Tangle - The DHS shutdown continues.

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Early Friday morning, the Senate passed a bill that would fund most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for fiscal year 2026, excluding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and some parts of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Later that day, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he would not bring the bill to a vote. The House instead passed a separate bill that would fund DHS in its entirety for eight weeks. Both the House and the Senate have begun a two-week Easter recess, and neither bill is expected to be considered during that time. 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!And, we’re off…Our new, moderated, members-only comments section is officially live on the Tangle website. A big shoutout to everyone who participated yesterday — including a few readers who caught today’s correction and clarification. Tangle’s editors noticed an immediate and obvious change in tone of the comments, with much more level-headed disagreement, fewer instances of namecalling, and zero immediate or obvious comments we had to moderate. It’s a great start to what we’re trying to build. Thank you all.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our 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: How do you think DHS should be funded? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Will Kaback 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 where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of our take. I'm your host today, Senior Editor Will Kayback. If you've been following the news over the past week or even just browsing social media, you've probably seen the videos of, of some insane security lines at airports across the United States. And of course, that connects back to the ongoing shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, and specifically the staffing challenges that TSA is having

as a result of that shutdown. So there is no end in sight. We are about 45 days into that shutdown that began on February 14th. President Trump did take an action over the weekend to potentially pay TSA agents and address some of the immediate. staffing shortages, but the resolution for the shutdown is about as far away as it was at the

beginning. So we're going to dive into the latest in the shutdown today, specifically looking at some of what's happening at TSA, some of the different funding deals that are being proposed in the Senate and the House, and some of the potential constitutional issues that could arise as the funding fight continues. Before we jump in, I want to share a quick clarification and a correction from yesterday's edition. So first off, we wrote that the U.S. has suffered 13 casualties so far in the war with Iran. We should have clarified that these were confirmed military fatalities. Over 300 personnel have also been wounded, and wounded are often included as part of casualty

counts in the military. We also wrote that U.S. F-35s were shot down by friendly fire. In reality, it was three F-15s that were accidentally downed by Kuwaiti air defenses. All the crew survived. One F-35 did make an emergency landing after passing through Iranian airspace, but it was likely damaged by an Iranian missile. So what we wrote there with regards to the type of aircraft and the nature of those incidents was incorrect and it requires a correction. I will say we are all officially awake and alert after our spring break. Having a correction right off the bat, obviously not ideal, but it is a reminder to us to stay sharp.

and thank you for the eagle-eyed readers and listeners who pointed out these errors to us. This is our 153rd correction in Tangle's 357 week history and our first correction since February 26th. Again, we track these corrections and place them at the top of our newsletter in an effort to maximize our transparency with readers and listeners. One other note before we get started on today's topic, our new moderated members-only comment section is officially live on the Tangle website. This is something that we announced in our last edition right before our break last week. And a big shout out to everyone who participated yesterday, including those readers who caught the correction and the clarification that I just read. We as a Tangle staff noticed an immediate and obvious change in the tone of the comments

with more level-headed disagreement, fewer instances of name-calling than we had been seen, and zero immediate or obvious comments that we had to moderate. So it's a great start to what we're trying to build, and thank you all for participating. and setting us off on a great path with this new policy. All right, now I'm going to pass it over to John to get us started on today's topic, and then I'll be back in a bit to read my take. John, over to you.

Thanks, Will, and welcome, everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, a bit of breaking news. The Supreme Court sided with a Colorado counselor's challenge to a law barring conversion therapy in an eight-to-one decision, finding that the law regulates speech based on viewpoint, and that lower courts did not apply sufficient scumption. scrutiny during review. Number two, President Donald Trump reportedly told AIDS that he is willing to

wind down U.S. military operations in Iran, even if the Strait of Hermuz remains impassable for most commercial ships and oil tankers. The president may instead focus on weakening Iran's navy and depleting its missile stocks. However, on Monday, President Trump said the U.S. would strike Iran's energy plants and oil wells if it did not reopen the strait to commercial traffic. Number three, the Israeli parliament voted 62 to 48 to pass a law making the death penalty, the default punishment for Palestinians in the West Bank, convicted in military courts of carrying out deadly terrorist attacks. Critics say the law will exclusively apply to Palestinians and not Israelis convicted of similar

crimes, as the law excludes Israeli citizens or residents who are never tried in military courts. Number four, Spain announced it disclosed its airspace to U.S. aircraft involved in the Iran war, with Spanish defense minister Margarita Robles calling the conflict profoundly illegal and profoundly unjust. Spain previously barred the U.S. from using its military bases for the war. Number five, the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline rose to $4.2, passing the $4 per gallon mark for the first time since 2022. And number six, a human rights organization reported that at least 70 people were killed and 30 others injured in a gang attack in Haiti's Artibony region,

a significantly higher death toll than initially reported by police. The president's order paying TSA workers is only a temporary fix. Congress is still going to have to authorize funding, but a deal still out of reach. Lawmakers are not a two-week break. 35 days into this partial government shutdown and Congress has left town for two weeks. I've talked to Democrats and Republicans right now. There are no plans for lawmakers to return back here to Washington to address this. This has now become the longest shutdown in American history.

Early Friday morning, the Senate passed a bill that would fund most of the Department of Homeland Security for fiscal year 2026, excluding immigration and customs enforcement and some parts of Customs and Border Protection. Later that day, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that he would not bring the bill to a vote. The House instead passed a separate bill that would fund DHS in its entirety for eight weeks. Both the House and the Senate have begun a two-week Easter recess, and neither bill is expected to be considered during that time. For context, DHS has been partially shut down since February 14th, after lawmakers failed to come to terms on a deal to fund the department through September. DHS oversees many government agencies, including ICE, CBP, U.S. citizenship and immigration services, the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Unlike most of DHS, ICE and CBP are still largely funded by last year's One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Many of the agency's other employees are considered essential and must continue to work during the shutdown without pay. On Friday, President Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing DHS to reallocate funds to pay TSA employees affected by the agency's ongoing shutdown. As a result, on Monday, most TSA officers received most of the back pay owed to them, though it is not yet clear if, and when additional checks will come. The TSA staffing shortfall, combined with spring break travel, produced record-long security lines at airports. Last week, the Trump administration deployed ICE personnel to many of the nation's busiest airports to try to reduce wait times.

During a briefing on Monday, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said President Donald Trump wants Congress to return to D.C. to finish DHS budget negotiations. Democrats have called for reforms to ICE and CBP as part of a deal for funding the agencies. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that the House-passed bill was dead on arrival in the Senate. The Senate deal passed Friday did not include reforms to ICE and CBP. Speaker Mike Johnson said that any DHS funding bill must include funds for ICE and CBP. We're not going to split apart two of the most important agencies in the government and leave them hanging like that, he said. We just couldn't do it.

Today, we'll take a look at arguments from the left and the right about the ongoing shutdown. And then, senior editor Will Kay Beck will give his take. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right. First up, let's start with what the left is saying. The left largely blames Republicans for refusing to make a deal to end the shutdown. Some criticize Trump's decision to send ICE to airports. Others argue that continuing the shutdown will further erode Congress's power of the purse. In securing America's promise, Deborah Fleischer observed one DHS funding battle after another.

It's striking that after everything we've seen over the past 15 months, Republicans are willing to block funding. for DHS rather than constrain immigration enforcement in any way. I worry about how the DHS employees will pay their rent or child care costs and about the work that may or may not be getting done during this time, Fletchiger said. I worked at DHS for almost 14 years, including a year as the acting ICE chief of staff, so I understand how important the agency's mission is, even if I strongly disagree with the Trump administration's conception of it. I also experienced firsthand the depth of ICE's structural, policy, and operational challenges. During previous shutdown fights, Democrats too often fractured under pressure.

This time, even without much political leverage or agreement on a vision for immigration, they held firm, Fleischer wrote. Democrats did not suddenly discover a love of immigration fights, and they didn't wake up eager to stake their position on one of the most historically fraught issues in American politics. They held firm because the political ground beneath them had moved. Their constituents had seen something they cannot unsee. The risks of inaction or of enabling further access now outweighs the risks of the political fight. In Bloomberg, Erica D. Smith said Mark Wayne Mullen's new job at DHS keeps getting harder.

A partial government shutdown continues to cripple DHS. Airport security workers aren't getting paid and the resulting staff shortages are creating lines so long that waiting travelers now regularly spill out of the terminals and into the parking lot, Smith wrote. In response, Mullen has vowed, as he wrote again on X on Tuesday, that his first priority as secretary will be to end the partisan fighting and reopen the department. Yet Trump has been largely working at cross-purposes, prolonging the shutdown through self-interested ultimatums and self-defeating policy decisions. Democrats are hardly innocent.

After all, they cause the shutdown, using it as leverage to force the Trump administration to agree on reforms for immigration enforcement, such as prohibiting ICE and Border Patrol agents from wearing masks. But the problem for Republicans is that the polling is largely on Democrats' side-smiths. said, which is why Trump's decision to send immigration agents and possibly the National Guard to more than a dozen airports this week seems like such a self-owned. Lines at airports are still long, and although the ICE agents are supposed to be doing crowd management, they've mostly been seen wandering concourses, fiddling with their phones, and standing in line on behalf of travelers

who need to use the bathroom. In Ken We Still Govern, Don Moynihan discussed Mike Johnson's institutional betrayal. Remember, ICE and CBP don't actually need new money. They are funded for multiple years because of the one big beautiful bill act. Their employees are being paid during the shutdown, Moynihan said. So here is where the institutional betrayal comes in. Mike Johnson had a pretty clear choice. A, reclaim the power of the purse for Congress by passing broadly popular legislation, or B, allow the president to not only dictate appropriations, but also engage in a potentially illegal scheme to pay TSA employees to deal with public anger. Johnson chose B. We've been here before. During the last major shutdown, Trump claimed that he could decide that

members of the military would be paid. There was no major uproar or legal appeal. After all, who's against paying the troops? But it set a precedent. DHS is sitting on a mountain of money. So Trump could make the same dubious claim that he just needs to move a bit of it around and the shutdown is over, Moynihan wrote. Except that is not how it works. Either the shutdown, a lapse in appropriations means the executive must lay down its tools is real or it's not. Either the legislative branch determines appropriations or it doesn't. The idea that it does is central to our constitutional scheme of government. All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying.

The right blames Democrats for refusing to make a deal. Some argue that the public will blame Democrats for the problems they encounter as the shutdown continues. Others argue that the shutdown endangers national security. The Washington Post editorial board described another government shutdown that won't end. After the deaths of Renee Good and Alice Pretti, it became clear that President Donald Trump had overreached in his deportation campaign. Democrats had the leverage to ask for some necessary reforms, as Americans' views on federal immigration enforcement agencies soured the board, said. Republicans conceded on some helpful oversight measures, like requiring agents to wear body cameras and identification. They also agreed to limiting enforcement in schools and hospitals.

but Democrats refuse to budge from their original list of demands. The irony is that while Congress failed to strike a compromise, ICE and the Border Patrol remain funded through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Meanwhile, Americans dealt with the fallout of leaving the rest of DHS unfunded, the board route. Many Democrats are betting that the chaos will work against the party in power, and they can run on fighting to defund ICE. The political logic is sound, but Democrats may come to regret that tactic. It's not hard to imagine Republicans refusing to fund agencies

better aligned with Democratic priorities. Meanwhile, Trump stepped into the governing void with a legally questionable emergency order to fund the TSA. He has turbocharged the trend of concentrating more power in the executive branch and a feckless Congress only makes it easier. In USA Today, Ingrid Jacks wrote,

Earth to Dems, your pointless ice shutdown only hurts you. TSA workers don't appreciate not getting paid. Hundreds of them have quit and at least 10% of the workforce aren't showing up to work. This has led to hours-long lines and missed flights at some of the country's largest airports at a time when many families are trying to celebrate their spring break, Jacques said. Instead of doing their most basic job, funding the government, lawmakers are playing games

and offloading blame to members of the opposing party. Enough already. Perhaps Democrats have forgotten, but it was only a few short months ago that they forced a 43-day government shutdown, the longest on record, and they emerged from it with nothing of note. they didn't get the concessions they wanted from Republicans on Obamacare subsidies, and public opinion in the end was not in their favor. What makes Democrats think that this time will be any different, Jack's Root? While Republicans in both the House and Senate have voted in favor of fully funding DHS, Senate Democrats, with the exception of Pennsylvania Senator John Federman,

have stubbornly refused to get on board, and some Democratic support is necessary in that chamber to overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold. In Fox News, Senator John Kennedy, the Republican from Louisiana, said Democrats are gambling with our lives by not funding DHS. My Democratic colleagues have opposed President Donald Trump's agenda at every turn, and that's their right. But their decision to shut down the Department of Homeland Security isn't some harmless act of political gamesmanship. It's incredibly dangerous, Kennedy wrote. In the one month since Democrats voted to deny funding to DHS, the United States has faced at least four apparent terrorist attacks. These terrorists killed four Americans and injured dozens more. It makes me nauseous to imagine how many more could have died,

if not for the bravery of local law enforcement officers, the Temple's armed security, and Old Dominion's ROTC students. At the heart of this meltdown is the fact that many of my Democratic colleagues want open borders. They don't think we should deport anybody, and they're holding funding for DHS hostage because they hate the idea that officers at Customs and Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement might actually enforce our immigration laws.

Kennedy said. In turn, they've made a series of demands to resume funding. Some of the requests were reasonable, and the Trump administration agreed to implement them as soon as possible. For example, all ICE officers will wear body cameras during future operations. They do it right now, but it's hard to buy cameras when Democrats won't approve their funding. All right, let's head over to Will for his take. Thanks, John. All right, this is Will jumping back in here with my take. The shutdown offers so many points of frustration. I honestly have a hard time knowing where to begin. The current shutdown is now the longest in U.S. history, surpassing last fall's 43-day full government shutdown. While it only affects one department, that department is an important one, comprising close to 200,000 employees and agencies with diverse critical missions.

And now Congress is in recess, and both parties appear far apart on a deal, so the shutdown could plausibly extend beyond two months. The immediate consequences, things like hours-long airport security lines, droves of TSA agents calling out sick or outright quitting are obvious. What worries me most, though, is that the problems that brought us here go much deeper than policy differences on immigration enforcement. If it were that simple, I think both sides probably would have reached a compromise by now. Instead, the situation playing out highlights a constitutional fault line that has grown wider over the course of President Trump's second term. And that's Congress's diminishing power of the purse. The seeds of this shutdown were planted with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025. Remember, that law was passed via the budget reconciliation process, requiring only a

simple majority to clear the Senate. Among its many provisions, the OBBBA gave CBP and ICE billions in new budget authority, allowing the agencies to operate normally even if DHS were shut down. On one hand, this was a savvy political move, anticipating this very moment that we're in and preemptively removing any leverage that Democrats might have to slow down immigration enforcement. On the other, it's a total subversion of how appropriations are supposed to work. As Cato's Dominic Latt wrote in February, CBP and ICE are now effectively operating outside of the annual appropriations process, removing Congress's ability to evaluate their performance and funding levels for several years. It's a siphoning of the power of the purse by the executive branch, done with Congress's explicit approval.

The constitutional consequences of this approach to funding extend far beyond the current shutdown fight. If the new norm is that the party that controls Congress can use reconciliation to pass years, even decades of funding for agencies that the other party is likely to scrutinize and rein in, the legislative branch has effectively ceded its oversight authority. Right now, the fight is over immigration and ICE. But imagine a future Democratic Congress with a Democratic president, passing a decade of funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and allowing the president to direct the president to direct the Democratic president. the agency to pursue progressive climate change policies without any check by Congress. Our government was designed to give Congress financial authority and avoid unaccountable executive spending, and yet it is now clearly the direction that we're headed in. Now, Republicans and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act aren't solely to blame for this dynamic.

Democrats, for instance, use the budget reconciliation process to pass stimulus checks and green energy subsidies during the Biden administration. But this move away from standard appropriations is now accelerating. Senator Ted Cruz recently opened up the playbook for everyone to see, saying that Republicans should use reconciliation to fund ICE for the next decade. Senator John Kennedy told Fox News last week that Senate Republicans brought President Trump a version of this plan, a deal to fund the TSA and other DHS agencies now, while leaving ICE and CBP to be funded through reconciliation.

Trump rejected it, and many commentators seized on the moment to blame Trump for the shutdown persisting. But these commentators also missed that this outcome would have insulated the agency from congressional oversight for years to come. Now, even more constitutionally troubling is President Trump's Friday memorandum directing DHS and the Office of Management and Budget to, quote, use funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations to pay TSA. agents. The order only cites one line from the U.S. Code, which simply reads, quote, appropriations shall be applied only to the objects for which the appropriations were made, except as otherwise provided by law. That's the only legal basis for this move that it offers. And beyond this threadbare justification, the source of the funds isn't specified either. Now, I and I think most Americans, of course, want TSA agents to be paid,

even if they harbor doubts about the efficacy of the agency. But that's not really what this memorandum is about. It represents a significant expansion of Trump's claimed power to use federal funds for purposes that Congress has not approved. If the president, any president, can resolve political problems this way, the legislative branch has lost one of its key checks on executive power. In the words of University of Michigan professor Don Moynihan, quote, either the legislative branch determines appropriations or it doesn't, end quote. If this move is allowed to stand, we'll have our answer. As the constitutional fault line widens, congressional Republicans have shown little resolve to hold

onto their power. Democrats, for their part, have shown little willingness to play ball and reach a deal. The prudence of this strategy is clear. Voter sentiment has turned against ICE and CBP since Renee Good and Alex Prettie were killed in Minneapolis in January, and recent polling suggests that voters want substantive changes to immigration enforcement before Congress approves new DHS funding. Democratic lawmakers have also remained united on their list of demands for ICE reform, while President Trump and the GOP have appeared discombobulated, offering varying concessions, pulling back on potential deals, and failing to reconcile their differences between chambers. Furthermore, Trump's attempted gambit, sending about one

100 ICE agents to assist with security at airports seems to have backfired, doing little to alleviate the long lines while resurfacing fears of agency overreach. So why should Democrats compromise? The party leaders no doubt remember last fall's shutdown fight when their failure to win meaningful concessions on extending health care subsidies produced significant blowback from their base. Right now, with Trump waging an unpopular war in Iran, Republicans racking up losses in special elections, and polls showing Democrats in a strong position ahead of the midterms, the case for making concessions is virtually non-existent. But the erosion of the separation of powers

degrades the very foundation that Democrats are using for their leverage. Republicans are never going to agree to all of their demands. So short of seating on some reforms, the next best option appears to be funding non-ice and CBP agencies. The bill that passed the Senate early Friday morning would have done just that. But kicking the ICE and CBP can down the road only heightens the prospect that it will eventually be resolved by reconciliation, with Democrats getting none of their reforms. Ironically, the only thing blocking this path right now is President Trump's opposition to the Senate deal.

But that, of course, could change at any time, and all the while ICE and CBP continue to operate unimpeded. Instead of digging in, I think Democrats should take a deal. Of the 10 demands they released in February, at least four seem achievable in the immediate term, requiring a judicial warrant to enter private property, mandating body cameras, verifying non-citizenship before detention, and allowing states to investigate potential crimes committed by DHS agents. Now, banning agents from wearing face masks will remain a sticking point, but I don't think this one reform is worth holding out over when others are within reach. Now, my preferred outcome would be to fund all of DHS through an appropriations bill, but I know that that's also unlikely at this juncture.

Not only do Democrats seem willing to let the shutdown persist, but that kind of deal is not guaranteed to pass both chambers or overcome a presidential veto. And as bad as some of the airport security delays have been, I don't think lawmakers are truly feeling the heat yet. President Trump's TSA payment maneuver, while legally dubious, is already leading to airports returning to normal this week. As the shocking videos of TSA lines stretching out the door fade from our social media timelines,

so too, I think, will the public sense of urgency. I don't see an end in sight, and that leaves me feeling pretty cynical. In an ideal world, Congress could strike a deal. and send a message that its members can still compromise to resolve their differences, and that it intends to hold on to its delegated powers. But we simply don't live in that world. Instead, we're on a path to put more power in the hands of the executive.

Now, I don't know exactly where that path leads, but I don't want to follow it. All right, that is it for my take. I'm going to pass it over to managing editor Ari Weidstman, who had a dissent for today, and then I'll be back to do the reader question. Ari, over due you. This is Tangle's managing editor Ari Weitzman with a staff dissent to Will's take today. I argued with Will a lot about this specific point during editing, but I think he's overstating the constitutional issue at play here.

Congress has ceded oversight authority by not funding CBP and ICE through an annual process, as Wilb wrote, but it still exercised its financial authority in doing so. It didn't give the power of the purse over to the president. However, Trump paying DHS agents for funds not allocated for that use is an executive overreach into that authority. Describing these two very different acts, both as constitutional issues regarding congressional power, seems facially incorrect to me. And leaving the gradations out of that analysis risks watering down real constitutional crises when they occur. Okay, that's it. I'm going to sit back over to Will for the rest of the pot. We'll be right back after this quick break.

All right, this is Will jumping back in with today's reader question. Today's question comes from Chris in New Orleans, Louisiana. If the vice president were to break ranks with the president in such a way that the president wanted to fire him, can he do that? Here's our response. The short answer is no. The president cannot fire anybody elected to their office, and the vice president is an elected official.

Like the president, the vice president can only be. removed from office through impeachment and conviction. Now, this is admittedly a little confusing, since the vice president is part of the president's cabinet and the president can freely dismiss other cabinet members at will, meaning the vice president is a bit of an anomaly in the executive branch. The office was not always defined quite as clearly as it is today, and the Constitution did not initially provide the ground rules for the office that we have now. Our nation's first Vice President John Adams considered himself to be more the head of the legislative than a part of the president's cabinet, which was also not yet defined. In fact, from Adams' election until 1804,

the vice president was the person who received the second most votes in the presidential election. With the ratification of the 12th Amendment that year, the vice presidency started to have its own dedicated candidates, allowing the parties to run the unified tickets that we see and know today. One thing that hasn't changed since Adams' time is that the vice president retains some independence from presidential oversight. Politically, the vice president's office doesn't have much authority outside of what the president confers onto the office. But constitutionally, the president doesn't have direct control over the vice president. All right, that's it for today's reader question. Now I'll pass it back over to John to take us home for today's newsletter.

John, back to you. We're going to be trying out some different content in the newsletter and podcast. We're starting that today with a new section called A Deeper Look. Though they seem like business as usual today, government shutdowns didn't always actually shut down the agencies experiencing a funding lapse. Prior to the early 1980s, agencies would often continue to operate even if they had no appropriated funds. That changed when U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civoletti succeeded in his push for a stricter interpretation of the anti-deficiency Act, requiring agencies to halt day-to-day operations and furlough many employees during a lapse in congressional funding. You can read more about that with a link in today's episode description.

And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day Story. Of more than 40 million entries across all the major contests for the annual NCAA March Madness tournament, one perfect bracket remained last Monday, a women's bracket belonging to 14-year-old auto shellhammer, a Pittsburgh eighth grader with no previous basketball knowledge. Although Notre Dame's victory over Vanderbilt on Friday means Otto's bracket won't be perfect, he still retains his last perfect bracket status. I think it's absolutely hilarious, Amy Schallhammer, Otto's mom said. It's just so fun to see.

He's been watching, and it's making him more excited about it. The Associated Press has this story, and you can check that out with the 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 reetangle.com, where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac, Will, and the rest of the crew, 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 Kback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Pinooth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Dianston.

To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.