Tangle - The attacks in Michigan, Virginia, New York, and Texas.

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

Over the past two weeks, a series of attacks has taken place across the United States, with suspects allegedly linked to Islamic terror groups or ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.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!Our latest.In the last few days, we’ve published a couple of subscribers-only editions that you may have missed. Last Friday, Senior Editor Will Kaback published the latest installment of his “Whatever happened to…” series with a look at net neutrality. Then, over the weekend, Executive Editor Isaac Saul interviewed The New York Times’s David French about James Talarico, Trump, and writing for The Times. Thank you for subscribing to Tangle and supporting the work that goes behind special editions like those. If you’d rather watch, check out Isaac’s conversation with French in full on our YouTube channel here!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think could have prevented the recent attacks? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Isaac Saul and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be covering the recent spate of domestic terror attacks here in the United States. Going to have John Law break down the main story, and I'm going to be here with my take. Before you jump in today, though, I want to give you a quick reminder that we have a couple awesome additions of the podcast that you guys might have missed. Over the weekend, we published a member-only interview between myself and David French, the New York Times columnist and host of advisory opinions, probably one of the most well-read conservatives in the country right now in terms of people reading his work. He is also a very well-read guy. Highly recommend the interview.

It was super interesting. we talked about the James Tala Rico controversy, which he was in the middle of his views on the legality of the war in Iran, all sorts of really good stuff that I think is worth plugging into. Also, last week, Senior Editor Will Kback revisited net neutrality in a member's only edition that is very much worth your time. I encourage you to go check it out. All right, with that, I'm going to send it over to John for today's main story, and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac, and welcome everybody. Hope y'all had a wonderful weekend.

It is a new week, which means another fresh opportunity to do something positive, to influence the world. So let's bring the best of ourselves to everything that we do in the hopes of planting some seeds that yield some fresh and positive opportunities for everybody. All right, everybody, here are your quick hits for today. First up, President Donald Trump is reportedly working to assemble a group of countries. to reopen the Strait of Hermuz amid rising oil and gas prices. The effort may include an operation to seize Karg Island,

a critical Iranian oil export hub that the U.S. struck on Friday. Number two, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr suggested news networks could lose their broadcast licenses for airing hoaxes and news distortions about the conflict in Iran. The comments came in response to a post

by President Donald Trump criticizing the media's coverage. Number three, a federal judge blocked subpoena served by the Justice Department to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, ruling the prosecutors had produced essentially zero evidence that Powell had committed a crime. The Justice Department is investigating Powell for his management of the central bank's renovation of its Washington headquarters. Number four, South Korea's military said North Korea fired over 10 ballistic missiles toward the sea off the country's east coast as the U.S. and South Korean militaries conducted drills on Saturday.

And number five, President Trump plans to sign an executive order on Monday, creating a benefit Fraud Task Force, chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance. The group will seek to develop a national strategy against fraud in state and federal programs. A Michigan community comes together in a moment of healing. Worshippers from the Temple, Israel, and West Bloomfield gathered Friday night for services. On Thursday, a man crashed a pickup truck, packed with explosive into the synagogue, and started shooting. 140 children, teachers, staffers were inside at the time. Moments ago, Austin police releasing police body camp footage of their emergency response to Sunday's deadly mass shooting. It's being looked at as an act of domestic terrorism.

Today, the FBI responded, along with our federal state and local law enforcement partners to Old Dominion University. What we know now is there's one deceased victim and two at the hospital. I'd like to acknowledge the students who showed extreme bravery and courage by containing the shooting. and stabbing for their loss of life. Over the past two weeks, a series of attacks has taken place across the United States, with suspects allegedly linked to Islamic terror groups or ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. And editors note that Tangle does not name perpetrators of attacks because of the well-documented contagion effect.

On Thursday, a man drove his truck into a synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, then opened fire on the building. According to authorities, synagogue security engaged the assailant, who then shot himself inside his vehicle. One security guard was taken to the hospital after being struck by the vehicle, but no one else was injured. The suspect was born in Lebanon, entered the U.S. on an immigrant visa in 2011, and was granted citizenship in 2016. The suspect had lost several members of his family, including his brother, niece and nephew in Lebanon in an Israeli air strike earlier in March. The Israeli military said the suspect's brother targeted in the airstrike was a commander of Hezbollah.

Also on Thursday, a gunman opened fire in a classroom where Army Reserve Officers' training corps members were gathered at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. The suspect allegedly shouted Alhu Akbar before the attack, killing one person and injuring two others. According to authorities, students in the classroom subdued and killed the shooter. The suspect was identified as a native of Sierra Leone, who became a naturalized U.S. citizen and served in the U.S. Army National Guard. In 2017, he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for attempting to support the Islamic State. He was released from prison in 2024. On Saturday, March 7th, police subdued and arrested two men from Pennsylvania who allegedly attempted to detonate two improvised explosive devices outside Gracie Mansion,

the New York City mayoral residence. The IEDs did not detonate and no one was injured. The attempted attack occurred during an anti-Islam protest led by far-right influencer Jake Lang that had spiraled into counter-protests. After their arrest, the suspects reportedly told police they are supporters of ISIS and were partially inspired by the terror group. Finally, on March 1st, a gunman opened fired on patrons of a bar in Austin, Texas, killing three people and injuring over a dozen others. The alleged shooter, who was killed by police, was a Senegalese national and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2013. According to authorities, he was wearing a sweatshirt that said, Property of Allah, and an undershirt with an Iranian flag theme when he carried out the attack.

In the wake of last week's incidents, three Republican lawmakers published posts on X focused on the attack's alleged connections to Islam. Senator Tommy Tuberville, the Republican from Alabama, reposted a picture of New York City Mayor Zoramamam Dani next to an image of 9-11 attacks, writing, The Enemy is Inside the Gates. Representative Randy Fine, the Republican from Florida, said, we need more Islamophobia, not less. Representative Andy Ogles, the Republican from Tennessee, posted, Muslims don't belong in American society. Today, we'll cover these attacks and their link to heightened terror threats in the United States with views from the right and the left. And then, Isaac's tape.

We'll be right back after this quick break. All right. First up, let's start with what the right is saying. Many on the right say the attacks underscore the need for a broad rethinking of immigration policy. Some criticize the media's coverage of the attacks. Others say modern terror threats increasingly come from inside the U.S. In the federalist, Brianna Lyman argued, this week's terror attacks prove immigration isn't good just because it's legal.

On Thursday, an assailant, a Sierra Leone National, opened fire at Virginia's Old Dominion University, killing Brandon Shaw. The man came here legally. That same legality didn't stop 41-year-old, another assailant, a Lebanese national who came to this country in 2011 and was naturalized in 2016 from crashing his car into a Michigan synagogue on Thursday while armed with a rifle, Lyman said. Meanwhile, New Yorkers were spared all. on Saturday after two radical Islamists, whose parents immigrated here from Afghanistan and Turkey, allegedly tried to bomb anti-Islam protesters outside of New York City Mayor Zon Ramam Dhani's official residence. For decades, Washington has operated under the false pretense that immigration is objectively good,

so long as it is done legally. That assumption has led us to suicidal decisions, Lyman Rout. It has also led to the displacing of American workers and students, as well as a disruption of national unity and cohesion. As these terrorist attacks show, legality alone does not make someone American in culture and norms, nor does it ensure that these immigrants share the same political and religious values that underpin our republic.

National Review's editors wrote, The media can't hide the truth about the Gracie Mansion bomb attempt. There is no doubt as to their motivations. Both men spoke freely and unrepentantly to police at the scene, proudly claiming inspiration from ISIS and stating that they had intended their terror atrocity to be bigger than Boston, the editors said. Yet one would know none of this were one to go only by the headlines and framing devices

the mainstream media have consistently used to explain this story to American readers who, like it or not, primarily consume their news in headline rather than article form. It is impossible not to notice that all of these headlines, or countless others from similarly situated media outlets, are carefully crafted to avoid stating a politically inconvenient in truth. Islamic terrorists came horrifyingly close to detonating bombs in a crowd of protesters. Instead, our attention is directed toward the hateful nature of the rally, the editors wrote. The media are consistently choosing not to report on the attack outside Gracie Mansion honestly, instead employing all of their creative writing skills to craft craven,

obfuscatory headlines that aim to deceive by omission and suggestion. In the Wall Street Journal, Kevin Cohen said, terrorists are now often made in the USA. Western counterterrorism operated for decades on a simple premise. Threats came from somewhere else. They crossed borders. They arrived with suspicious travel histories, fraudulent documents, or known affiliations.

Stop them there and the interior remain secure. That premise is no longer holding. The days since the Iran war began have seen at least four apparent terrorist attacks in the U.S., Cohen wrote. Increasingly, the danger emerges inside societies that still treat admission as the end of the security process rather than the beginning of one. Seen one by one, these incidents look like separate crimes, but they share several threads, lawful presence, few warning signals, online radicalization, and attacks carried out without

the fingerprints of an organized network, Cohen said. Radicalization rarely follows a single path. For some, ideology comes first. For others, the trigger is grievance, isolation, or personal instability, which gradually hardens inside online echo chambers, where resentment circulates freely. Social media has accelerated the process, allowing extremist narratives to spread quickly and widely. All right, that is for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. Many on the left expressed concern over the rise in number of domestic attacks.

Some note the danger posed by terror attacks and anti-Muslim bigotry. Others criticize Republicans for their shifting national security policies. The Newsday editorial board said, The terrifying Temple Israel Old Dominion attacks bring home danger. A pair of terrifying incidents Thursday brought home the fear and uncertainty prevalent on the global stage, leaving Americans rightfully feeling more vulnerable and concerned for what could come next, the board wrote. The ongoing conflict has opened the door to increased radicalization and terrorism, and to the potential for more terror to come.

Anti-Semitic violence has intensified too, with active shooter incidents at three Toronto synagogues, an explosion outside a Belgium synagogue, and a security incident outside a Norway synagogue, just in the last two weeks. While those threats are real, nothing excuses sweeping racist rhetoric that targets Muslims coming from those like Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, who Thursday posted to social media,

the enemy is inside the gates, accompanied by a retweet of a photo of New York City Mayor Zoroamam Dhani, paired with a photo of the September 11th terror attacks. That's unacceptable, the board said. Radicalized individuals don't represent entire religions, just as synagogues and Jewish schools don't represent Israel or its military.

In USA Today, Sarah Becanyo argued, don't let the Gracie Mansion bomb scare obscure the far-right's danger. The news media has been, rightfully, focused on the potential harm these IEDs could have caused. Political violence is never the answer, no matter the views being espoused. But the presence of far-right Islamophobic protesters in New York City is also deplorable and failing to get the attention it deserves,

regardless of how the protest ended, Pekanyo said. The protests, titled Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City, Stop New York City Public Muslim Prayer, was organized by far-right influencer Jake Lang. Lang roasted a pig in front of Gracie Mansion as part of the protest. Lang presumably lives in Florida. He's running to replace former U.S. Senator Marco Rubio there. Yet he's traveled north to spew hate in New York, McGeanier, wrote.

It's pathetic that someone would come all the way from Florida because they're outraged that New York City has a Muslim mayor. The entire weekend was full of chaos. but that chaos could have been avoided if Lang just stayed in Florida. In the American prospect, James Barada wrote, Playing politics with national security is a dangerous game. National security experts contend that geopolitical escalations amplify the risk of lone wolf extremism,

in which self-radicalized actors commit violent, ideologically motivated attacks without material support from organized terrorist networks, Barada said. But the ongoing erosion of counterterrorism resources and expertise, recent shift in priorities across U.S. intelligence agencies toward immigration and historic lack of oversight over the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, which has developed a reputation for rungfully targeting activists and communities of color, appear to be softening the nation's counterterrorism readiness. Apart from the shift in priorities across U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, the Trump administration appears to be diminishing the nation's

counterterrorism capabilities in other ways, Barada wrote. Days before Trump ordered U.S. Central Command to initiate Operation Epic Fury. FBI director Cash Patel reportedly fired a dozen agents, analysts, and staff tasked with monitoring threats from Iran due to their involvement in the federal investigation into Trump's alleged retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for the left and the writer saying, which brings us to my take. Unfortunately, we're catching up on a lot of ground here all at once.

So to start, I think it's worth taking these attacks in the order we reported them in the introduction and thinking about the common threads from the stories. Let's start with the man who drove his truck into a synagogue in Bloomfield Township, Michigan. Obviously, the congregants at that temple were innocent, and they did nothing to provoke such an attack. At the same time, the relevance of the family members this person lost in an Israeli air strike in Lebanon is also obvious. When I say violence begets violence and we have no way to truly understand how war will create more extremists, this is a good example of what I mean. The suspect's brother was reportedly a commander of Hezbollah, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization. I'd like to imagine our federal law enforcement agencies could have identified someone like that as a threat, but it's hard to imagine exactly how they could have stopped him without some kind of predictive surveillance apparatus that borders on pre-crime.

or if you take the killer's purported rationale at face value, I suppose preventing Israel from bombing Lebanon is a solution, which is something we obviously don't control. At Old Dominion, a person with a record of trying to help the Islamic State opened fire in a classroom, killing one person and injuring two others. The man reportedly yelled al-Ahul-Aqbar before his attack but was killed while being subdued, so we won't know what really drove him over the edge or why he targeted the classroom. The shooter had previously been sentenced to 11 years in prison for attempting to supply support to ISIS. It's easy to fault the fact he was on the street, but by the same token, 11 years is a long time. He served nine years in prison and was still under court-mandated probation. He was also a U.S. veteran, a naturalized U.S. citizen, and enrolled for online classes at Old Dominion. In the Gracie Mansion attack, two young men who claimed to be supporters of the Islamic State Terror Group showed up in Manhattan,

with the stated intent to create an attack worse than the Boston Marathon bombing. The men drove to New York with materials for a homemade bomb they bought in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where I grew up. While the corporate media is truly embarrassing and biased reporting on the story led many to believe mayor Zohramam Dani was being targeted, in reality, the two men were allegedly going after a far-right rally titled Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City, Stop New York City Public Muslim Prayer. Both men said they were inspired by ISIS materials sent to their phones.

Finally, the Austin shooting, which occurred just a couple of days after some of my team and I attended a conference a few streets over. The shooter acquired his guns legally in 2017, was a naturalized citizen, and was unknown to officers before the act of violence. Their reports he may have had a mental illness. What stands out to you when you look at all these cases? It's easy, as some people have done, to simply point to the association between all these attackers and Islam, then chalk all this up to a failure of our pluralistic society. Or alternatively, that the attacks were carried out by mostly immigrants or naturalized citizens, meaning that our immigration system requires better vetting.

But this is a simplistic response that would fail to actually prevent these attacks. Each of the naturalized citizens were radicalized after being naturalized, which means a vetting process to become citizens would not have stopped them. Again, I think it is a good and reasonable argument that we should have denaturalized the suspect in the old dominion attack, or that maybe denaturalization windows might be larger if you were outside the five-year period for committing crime that can trigger denaturalization.

At the same time, I think it's equally valid to say that we treat naturalized citizens the same way we treat all citizens. That means not solving our problems through deporting them, but through putting them through our justice system the same way we would a U.S. born citizen. What's more interesting to me is that almost always, when we cover acts of mass violence, the warning signs become immediately obvious. Social media posts, family members throwing up red flags, a history of violence, an encounter with the police. But so far, those typical warning signs were sparser and less obvious than usual. The strongest warning sign was the Michigan attacker,

reportedly not showing up for work in days before the attack. Otherwise, law enforcement would have had almost no early indicators to go on. The Old Dominion attacker had only his prior record. The Gracie Mansion would be bombers, only their recent search history, and the Austin shooter, his history of mental illness. I don't think we'd want the feds to use any of those to justify investigations. And, of course, it's hard to separate these ideologically motivated acts of violence from the larger spate of violent mass shootings in our country, which are typically carried out by disaffected young men, often homegrown and white, with no immigration story and no relationship to any foreign country. To me, solving for the four stories in today's newsletter with stricter immigration

would be just as ineffective as trying to address homegrown violence with reducing exposure to violent video games. If you're in the mood to be maximally cynical, some very dark jokes online about this kind of violence being the most quintessentially American thing an immigrant could do in 2026 is really not that far off. We are uniquely bad in this respect, and the root cause is not immigration or Islam, even if this spate of attacks has been carried out by Islamic people with relevant immigration stories. To be direct, I'd feel much more optimistic about where we were as a nation if resolving mass violence like this were as simple as restricting immigration. But I'm not. What actually makes me despondent about the mass acts of violence, both the ones we've

witnessed in recent weeks and the ones we've witnessed for the last two decades is the conglomeration of all the issues that create them. Online radicalization, the loneliness epidemic, the disaffected young males, the Islamic extremism, the far right extremism, the terribly enforced gun laws, the culture of glorifying violence, the mental health issues, and so on. And for the recent attacks, consider some of the uniquely wonderful things about America that are being used against us for evil. Our robust freedoms of speech and assembly allow a far-right group to gather in an anti-Islam rally outside the Muslim mayor's resident in our biggest, most diverse city, which predictably antagonizes a counter-protest. Then a pair of teenagers allegedly radicalized by freely disseminated information show up ready to inflict mass damage.

the brother of a Hezbollah commander is welcome to our society as an individual, one able to live freely without the weight of his family association, and he uses that freedom to retaliate against innocent American Jews for a military strike conducted by a foreign country in a foreign country. A naturalized citizen who once tried to support ISIS is told he can return to civil society after he serves an appropriate punishment and leverages that opportunity at redemption to murder a teacher and injure several others. Even the Austin shooter, also a naturalized citizen, benefits from our gun laws once he becomes naturalized in the spirit of being treated equally as any other citizen and he possesses a firearm for nine years without using it illegally until he does. How do we address these problems without uprooting the values we espouse and often live out as a nation? How do we protect ourselves without dynamiting the very pluralistic society these values produced and yet are now being abused? How do we turn our attention here with a giant foreign entanglement occupying the federal government's time? And what leaders are going to offer solutions that don't involve mass surveillance or ignoring the religiously motivated violence or violating our civil liberties

or widespread immigration crackdowns or revoking gun rights? It's not that I don't know the answers. It's just that I can't even realistically imagine a holistic solution in this political moment. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Hans in Glendale, Wisconsin. Han said, while all our eyes are fixated on Iran, there is also fighting going on between Iran's neighbors, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

What is this conflict about? And is it connected to the U.S.-Israel campaign at all? Okay, so on February 26, Afghanistan's Taliban government launched an attack on Pakistani military bases near their shared border, claiming retaliation for Pakistani strikes on Afghan bases several days prior. Pakistan responded by bombing Afghan border provinces and the capital of Kabul the first time Pakistan has ever launched attacks on Afghanistan's major cities. Pakistan's defense minister described the situation as an open war. Details about casualties and civilian deaths are divergent and difficult to verify. Afghanistan claims Taliban attacks early in the

conflict killed 41 Pakistani soldiers and wounded 53 others, while Pakistan claims it inflicted heavy casualties and material losses on Afghanistan while targeting 41 border outposts. Most civilian casualties have been on the Afghan side, and the United Nations says that Pakistani attacks have killed 75 civilians and displaced 115,000 others. The current Afghanistan-Pakistan War is not directly tied to the outbreak of war in Iran, but its implications could exacerbate regional destabilization. At the core of the conflict, Pakistan asserts that the Afghan Taliban is offering a safe haven for the Pakistani Taliban, that's the TTP, a jihadist militant group formed in 2007 with the

goal of overthrowing the Pakistani government. The Taliban rejects these claims for whatever that's worth. Pakistan originally helped to create the Taliban and was one of its principal supporters, so the current conflict represents a dramatic reversal in Pakistan. position towards the militant group governing its Western neighbor. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one.

Peace. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under-the-radar story for today, folks. On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order authorizing the Department of Energy to accelerate oil and gas development under a Cold War era law. Energy Secretary Chris Wright then directed oil company Sable Offshore Corp to restore drilling operations off the southern coast of California, which could produce roughly 50,000 barrels of oil a day. One of the pipelines that Wright ordered to reopen was the site of a 2015 spill

that released 100,000 gallons of oil into the ocean and damaged marine life. California Governor Gavin Newsom criticized the order and said he will sue to stop it. The Los Angeles Times has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. And last but not least, Star Have a Nice Day Story. Until recently, the waters off Hujirat, India, were ground zero for whale shark hunting, up to 500 of the world's largest fish killed every year, mostly just to waterproof boats. Then, a beloved Hindu spiritual leader began weaving whale sharks into his sermons, likening them to daughters returning home to give birth, and the fish went from Nameless to Bahli, the beloved one. Since 2002, fishers in Gujarat have rescued over 1,000 whale sharks, and hunting has ceased almost

entirely. The whale shark is like my daughter, fisherman Ganeshba'i, Devjibai, Veridim said. If she hurts, I hurt. Reasons to be cheerful has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to retangle.com, where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership they get to a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the career, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace.

Our executive editor and founder is me. Isaac Saul and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canuth, 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 Retangle.com. Thank you.