviors that a lot of people probably could have expected. This was a guy who was transparently not qualified to be the head of the FBI when he was appointed.

It was one of the people that we were most critical about being nominated. And so when you think about that, like, what has changed between the guy he is now and the guy he was then that's going to require his firing when the primary quality that he has of being loyal to the president has remained at half. It's interesting. I mean, you made a great point about the kind of general behavioral issues. Obviously, I was somebody who was really critical of Cash Patel and his appointment. and he was one of the ones that I sort of flagged as being most concerned about. I don't know that those stories

with the public, just from a purely political perspective, how much they will kind of break through. Oh, he's, you know, he doesn't have the attention span. He's impulsive. He tweets stuff out before he should. There's something about,

even the story that I agree was enrapturing about him, you know, thinking he was being fired. There was so much detail there that it's hard to imagine it was a concocted story. It sounded quite real to me. You can sort of tell when you're reading it. Like, nobody could have made this up.

But I don't know that that story really breaks through with the public in the same way, just the image of the FBI director being too hung over to get out of bed or whatever does. Yeah, that's true. And I think that's why, I imagine if it's him,

that's going to be the allegation that he fights head on. And I'll just throw out there, again, I don't want to put too much skepticism on the Atlantic story. But I will say, I just looked it up as we were talking. It was two dozen anonymous sources the Atlantic said that they spoke to. I believe those are real people. I think Atlantic is a serious news organization with editorial guidelines. They're talking to people. They're getting them off the record.

But I'll note that in their reporting on the lawsuit, Politico said that they could not independently verify the Atlantic report, which is interesting because sort of the insidery media thing here is that when a story like this breaks, what typically happens is a bunch of journalists run to it. A lot of them have the same sources. And you often see that story replicated in another news outlet with their own sources pretty quickly after. And we haven't seen that happen with this Atlantic piece. And Politico has probably the best source reporters in the country. I mean, I would say up there with the New York Times, the Walshie Journal, the Atlantic, Fox News.

So the idea that Politico couldn't get a few people who are on the White House beat or who are covering the FBI, who have direct sources around Cash Patel, I'm sure, to verify the Atlantic story. I just thought that lack of corroboration caught my eye and was pretty interesting. So I'm not saying that the Atlantic story is made up. I don't think Cash Patel is going to win this lawsuit, but maybe a little bit more thinly or questionably sourced than the typical fair that we see out of the Atlantic. Again, I just got a weird vibe from the whole thing. And so I'm interested to see what sort of other Cash Patel stories pop up in the next few weeks

and how much they kind of mimic or corroborate what we got out of the Atlantic. Please stop suing news organizations, but I don't think that that's going to go anywhere. I'm just, yeah, have a healthy bit of skepticism about the whole thing just felt a little off to me. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right. There was some other very big, important, and I think. think more tangible concrete news that happened this week yesterday, in fact, which is that Virginia has basically just opened the door for a mass gerrymander of the entire states. It's going to probably turn what I believe was a six to five. Was it a six to five split into a

nine to one split? I think 10-1. 10-1. Republicans lost four. house seats or will lose four house seats off this gerrymander that is going to be downstream of this referendum that was voted on yesterday. This is all coming after President Donald Trump launched a redistricting war in Texas that we knew was going to go national. It spread to California, Virginia. We're going to see it in Florida now. We've seen a little bit of it in places like Illinois. I don't know if you guys would. What's that? Indiana, I think, as well. Indiana as well, yeah. I don't know if you guys, I'm sure you guys remember, we talked about

this a lot on the show. The three of us had actually a pretty robust debate, even, about, yeah, what Virginia should do, what the path forward looked like. I'm interested to hear from you guys about where you sit now after, I mean, this feels like this kind of full circle moment. I saw President Trump got interviewed on a Virginia, I believe it was a Virginia radio station, and he was asked about gerrymandering, and he said, I don't know if you know what gerrymandering is,

but it's not good. He's trying to talk Virginia voters out of voting for this referendum. Yeah, huh, who, yeah, I agree, Mr. President. This was the very predictable outcome of him doing what he did. And we had this argument about what should happen. And I think I'm feeling equally torn now as I was then. And I'll restate my position that I think I'm pretty much still aligned with, which was I am anti-jerrymandering as a principle. I think it is a scourge.

I think it's spreading across the country. It is diminishing the value of the vote, making many, many more races non-competitive that should be competitive. And it is effectively politicians choosing their voters instead of voters choosing their politicians. And yet, I kind of wanted Virginia slash Democrats to punch the proverbial bully in the mouth. Trump started this by openly. I mean, he didn't quietly go push for redistricting in Texas. He made a big grand announcement and like PR energy into saying, we are going to win a gerrymandering war,

and we're going to win every possible House seat that we can, and we're going to start in Texas and bring it on. And now Democrats have responded, and they've got some ground under them. They now have the gerrymandering redistricting advantage, as of today, Wednesday, April 22nd as we record this. They won't have it after whatever is going to happen in Florida happens. I don't think.

I think Republicans will successfully gerrymander Florida and take some of that advantage back. But I said I was hoping that Democrats maybe fought back here because ultimately I thought the complete and utter meltdown of the process was the only way for both sides to realize how bad this was for them and then just back off. And that maybe that could start a wave of sort of undoing all these gerrymanders or a wave of these independent commissions.

But we're here now, and Virginia Democrats just did it. And I guess I'm interested to see how you guys are feeling now that the chicken has kind of come home to roost. And we actually got the result that we were talking about in hypothetical terms a few months ago, which is Democrats fought back, Republicans fought back, and Democrats fought back. And now, again, as of today, Democrats have the advantage in this redistricting fight that Trump started. But Virginia, effectively a purple state, is going to have. nine of its ten House representatives be Democrats in the next election, which is pretty unfathomable. Yeah, 10 of it's 11, I believe. But yeah, I remember when I was, the last time we were discussing this,

I think one of the points I was making was it's going to be bad electoral politics for the Democrats long term. I don't think that's right. I think that's been proven somewhat untrue. I was in Charlottesville last month, which is a very, very blue area, I think nationally, not even just in Virginia. And there was nothing but support for this referendum. And the terms were clear and it was about standing up to the king. It was a very no-kings kind of thing. I don't know if that plays outside Northern Virginia as much, but it carried enough. And I think it's very clear that anything you're going to do to oppose Trump,

that you're pitching to a Democratic voting base is going to play. So that was wrong. I do think that the principle of the matter, which I don't know, I think we as a group and maybe you and I directly, Isaac, are just sort of like feeling out. I don't think either of us is like, I am right and you are wrong and this is what's going to happen. It's just you have this theory that my read is like you're sort of 60% on, that you're like the only way out is through.

We have to get this to the extreme and then we're going to put our guns down. And my view is like any step forward. is a step too far. We can't gerrymander anything or else it's just going to make this process more normalized. I don't know. The thing that is clear to me, though, is that we are going more in your direction and we're going to be seeing more states gerrymandar as much as possible. Full steam ahead until 2030. The interesting thing to me is that the Virginia referendum was decadal again. So it was saying until 2030, which was the same as California's. And then after that, they want to revert back to their previous system. I don't know if that's true for the other states. And that's the thing that

I want to try to ask and learn more about. Probably should have known that coming into this. But that's the thing that kind of gives this a bit of a saving grace is that it is time-capped, at least for some of them. And I don't know, I guess I hope you're right because it's clear we're going in your direction. And I'd rather us go so far down that we have to bounce back up rather than go back down and live in the dirt. Yeah, I mean, just quickly, the opportunity, I think, for my position is that redistricting happens every 10 years with the census. So, I mean, like, the census happens, and then there's a wave of all this redistricting.

And so, ideally, yes, what you're saying or what you sort of just alluded to there is the dream scenario from my perspective, which is the next time we hit that big decade mark 2030, there's a census, there's redistricting, reapportionment, reapportionment, all that stuff is in the air. And everybody's looking around going like, the system's screwed. And we've screwed each other and a bunch of people who are in power or losing power. And, you know, there's just sort of this opportunity to lay the weapons down. I know it's hard to imagine, given what we're living through right now.

But also, you know, I think there's an interpersonal play here that is understated, which is there are four Republicans serving in the House right now who are going to lose their jobs in the next election. And there will be a bunch of Republicans who are in Congress after they leave who just lost, like, colleagues and friends that they like working with or that they co-sponsored building. together. And they're not going to be happy about that. And that's happening to Democrats, that's happening to Republicans. And they all know what they're doing is dirty. It is dirty, unethical politics. They are redrawing maps in order to pick voters that they know will assure them electoral victories. Every single one of them in their heart of hearts understands that this is a gross, dirty, unethical practice.

And so I'm sure some of them enjoy that because there are some people in Congress who are psychopaths, but I think a lot of them really are good people who are civil servants and recognize the fact that this is a really, really bad thing. And they don't want that blood on their hands. They don't want that dirt on their hands.

And they want to get out of the business of this whole gerrymander war and just go focus on winning elections in the district that they had and they've always had and they grew up in, et cetera, et cetera. So that's kind of my hope. I think it's

a little polyanish, but I do think that we're not going to get there unless this situation gets worse, which it's getting right now. I mean, the charge of hypocrisy is the kind of easy one to make here. I mean, Democrats, as I surely openly

talked about being concerned about what the president was attempting to do in Texas and it's fair to say that he kind of started this latest round of gerrymandering in that respect. And at this point, it's kind of made a bet and lost. But I also think that Democrats really didn't have much of a choice in terms of what their voters wanted from them. They want to win races.

They don't want to lose to Republicans. And if it takes, kind of abandoning your principles in the short run, this is how they would explain it, in order to secure power so that you can ensure at least that the other guys don't win, that is what voters, the Democratic voters, kind of expect them to do at this point. I think the question here becomes whether or not there's going to be any sort of serious, formal, national push because it would have to be national to actually do something about gerrymandering across the country in all these different states where people, again, have these strongholds, or you have a purple state like Virginia, but in California, you had a Democratic

stronghold. You knew that you could abandon your independent redistricting situation for a and make it a bit more partisan in order to try to achieve this good outcome for them electorally in the short run. I do think it would be better for the country in general if we were to make this a more independent process and there wasn't this attempt to try to rig the system. I do think personally when I look at this, it would be very hard for me as a voter casting a ballot in a state that had just done this to look at whoever was in office and think in a generous way about them and about the quality of their work, if you'd known that they just kind of engineered the race

in a particular way, so it would be easier for them to win. One hopes that that kind of narrative is something that will actually matter to voters a couple of years from now. But I think in the short run, like Virginia Democrats are just happy that their guys are winning. And it'll sting for Republicans for a while,

but I think that's the case. And I think it's very much the same sort of thing in California. And in general, nationally, Democrats will be happy. We won this round. I do think if there was a sustained effort that there might be a possibility of getting some kind of national policy passed here, but reality is that Congress doesn't get much done.

And I don't think they're going to get punished for not doing anything. So I suspect that this is the status quo, this is kind of where we are. And on top of that, the people that are going to be coming in to represent those new seats, those districts, that might not survive more than two years, who are those people going to be? What are they going to do in Congress for two years?

Do we think that they're going to be bipartisan and reach across the aisle to accomplish something? No chance. We're going to be seeing more gridlock because of this. And then after that, maybe we get like a come to Jesus moment and return to sanity and more redistricting efforts go on that are sane and nonpartisan in a true sense.

But I actually legitimately, I'm not certain that that can even be done at a federal level. I think that's the kind of thing that maybe has to be done at the state level, like constitutionally. I mean, I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but I think that's one of the reasons why we haven't seen a push at the federal level is states are in charge of during their own districts. And, I mean, maybe there can be a law that oversees that process

in a way that's neutral, but I'm skeptical about that. Yeah, for what it's worth, the thing that seems to be, happening now is Democrats' new talking point is that Virginia voters are interested in a fair national map. And that's the thing that they're hammering is it's not about how gerrymandered any particular state is or what an individual state is doing. It's that the national map is fair and balanced. And so if somebody gerrymanders in Texas, Virginia is justified in gerrymandering because they're balancing the national map. That's sort of the language that I've seen

minority leader Hakeem Jeffries use, and it's getting echoed by some other Democratic leaders and politicians. What's the term for that from the Cold War? It's like balance of chaos. I can't remember what it is, but it feels very cold war to me. Yeah, there is a...

I mean, yes. There's an entire vibe here to me, that's very leveraging the system, non-kinetic warfare. They're all just pulling as many levers as they possibly can. And doing it in a fairly... Mutually sure destruction. That's it. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And doing it in a fairly organized fashion where the tacticians on both sides are hard at work trying to defeat the others.

So, yeah, again, I'm hopeful that we're at the beginning of the end here in the gerrymandering wars, but once it ends, what we'll need is an actual national push to undo some of the damage. And I'm not totally sure where that's going to come from or where it's going to originate, but somebody's going to have to step up and do it. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right. We've been talking about a lot of the bad people doing bad things. things for the last 15 minutes. So I'm going to interject briefly with our Good Guy of the

Week segment because it's a good one this week. I presume John will play some sweet music right now. All right. Hey, this good guy of the week is a genuine good guy hero of the week, which is the Pauls Valley High School principal, Kirk Moore. Did you guys see this video in Oklahoma? He wrestled a school shooter down to the ground, actually suffered a gunshot wound to the leg in the process of doing it. And then was Crown Prom King earlier this week after

taking the action to, which, not to make too much light of the situation, but it is funny to kind of imagine like the senior in high school who was so prepared to win prom king and then just lost it to the principal. That's all I've been thinking about. The video of him with his wife, who's also prom.

Queen. It's just amazing to me. Yeah, yeah. You know there's some, like, the captain of the football team who's got a really nice hairline and it's just this tall, handsome senior in high school who's just like, I can't believe I didn't get Prom King this year. He's the real good guy of the week, taking that loss graciously. Whoever that, yeah, whoever that layup, Problem King was. I'm just going to read this excerpt here really quick. Authorities say that in the Columbine-inspired attack, the shooter entered the school lobby with two semi-automatic handguns, ordered people to the ground, and attempted to shoot a student before his gun malfunctioned, and he was stopped by more

the president. You know, this is movie-type stuff. Takes real courage in the real world. So kudos to our good guy of the week who has inspired me that maybe there's good guys out there to stop gerrymandering. That's what I think is if we still have people, if we still have people who step up in front of an automatic, semi-automatic loaded rifle. I'm sure there are some people out there who can stop gerrymandering. You hear that, Congress and state representatives. Gentlemen, any words for Mr. Principal Kirk Moore? I mean, yeah.

Right. Can you imagine? That's unbelievable. You watch that video. You really don't get the sense that he was being particularly calculating at all. He just, he saw a threat. He leapt into action. He was trying to protect his team and his kids in that school. And you would hope that there's someone like that around anytime something like this happens.

And unfortunately, these things do in fact happen. But yeah, no. I mean, I think this is perhaps the best good guy of the week yet, Isaac. So, yes, good. Thanks. Yeah, I'm, you know what, it's a pleasure to go searching for these people in the midst of the chaos of the news. I did, I will say, back to getting to the real world, or the, this is the real world, back getting to the more cynical world. I did go looking for some Democrats who were opposed to the gerrymandering effort in Virginia because I thought that would be a good guy the weekend.

They were not easy to find. Yeah. All right, well, before we get out of here, I do want to spend a little bit of time talking about the latest on Iran. We've got a few minutes left. and we did a whole no-Iran episode last week. So there have been some developments here recently. Most notably, I think, is that we hit the Tuesday deadline, Tuesday night deadline where the ceasefire was going to end.

President Trump extended the ceasefire seemingly with no real progress in negotiations, which I don't know. I say that a little bit flippantly. It's not meant to be a criticism. I just don't actually know what happened. I think the clock ran out and he didn't want to do whatever is implied by the end of a ceasefire.

So he extended the ceasefire. He was threatening to bomb. Yeah, immediately start bombing. Right, but he didn't. And we didn't really get an explanation of why. I mean, he said I got urging from the Pakistani prime minister and whatever else. Like, yeah, of course they don't want the war to start again.

Again, I'm not complaining. I don't want the war to start again. I hope it's a permanent ceasefire. We need to figure out a way out of this mess. But there was a trip that was going to happen with J.D. Vance to Islamabad. Then there wasn't a trip. And then there was. And now I'm not really sure it's going to happen.

But it wasn't on the timeline that we were told it was going to happen. The negotiation seemed stalled a bit. We got a pretty important report today from the financial times that these Iran tankers, at least 34 tankers with links to Iran have now bypassed the U.S. blockade since it began, which until this report came out, we were mostly getting our information from the White House, which had been saying that the blockade

had completely stopped all these oil tankers from leaving the Strait of Hormuz and going wherever they wanted to go. I saw this morning this very odd story with Trump negotiating the release of these eight women that Iran was threatening to hang, I say odd because the president was posting about it and sharing images of the eight women

that were clearly AI-generated women from some random Twitter account online. I don't think they were the real women who were at threat of being killed by the Iranian regime. It's this whole very bizarre thing. And then he posted again later in the day saying that a few of them were going to

prison and the other ones are being released and he appreciated the, I guess, the IRGC or whoever was going to carry out these executions for not doing it. It seems to be trying to gin up some sort of goodwill projection of we're talking and we're working things out. Any thoughts about where we are or what's coming next? I mean, I'd love to get you guys read on this situation. I'm a little dumbfounded. Like I just don't totally understand exactly where we are in the timeline or what we may be getting in the next week or two. And in context here, do we have a timetable for the latest ceasefire? Like, is it just kind of, you were extending it, but we don't even know when this will

end at this point? Yeah, I don't think we got a particular timeline. A lot of the stuff that I've been seeing is a lot of the reporting that's out there that I think the administration is quietly planting seeds with various. media organizations, is that this might be another 30 or 60 days to get a deal. I mean, this stuff does not happen quickly. You know, the JCPOA took years and years of negotiations. Even some random oil fights that we've had with Iran have taken months to resolve. This is, you know, we launched an actual war and killed the entire, you know, top level of the Iranian regime.

this is going to take some time. I think even just figuring out who's in control and who the right people to negotiate with are going to take some time. But yeah, as far as I know, I've not seen a particular official deadline. I'm sure Trump said something about, you know, a couple weeks or whatever else.

But clearly that, the truth social stuff, I don't think is actually written in stone. It appears that that is the president shooting from the hip, which is why I don't really. really loves social media diplomacy, but, you know, that's kind of what we have because he's calling the shots, clearly. Yeah. Is it even a suspense this time?

I guess is the next question. Yeah, it's not really clear. It's like kind of informally extended. I mean, look, the most, there are many things here. One of the more interesting things, I think, is that Donald Trump had been clearly trying to leverage this kind of perception of him as someone who's unhinged and completely unpredictable in a way that would perhaps benefit him and get the Iranians to come to the table, and they just don't believe it. They seem to have a fairly sophisticated understanding of U.S.

politics, which is to say, all you have to know is that this is not a popular conflict with the American people. The midterms are coming. The president of the United States does not want to be in this circumstance for any reason whatsoever, and they don't have anything to lose by stretching this out as long as possible. Their perspective seems to be that the United States is going to capitulate first. You know, is this economically? Are there hardships for them? Yes, sure. Politically, is this challenging for them? Kind of, but also what's going to happen? There would have to be a revolution in order for them to have some sort of political consequences because it's not like there's an election in the offing. So the question becomes, like, what is the United States

willing to suffer here in retreat in a circumstance where they're just not willing to do much more than they are currently doing, which is enforcing this somewhat porous blockade, given the opportunity, like something else bad might happen. There's been repeated reports that the straight is being mined again. All of those things could perhaps lead to escalations. And I think the administration knows that too.

So the question becomes, what does backing out of this in a way that looks respectable seem like? And I talked to actually Michelle Goldberg from the New York Times earlier today and kind of put that question to, her. And she suggested, you know, essentially, you're trying to get back to where Barack Obama left things. Like you renegotiate effectively the same deal, probably a little worse. And if you're the Trump administration, you try to sell it as the best deal that anyone could have ever struck. And maybe the gravy on top of that is that you've decimated their conventional military

abilities at this point. But that was never really the most urgent concern where Iran is concerned. With Iran, it's always been about their capability to eventually develop some sort of nuclear armaments. And there's kind of short-term abilities to create trouble for Israel and some of their other people in the region through some of their proxies. But that capability had already been severely decrated by the conflict with Israel and Palestine. So it's very difficult, I think, for the administration to spin this in a good direction. It just seemed to have miscalculated. This was not Venezuela. And it doesn't appear that it's going to turn into Venezuela.

I will say it's maybe a bit of an overstatement to say Iran has nothing to lose. I know you walk that back pretty quickly. But I think it's more like the timelines work differently when you are dealing with one side here has political pressures. And those timelines are shorter. And one side does not have political pressures. And if they don't feel like they have as much. connection to the pain of their armed forces and population, then they're going to suffer them and not really feel it at that top level of government. So the leverage that one side is

exerting isn't getting felt as much as the other. But if you stack up like the real terms of damages, Iran's suffering far more damage. But the leverage is just like completely mismatched. And when you when you add up that equation, it's tough to make it like not come out as a stalemate. Like you've got one small lever that is. like moving a ton of weight and another really long lever that's moving a small amount and they just seem like they're

like those forces aren't going to pitch in one direction or another anytime soon. I just want to give you guys to I think disparating pieces of breaking news here as we're chatting and I pull this out. One is the headline the splash on the New York Times right now is that Iran again

tightens its grip on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Traffic in the Strait has all but halted as Iran renews its attack striking two vessels on Wednesday. More than 300 ships linked to Iran have passed through the strait since the war began. So a confirmation that Iran is still getting its own ships through the U.S. Navy blockade and also striking other ships that have come through. S&P Global Market Intelligence said that today just one ship passed through the Strait of Hormuz that was not an Iranian ship. So that's one. And then the other was a report that just broke from the Washington Post from the reporter Dan Lamath, who is, I believe that's how he says his name, Dan Lamath. I apologize,

Dan, if I'm mispronouncing your last name, because I love your work. He does a lot of military affairs writing at the Washington Post and said, exclusive, it could take six months to fully clear the Strait of Hormuz of mines deployed by the Iranian military and any such operation is unlikely to be carried out until the U.S. war with Iran ends. The Pentagon has informed Congress today. It's an assessment that means the conflict's economic impact could extend late into this year or beyond. I just like everything, again, you know, I said this last week on the, on in the newsletter and on the podcast, it all just points to this extended quagmire that I don't really know how we get out of, but we're in the middle of a ceasefire,

Trump's making all these threats, Iran's bombing ships coming through the straight and one ship got through today, and now we're talking about a six-month-long operation of fully clear mines after the war has ended. So if the war ended today, officially six months from then, I just, yeah, I mean, it just doesn't seem great. So we'll see where this takes us,

But again, since we spoke about this last on the podcast two weeks ago, I've only become more convinced that we are in deep, deep trouble, and that the exit plan here is not clear or obvious to me, and it's probably not going to be smooth. And it's going to be an albatross on the president's neck in the midterm elections. I should say it's going to be an albatross on Republicans next because they're the ones who are going to bear the brunt of this. It's really going to hurt Trump's campaign for the next.

Peace Prize. Yeah, yeah, for the FIFA Peace Prize. Well, maybe the Medal of Honor. Maybe he'll finally be able to award himself the Medal of Honor, as he suggested. Although, again, he did say it was a joke or someone suggested it was a joke. I think he said it was a good, that's a great,

that's a classic Trump joke. I'm going to give myself a Medal of Honor. I'm kidding, but I might. I'm kidding, but I'm only not doing it because it's illegal. So Obama do it, and I mean, but still, I love me. Yeah. All right, gentlemen. Well, I promise you guys a tight ship today.

Camille and I are both hitting the road and getting some travel in this evening. So I'm going to be a good show manager and bring us in to the grievances, which is our sacred, safe space where we get to complain about the seemingly mundane but very, very important things that happened to us on a weekly basis. John Law, please play the music for us, my friend. The airing of grievances. Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal. Let me think for a second, actually. I didn't come prepared today. Everything going too well for you too, see?

I was going to say, speaking of safe spaces, we should start bowling, Camille, to come up with something. I see you smiling, though. I've had such a good week. I can tell. No, I got like seven hours of sleep. last night, eight hours of the night before that. I'm, I am feeling better than I've felt in a very long time. John, cut us Mike.

I suppose my grievances, it can't last. And I don't really know what to say about except for that. I am unfortunately pretty bicossal these days. Time zones still screwing me up. But I think time zones have already been a grievance of mine in the past. And I'm not really sure what you can do about that. Planetarily. You know what I mean?

We need maybe Sonic flights, something along those lines, supersonic airframes for commercial use. It's tough to continue to do this with you, I think. I'm also generally not like a person who looks for things to complain about, but every time we come into this, you just like, I love your positive spin. I love your optimism. I'm sorry. But you're breaking the show.

You can't even get a grievance out. without turning in us, I'll feel good story. All right, all right, go ahead. You're out, man. Well, I guess I'll have two small ones. The first is, as you may be able to tell, like, it is allergy season. Allergy season has started for me.

So that's more of a grievance for John, I think, who's had to cut out my sniffling throughout the show as I've tried to mute my mic during my sneezes, but have not been successful with all of them. So allergies are terrible. It's kind of awful that our immune system just gets bored and it's like, I'm going to attack myself. And then that just happens to you for like two months.

And you're like, what's that? A flower? It's a threat. Yeah. And then you get into a defense mode. It's not a good feature. It's a bug in the system. But I'm going through that.

But more, more, I think, aggrieving me in the past couple weeks has been, I've gotten a couple of these emails recently, which is a good prank, whoever is doing it. I appreciate the bit. It's easy to do. You just sign somebody. up for spammy newsletters and then you just get them and there's nothing you can do about it. And you just unsubscribe and hope that they go away.

But I got one called History Facts. This looks like a legit newsletter, I guess, but I do not sign up for this. The first email that I got from them was about the history of alcohol and beer and brewing, which I know about and their facts are incorrect. And it's just annoying to open a newsletter that's like, did you know that brewing dates back to 3,500 BC? And I'm like, oh, no, it was actually much, much earlier than that. So you should double check that.

And then have to scroll past like several ads about how this one Norwegian method can help me lose my mommy tummy. And I don't want this until I can get to the unsubscribe and cancel. Like, it is nice to work for an organization that will not spam you. but I wish that whoever it is that is signing me up for these newsletters. And this is just one, and you know what you're doing, stop. And in fact, if you want to target W-I-L-L-R-Tangle.com, you would love to learn more about pseudoscience and fake facts about the history of beer and how to lose a tummy.

I'm sure of it. I love that. Really nice. Yeah, I cannot stand the amount of... I mean, my personal inbox is not functioning. Like I literally can't use it now. I think I have to start a whole new email address or something because it's just so broken. So that's in my near future is to just completely abandon that email.

It's just all spam. My complaint this week is about a new suburban reality that I realize. I've spent some time on the show talking about how nice the suburbs have been, how the transition's been going really well. And it has largely been going well. But the town that I moved to in New Jersey, they do something that I find incredibly maddening, which is they have a recycling schedule that is every week. It's one day a week. But every other week, it is either plastic and cans and glass or it's cardboard and paper, et cetera. And basically what that means, at least in my house, especially right after you've moved, is that you get a two-week buildup of cardboard boxes from the new things you've bought or packages or whatever that don't fit in your recycling and end up being basically littered all over your porch or lawn or wherever you try and, you know,

hide them until the recycling day comes once every two weeks. Or you have a recycling bin that's just overflowing with cans and plastic, etc., etc. And I have a big 30-gallon recycling bin outside, one of the big guys. And after two weeks, with a household full of people who are addicted to Seltzer and Diet Coke and a baby who eats unlimited amounts of berries that all come in little plastic containers, like that thing is overflowing. And I don't understand why they can't, like every other place I've ever lived my entire life, just take both the plastic and the tin and the glass and the cardboard and the paper all on the

same day once a week. I very much don't like this system. And I've had to say under my breath a few times that, you know, recycling's a hoax and I'm mad that I have to do this anyway. That's a separate grievance that I don't want to get into. But I'm trying to play by the rules. I'm trying to be a good member of this new community I'm in. And I hate this system. And I hope. it ends and I will be bringing it up. And my local city council board town meeting, whatever, I can't wait to be one of those annoying local political people who shows up for those things. You know what you could do. Wait for that video to go viral. Yeah. Yeah. Before then, I think something that's kind of cool, I don't know if I want to say cool,

this is really dorky, but you can tour your local recycling or waste facility. And it's actually kind of interesting, and they probably have answers to that. Maybe they're not compelling answers, and you can have more fodder for your grievance that you bring to the city council, but that might be worthwhile, and you might get the answer to your grievance there. Have you done this, it is a good question. It is a good, it is a good, it's a good lead-in to just say that, I think the reason they probably do this is because it's way more efficient to just separate them at pickup versus separate them at the facility. That's the conclusion that I came to is we just have a day where we get all the same stuff and then we have another day where we get all the same stuff. So maybe there's a good economic justification or something efficiency in there.

But I hate it nonetheless and I'll stand by that till the end of time. You're right. It's an American to hate. It's my right, baby. All right, fellas, I promise a 515 end. It's 5.16 p.m. Eastern Time. It's Wednesday, April 22nd. So anything that we said that's dated by the time you hear this podcast on Thursday is John Lull's fault for not being faster editing.

And we'll see you guys next week, I guess. I have a lot of people under the bus this week. All right. Crowd and under here. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wohl. 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 Canute, and Bailey Saul.

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.