Tangle - The government funding bill

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

On Saturday, President Joe Biden signed a stopgap funding bill into law, averting a prolonged government shutdown after last-minute negotiations in the House and Senate. The continuing resolution (CR) is a scaled-down version of a bill that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) released on Tuesday but scrapped a day later. The new CR, called the “American Relief Act, 2025,” funds the government at current levels through mid-March while providing roughly $100 billion in natural disaster aid and $10 billion for economic assistance to farmers. Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com to sign up!The gift of Tangle.A quick reminder that you can give the gift of Tangle! We have gift subscriptions on our website that are discounted to encourage buying them for your family member, friend, or colleague (especially those who you struggle to discuss politics with!). Click here to spread the love.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.Take the survey: What do you think of the funding bill passed by Congress? Let us know!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomasl. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Timothy Chalamet reinvents himself again as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, a riveting portrayal of the legendary artist's meteoric rise and groundbreaking journey. Witness the untamed spirit of a musical pioneer brought to life. From James Mangold, the visionary director of Walk the Line and Logan, this powerful film celebrates the courage to create and the legacy of an icon who redefined music forever. Watch the trailer now and get your tickets for a story that inspired generations. A complete unknown, only in theaters December 25th.

["Tangle," by The Bachelorette plays in background.] From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. ["Tangle," by The Bachelorette plays in background.] Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. And welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the 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 talking about what exactly was in the government

spending bill that finally got across the finish line, how it changed after being tanked by Republicans and Elon Musk last week. And I'm going to share my views on exactly what happened. And then of course, you're going to get some takes from the left and the right as well. So with that, I'm gonna pass it over to John for today's main pod and I'll be back for my take. ["The Christmas Elf"] Thanks Isaac and welcome everybody. Two days before Christmas and I am pumped.

I don't know if y'all know this about me, but I'm a bit of a Christmas elf. I really love the holidays and I'm super excited. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and here's to getting through this hopefully short week. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 men on federal death row. The men will now serve life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Biden did not commute the sentences of three other men on death row who each carried out mass killings. Number two, former representative Matt Gaetz, the Republican from Florida, allegedly paid multiple women for sex, including a minor, and purchased and used illegal drugs,

in some instances from his congressional office, according to a final draft of the House Ethics Committee's investigation into Gates's conduct. Number 3. The United States Central Command said two U.S. Navy pilots were shot down over the Red Sea in an apparent friendly fire incident. The pilots ejected from their aircraft and were rescued. Separately, at least five people were killed and around 200 injured when a car drove into a crowd of people at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany. Separately, Houthi forces in Yemen claimed responsibility for a missile strike on Tel

Aviv, Israel, that injured more than a dozen people. 4. A woman was lit on fire and killed aboard a New York subway on Sunday. Police announced they had arrested a suspect reportedly identified as a Guatemalan migrant. And number five, the personal consumption expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge, increased 0.1% from October to November and 2.4% annually, a smaller increase than expected. President Biden signing the new government funding bill here at home just minutes ago

in Washington. That's after Congress scrambled to pass the spending plan at the end of a roller coaster a few days on Capitol Hill. It all started with a bipartisan deal to avoid a government shutdown, a plan that was tanked by President-elect Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, forcing lawmakers to go back to the drawing board, coming up with a plan that failed on Thursday, followed by another plan that passed the House last night

and then the Senate early this morning. On Saturday, President Joe Biden signed a stopgap funding bill into law, averting a prolonged government shutdown after last-minute negotiations in the House and Senate. The continuing resolution is a scaled-down version of a bill that House Speaker Mike Johnson released on Tuesday but scrapped a day later. The new CR, called the American Relief Act 2025, funds the government at current levels through mid-March while providing roughly $100 billion in natural disaster aid and $10 billion for economic assistance to farmers.

We covered the initial continuing resolution on Thursday, and there's a link in today's episode description. The extension of government funding, disaster aid, and economic assistance for farmers were all part of the first version of the CR, as were a host of other provisions unrelated to the potential shutdown. Those additional measures prompted pushback from President-elect Trump, Musk, and many House Republicans who said they would not support the additional spending. Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance also pushed for any funding bill to include a debt ceiling increase. Johnson then introduced a second version of the CR that continued current government funding

for three months, but replaced a host of controversial provisions with a two-year debt limit suspension. That bill also failed, with 38 House Republicans joining all but two Democrats to vote it down. Finally, the House passed a third version of the CR on Friday, with the debt limit provision excluded. That passed the Senate 85-11 and was signed by President Biden just after midnight, with a government shutdown technically in effect. The measure required a two-thirds majority to pass because it was taken up under suspension. All Democrats except one voted for the package, while 34 Republicans voted no.

Although Johnson was able to eventually shepherd a deal through, the episode led several House Republicans to publicly question whether they would support his re-election as Speaker when the next Congress is sworn in. Trump has not commented on the final CR, but some of the President-elect's allies are reportedly criticizing Johnson for his handling of the bill. Musk, meanwhile, expressed tepid support for the outcome, calling it a change from a bill that weighed pounds into a bill that weighed ounces. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Democrat from New York, framed the CR as a bipartisan bill that funds the government, helps Americans affected by hurricanes and natural disasters, helps our farmers, and avoids harmful cuts," adding in a separate statement,

"...this bill does not include everything Democrats fought for, but there are major victories in this bill for American families." Today, we'll explore reactions to the funding bill from the left and the right, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick break. Timothy Chalamet reinvents himself again as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, a riveting portrayal of the legendary artist's meteoric rise and groundbreaking journey. Witness the untamed spirit of a musical pioneer brought to life. From James Mangold, the visionary director of

Walk the Line and Logan, this powerful film celebrates the courage to create and the legacy of an icon who redefined music forever. Watch the trailer now and get your tickets for a story that that inspired generations. A complete unknown. Only in theaters December 25th. All right, first up, let's start with what the left is saying. The left is critical of Republicans' handling of the spending bill, particularly Trump and Musk's role. Some suggest that Musk may have gotten exactly what he wanted from the episode. Others say the ordeal is a sign of things to come in the next four years. The Washington Post editorial board wrote, Trump and Musk show how not to conduct the nation's business. The CR managed to keep the government open, though lawmakers were forced to strip most of the Democrats' desired provisions, and Mr. Trump's, to get it across the finish line.

No matter what one thinks about the negotiations' particulars, everyone should agree that this is not the way to conduct the nation's business, the board said. Mr. Trump should not have spurred a last-minute frenzy to keep the government running during the holidays when a reasonable bipartisan compromise had already been reached. The negotiator's job was made harder by the fact that Mr. Trump and Elon Musk,

the President-elect's confidant tasked with making the government more efficient, seem to be at cross purposes in their demands. The episode is all the more frustrating because Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump both had at least a kernel of a point worth making. Mr. Musk is right that federal spending needs trimming, the national debt is on an unstable course, and the government spends too much to see to its core responsibilities. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, is right that the federal debt limit should be reformed if not abolished,

the board said. But it takes two to deal. End time. Last-minute ad hoc legislative theatrics will gain Mr. Trump and the country far less than a more reasonable approach would. Meanwhile, the nation will suffer amid confidence-sapping uncertainty and political confusion. In the American prospect, Robert Kuttner said Musk got the only thing that he wanted. Does Trump realize it?

In the end, legislators of both parties wanted to get home for Christmas, and both houses overwhelmingly passed a simple continuing resolution keeping the government funded at roughly present levels through March, plus disaster relief and farm aid. Musk succeeded in stripping out the China provision, Kuttner wrote. The mainstream media focused on the TikTok of whether the government would shut down, on Musk's surprising influence influence and the issue of the debt ceiling, but totally missed the China investment provision that was the real driver of the dispute. Did Trump miss it? Let's recall that Trump is a ferocious China hawk.

Stopping U.S. investment in sensitive technologies that could help China has been a key element of the agenda for serious China experts in both parties. On that issue, Musk won and Trump was rolled, Kutner said. Musk disingenuously praised Congress for drastically shrinking the total spending. This was total bullshit since the budget numbers of the original deal and final one were almost identical. But shrinking spending wasn't the goal. Keeping the government out of his China business was.

In New York Magazine, Ben Jacobs argued, the Republican Party is out of control. At the dawn of unified rule in Washington, Republicans couldn't even agree on whether to keep the lights on. What had been a relatively formulaic affair, a bipartisan deal struck by Speaker Mike Johnson to avoid a government shutdown turned instead into 48 hours of pure chaos, Jacobs wrote. While Democrats were dismayed to lose various provisions in the original deal, none of them was worth shutting down the government over. All fell into line on Friday night and supported the bill.

In contrast, 34 Republicans, most from the party's hard right, did not. There were idiosyncratic reasons for some to object, but there were 20 members returning in 2025 who had objected to both bills, voting no on both Thursday and Friday. It showed the outlines of just how big the rump of dissent Republicans could be in the next Congress to frustrate Johnson's ambitions, Jacob said. Even if Johnson manages to avoid defenestration on January 3, he still has to manage a paper-thin majority that will range from Mike Lawler, who is expected to run for governor of New York as a moderate, to Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently floated Musk for speaker. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying.

The right is mixed on the outcome, with many praising Trump for pursuing a scaled-back CR. Some say the episode shows Trump has less power than he rejects. Others say the spending fight was a welcome change from past iterations. In Fox News, David Marcus said Trump's handling of the showdown threat was a masterclass. In the space of just a few days, Trump's pressure on the Congress, including sickening his Department of Government Efficiency attack dogs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on reckless spending, turned a 1,500-page monstrosity of a bill into a slim 120-page banger of bare

necessities including disaster relief and help for farmers," Marcus wrote. Within hours of the torrent of posts from the dynamic duo of Doge, the American people began to wake up to what was in the bill and object. A trickle of GOP lawmakers flipped from yes to no on the bill, and with that, the stage was set for our soon-to-be commander-in-chief. With the target softened, Trump tore into the bill, going so far as to threaten lawmakers who voted for it with primary challenges.

Trump even indicated that Johnson's speakership could be in doubt if he didn't get in line, Marcus said. It was fascinating how people all week tried to paint the budget mess as Republicans in disarray, with House members defying Trump and looming trouble between Trump and Musk. Yet when the dust settled, we had shed 1,400 pages of blundering BS with nary a peep from Biden. In National Review, Philip Klein wrote, Trump gets an early lesson on limits of his power over Congress.

Trump wanted Republicans to scrap or pass a long-term extension of the debt ceiling under President Biden's watch so that it wasn't something that he would have to deal with during the early months of his presidency. But it turns out that there are still a few dozen Republicans who don't want to raise the debt ceiling without spending cuts, and they aren't simply going to change because Trump sends out a few social media posts," Klein said. Trump's presence does not alter the math that bedeviled former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and that is causing problems for Speaker Mike Johnson.

The reality that Trump will be facing when he takes office is that there is a razor-thin Republican majority in the House, and it will take less than a handful of Republicans to sink anything Trump wants to do as long as Democrats are united in opposition. In the upper chamber, Senators Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Mitch McConnell are clearly willing to oppose Trump on the number of issues, and when that happens, he won't be able to lose a single additional vote. There's a reason why Matt Gaetz's nomination had to be pulled. In the American conservative, Jack Hunter suggested a new kind of political movement

is flexing its muscles in Washington. Under Democrat presidents like Barack Obama or Joe Biden, passing this bill would have been business as usual unless a Republican majority could muster a stink, usually to no result. The same would have gone under a hypothetical Republican President Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush. Hell, Biden technically still is president, but the gravitational political pull right now is in the direction of President-elect Donald Trump, who is an unconventional leader to say the least.

It was largely Team Trump that stopped this bill, Hunter said. This limited government fiscally restrained spirit, so integral to traditional American conservatism, seems to be a guiding force on the eve of Trump's second term. The moment is by no means perfect. Trump has already said that he wants to raise the debt ceiling, something Democrats have long clamored for, but it is a libertarian populism that now animates the impending doge and that helped kill the terrible Johnson spending bill.

The establishments of both parties are accustomed to getting their way, particularly on spending. animates the impending Doge and that helped kill the terrible Johnson's spending bill. The establishments of both parties are accustomed to getting their way, particularly on spending. This time, they didn't. Alright, let's head over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So, it's not hard to understand, for me, why Congress's approval rating is so low and this is how they act. To recap what just happened briefly, a major spending fight derailing months of bipartisan

negotiations and nearly shutting down the government over the holidays just got us a bill costing nearly the exact same amount of money just without some of the most popular and bipartisan provisions included. That is what just happened. Looking at the massively decreased page count of this bill is deceptive because the bill that passed contains almost all of the key provisions from the bill that failed on Thursday. Disaster aid funding, economic aid for farmers, and federal funding to repair the Scott Key Bridge in Maryland.

Notably, the final continuing resolution also still contains a three-month extension of the use of telehealth in Medicare, a popular pandemic-era measure. But as observers like Elon Musk were quick to note and celebrate the now passed CR is much shorter. So what got left out? Most of the commentary from the left and the right focus on the fact that the bill did not include a debt ceiling extension into January 30th, 2027,

which is what President Trump had asked for. He wanted to do it now under Biden, so it wasn't a fight on his watch. Instead, a few other pieces of legislation that got dropped from the bill really caught my eye. For one, the new CR did not include long sought-after reforms for pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, the middlemen between drug manufacturers and insurers. The reforms would have required PBMs to provide more information on rebates they negotiate and how much they pay for drugs, and to pass rebates onto health plan sponsors,

like insurers or employers. These requirements were aimed to limit a practice called spread pricing, in which PBMs charge payers like Medicaid more than they pay a pharmacy for a drug and then keep the profit. The reforms likely would have saved patients and the government money,

but they are dead for now. Also absent in the new CR was legislation to restrict investments in China. That effort specifically targeted the artificial intelligence and technology sectors, but also would have mandated reviews of Chinese real estate purchases near sites of interest to national security in the US. It was a decidedly hawkish piece of legislation, but one that had a lot of bipartisan support given the increasingly adversarial relationship between the U.S. and China, particularly on trade and technology.

Third, the final CR did not include funding, supported by both parties, to continue protections for low-income Americans who have had their food stamp benefits stolen through illegal skimming devices. Congress had been allowing states to replace those stolen benefits using federal funds, replenishing more than $150 million in benefits stolen from 300,000 low-income households over two years. While I appreciate efforts to make our government leaner and to make our legislative process more straightforward and less dysfunctional, I don't think that's what Trump and Musk did here. Instead, they cut out efforts to put more pressure on PBMs for transparency, to take a more advers on PBMs for transparency,

to take a more adversarial stance toward investment in China, to refund poor people's benefits that were stolen, and give a raise to lawmakers. I celebrated when Musk got involved in Twitter, but he's genuinely lost me over the last couple of years, and not because of his political views, many of which I agree with. He's lost me because of his insistence that he is right about so many things where he is very obviously wrong, which shows an ignorance about how the government works and a total abandonment of curiosity to learn. He spent all week tweeting objectively false things about the initial bill and then celebrated when the bill was shorter, apparently unaware that the new CR didn't actually save the government money or spend any less than the bill he tanked.

He just thought a shorter bill meant less spending. What's more, his praise was directed at the second CR that included legislation to lift the debt ceiling, which would have effectively given Congress a blank check for two years. If his Department of Government Efficiency is going to be run with a similar misunderstanding of how budgets and spending work, you can count me out. Brian Riedel, one of my favorite conservative economists, put it like this, quote, The huge CR Omnibill was bad and deserved to go down, but the House GOP outsourcing itself to Elon Musk is still very bad, not least because nearly everything he tweeted about

the bill was false internet rumors, end quote. I'm not entirely sure how long this whole Trump-Elon Republicans marriage can go on. This latest sequence makes for some very, very bad optics, at least from where I'm sitting. Consider this, Elon Musk is the richest man in the world, and the bill he just helped kill had some direct connections to his private work.

The restrictions on investment in China would have impacted his business dealings. Musk also is a massive Pentagon contractor with SpaceX, and he put up zero fight a couple weeks ago when the nearly $1 trillion defense authorization bill passed, as Senator Chris Murphy, the Democrat from Connecticut, noted. Even the removal of the big pharmacy reforms raised my interest, as the network of billionaires Trump has brought into his administration must have been impacted. Politico noted that Mark Cuban was one of the few people to call out Musk on this specifically, asking him his views on the industry given the legislation he just killed.

I don't think it'll be long until these stories start to bother both Trump and cause too much grief for Republicans. In an era of populist fervor following an anti-establishment Trump candidacy, the optics could get even worse in a hurry. What concerns me more, however, is that the problems could go well beyond optics. No American should get used to the richest person in the world and the president working hand in glove, and we should focus as much on the things Musk is not talking about as we do on the issues he keeps directing all of our attention to.

All of this is also a preview of the messiness to come when Trump takes office. As I've said over and over, I support the fight many House Republicans are waging. Our government spending is out of control, and the way Congress passes spending measures is completely broken. I support Speaker Johnson's push for drafting, debating, and passing individual appropriations bills, and I support people like Musk focusing on the massive government bloat and waste that we have come to accept. Yet, remember this.

On Wednesday, Trump threatened to primary any Republican who voted for a continuing resolution without a debt limit extension. He put particular focus on Representative Chip Roy, the Republican from Texas, who's long been against removing the debt limit. On Friday, 170 Republicans, including Roy, voted for a continuing resolution without a debt limit extension. Roy then took the

House floor and blasted Trump and Musk for not understanding that the new bill didn't actually spend less money before admonishing his fellow Republicans as profoundly unserious about reducing deficits. This is the real problem for Republicans. It's not their thin majority over Democrats. It's that they have massive intra-party disagreements on spending and the size of government, and Trump's stance is light years away from many of the House Freedom Caucus budget hardliners. I expect that to be the defining battle

of the first months of his presidency. -♪ We'll be right back after this quick break. of his presidency. We'll be right back after this quick break. Timothy Chalamet reinvents himself again as Bob Dylan in a complete unknown, a riveting portrayal of the legendary artist's meteoric rise and groundbreaking journey. Witness the untamed spirit of a musical pioneer brought to life.

From James Mangold, the visionary director of Walk the Line and Logan, this powerful film celebrates the courage to create and the legacy of an icon who redefined music forever. Watch the trailer now and get your tickets for a story that inspired generations. A Complete Unknown, only in theaters December 25th. Only in theaters December 25th.

All right. That is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Chris in Verona, Washington. Chris said, where and why would you rank Trump on the all-time president's ranking? Where would you rank Biden? Do you think Trump's second term will move him up or down in your rankings? Okay, so I'm glad you asked this question so I can give you one of the biggest non-answers I've ever given in Tangle. I hate presidential rankings. I think they are incredibly silly and unhelpful. First of all, how are we supposed to rank presidents at all? C-SPAN's well-known presidential survey ranks them based on 10 leadership characteristics that include traits

like public persuasion, crisis leadership, and moral authority. Overall, Abraham Lincoln ranks first in James Buchanan last on that list. The presidential greatness project literally just surveys historians on the question of greatness ranked zero to 100 and tallied Trump last in Abraham Lincoln first. This all seems totally absurd to me.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend there aren't tangible ways to measure presidential success. Buchanan was a terrible president and should be toward the bottom. I'm sure most of us could agree to knock George H.W. Bush for 9-11, the failed war on terrorism, and the 2008 financial crisis. But does anyone really think we can separate ranking someone like Trump from personal bias about what is good or bad for the country? Even if you agree on policy questions,

it still seems like a futile exercise. For instance, Trump built a few hundred miles of border wall. He promised to build 2000 miles of border wall. Should we move him up the rankings for getting a few hundred miles done? Should we move him down the rankings for not fulfilling his exact promise? Should we dock him for a bad idea or bump him up the rankings for getting a few hundred miles done? Should we move him down the rankings for not fulfilling his exact promise? Should we dock him for a bad idea or bump him up for a good one?

Also, how do we change his ranking now that we've seen the massive immigration surge under Biden? I really don't think we can rank presidents with much accuracy based on subjective notions like leadership skills, greatness, or moral authority. I especially don't think we can do it while we are literally experiencing their presidencies or even in the first few years after they leave office. So even if I were to play the game on Biden or Trump, I would wait a decade or two to see how their policies and terms really play out before cementing their legacies. 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 for a special end of year note heading into the holiday break. See you then. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. AT&T recently announced that it will eliminate its landline phone service in almost all U.S. states by 2029, citing antiquated copper wire infrastructure and maintenance costs as drivers of the decision. According to AT&T, the telecom company currently provides traditional landline service in 21 states, but just 5% of its residential customers and 5% of its existing commercial customers use the service.

In place of landlines, AT&T plans to expand its existing fiber broadband network and build out a landline alternative for customers who don't want or need a broadband connection. This is a multi-year process to ensure that every single customer has voice and 911 and access to an alternative before we are able to discontinue the copper-based landline service, Executive Vice President Susan Johnson said. USA Today has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. Alright, next up is our numbers section. The length in pages of the continuing resolution released last week is 1,547.

The length in pages of the CR passed by Congress and signed by President Biden on Saturday is 116. House Speaker Mike Johnson's net favorability rating is minus 6%, according to a December 2024 Economist YouGov poll. The percentage of Republicans with a favorable view of House Speaker Mike Johnson is 47%. The percentage of Republicans with a favorable view of House Speaker Mike Johnson is 47 percent. The percentage of Democrats with a favorable view of Johnson is 19 percent.

The percentage of registered voters who say that it is inappropriate for government shutdowns to be used as leverage in policy disagreements is 87 percent, according to a 2023 Quinnipiac poll. The percentage of Republicans who say it is inappropriate for government shutdowns to be used as leverage in policy disagreements is 79 percent. And the percentage of Democrats who say it is inappropriate for government shutdowns to be used as leverage in policy disagreements is 96 percent. And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. Flight the World Giving Machines, vending machines that enable individuals to donate

food, shelter, healthcare, and other items, have been facilitating charitable donations during the holiday season since 2017. This year, the machines are available in 107 cities in 13 countries. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sponsors the machines and donations are made in partnership with organizations like UNICEF, Catholic Charities, and the American Red Cross. You can read more about these machines and you can make donations online with links 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 www.reettangle.com and sign up for a membership. You can also go to tanglemedia.supercast.com and sign up for our premium podcast membership, which gets you ad-free daily podcasts, Friday editions, Sunday editions, interviews, bonus content, and so much more. Tomorrow, we'll have a brief newsletter and podcast to fill you in on what's going on over the holiday break. In the meantime, I personally want to wish every reader and listener a wonderful holiday time. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, and I hope you get some

good time with family, friends. Even a little bit of alone time can be nice during the holidays. A good time for reflection, think back on the year, and to look ahead and plan for a promising new year. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whatever you're feeling, just know that we here at Tangle truly, truly appreciate all your support and we're honored to share in this community with you. You'll hear from Isaac tomorrow

and I'll be back in the new year. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off, wishing you a beautiful and loving rest of your year. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Duke Thomas. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Will Kavak, Gailie Saul and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was made by Magdalena Bikova, who's also

our social media manager. The music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go check out our website at reedtangle.com. That's reedtangle.com. Timothee Chalamet transforms into the enigmatic Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, a cinematic captivation that explores the tumultuous life of a musical icon. This mesmerizing film captures the essence of Dylan's rebellious spirit and his relentless pursuit of artistic innovation.

From the director of acclaimed films, Walk the Line and Logan, this extraordinary cinematic experience is a testament to the power of music and the enduring legacy of a true visionary. Watch the trailer now and secure your tickets for a truly unforgettable cinematic experience. A complete unknown. Only in theaters December 25th.