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- [00:00]
Narrator
We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature. Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to or the succulents that adorn our homes, nature makes all of our lives, well, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it, but the outdoors is closer than we realize. With Alltrails, you can discover trails nearby and explore confidently with offline maps and on trail navigation. Download the free app today.
- [00:30]
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- [01:59]
Narrator
From executive Producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.
- [02:13]
Isaac Saul
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 Sul, and on today's episode we're going to be talking about Mahmoud v. Taylor, another Supreme Court ruling that has generated a lot of conversation and attention. This is the case about a group of Maryland parents who want to opt their children out of instruction that included LGBTQ themes and succeeded in doing so via the Supreme Court. So we're going to talk about exactly what happened. And then I'm going to share some opinions from the left and the right. And then my take, and this is an interesting one for me because I went in with some priors and my view is changed after learning more, reading the opinion, reading the dissent, reading much of the commentary and analysis. So yeah, just an interesting take today because my priors kind of flipped after, after I learned more. Before we jump in to the main story though, I want to give you a quick reminder and heads up that tomorrow we're gonna live stream at 8pm on YouTube, probably some other platforms like Instagram as well. An interview sit down between me and Camille Foster, our new editor at large, we're gonna be discussing his piece on the 2020 racial reckoning. We want to involve readers and listeners in this conversation. So if you have a question for Camille about his piece, you can submit it with the form that is in the episode description today or in our newsletter and then we'll try and address it in our conversation. But keep an ear out, keep an eye out for tomorrow, 8pm Eastern. We'll send one email reminder right before we go live. Go subscribe to our YouTube channel if you haven't done that yet. We're going to try and do more stuff like this. Just some community oriented streams and video calls and follow ups on the stuff that we're covering in a way that creates some kind of accountability and conversation between us and our listeners and readers. So I'm really excited about this one and if you haven't read Camille's piece, be sure to go do that. Or if you haven't listened to it, be sure to find it in our podcast feed. It's very much worth your time. And with that, I'm going to send it over to John for today's main story and I'll be back for my take.
- [04:34]
John Lowell
Thanks, Isaac, and welcome everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, Senate debate and voting on the one Big beautiful bill continued overnight and into Tuesday morning. A final vote is expected imminently. Number two, the Trump administration informed Harvard University that it had determined the school violated federal civil rights law over its treatment of Jewish and Israeli students. The administration said the school's federal funding is at risk if it does not take steps to remedy the issue. Number three, the Supreme Court agreed to revisit a 2001 ruling that upheld federal limits on coordinated campaign spending. The case was brought by the National Republican Congressional committee, then Senator J.D. vance and former Representative Steve Shabbat, who argue that the law violates the First Amendment Number four, the Boulder County District Attorney's office announced that Karen Diamond, 82, had passed away from her injuries suffered in the flamethrower attack against members of a Jewish community group in June. And number five, President Donald Trump signed an executive order removing most U.S. sanctions on Syria, which had been in place since the 1970s.
- [05:52]
Isaac Saul
The Supreme Court sides with parents who sued on behalf of religious rights. Justices are siding with a group of Maryland parents saying they may pull their children from from public school lessons that use storybooks with LGBTQ characters or topics. The parents argue they have religious objections to the content. The decision isn't final, they say. In the case, the high court just reversed the lower court rulings, but they suggest the parents will win out in the end.
- [06:18]
John Lowell
On Friday, The Supreme Court voted 63 in favor of a group of Maryland parents who had wanted to opt their elementary age children out of instruction that included LGBTQ themes. The majority agreed to grant the parents a preliminary injunction while their law supersedes in lower courts allowing them to withhold their children from such curriculum. The court's three liberal justices dissented for context. In 2022, Montgomery County's public school system introduced LGBTQ inclusive storybooks into its English language arts curriculum for elementary school students after Maryland adopted new rules to promote educational equity. The district initially allowed parents to opt their children out of lessons involving picture books that included LGBTQ content and themes, but it reversed that policy in 2023, saying that the opt outs had become unworkable. A group of Muslim, Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox parents then sued the school district, saying the new policy violated their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion. Lower courts ruled against the group, finding that the students participation did not compel parents to violate their religions. The parents appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in late April. Friday's decision reversed the lower court's rulings, finding that the district's policy unduly burdens parents religious exercise. The court ruled that the parents had shown both that they were likely to succeed on the merits of their case and likely to suffer irreparable harm if not granted a preliminary injunction rating for the majority Justice Samuel Alito said the school board requires teachers to instruct young children using storybooks that explicitly contradict their parents religious views and it encourages the teachers to correct the children and accuse them of being hurtful when they express a degree of religious confusion. Furthermore, Alito found that the nature of the Maryland law required the court to apply strict scrutiny to the case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, arguing that the majority's opinion ushers in a new reality wherein children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents religious beliefs. She wrote that the court had invented a constitutional right to avoid exposure to subtle themes contrary to the religious principles which strikes at the core premise of public schools, that children may come together to learn not the teachings of a particular faith, but a range of concepts and views that reflect our entire society. Alita refuted this characterization, referring to Sotomayor's view as a chilling vision of the power of the state to to strip away the critical rights of parents to guide the religious development of their children. Today. We'll break down arguments from the right and the left on the decision and then Isaac's take.
- [09:10]
Isaac Saul
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- [11:22]
John Lowell
All right, first up, let's start with what the right is saying. The right praises the majority's opinion, framing it as a win for parents rights. Some criticize the lower courts for adopting a narrow view of religious freedom that the Supreme Court rejected. Others say the school district failed because it tried to advance a plainly ideological agenda. National Review's editors called the decision a Supreme Court victory for parental rights in the woke wars. Mammoth versus Taylor is a standout case for parental rights, especially as lower courts and parents nationwide try to stop public schools from effectively proselytizing on issues related to gender identity, sexuality and more. The parents and their Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty representation deserve widespread applause for standing up to the woke incredibly well funded behemoth that is Montgomery County Public schools, the editors wrote. It is particularly valuable that the court explicitly acknowledged a decade after Obergefell v. Hodges, that its 54 decision in that case does not constitute an official public orthodoxy that the government is entitled to impress upon young children. To their shame, the county's public school officials maintained that forcing children to learn material that asserted, for instance, that doctors guess when determining a baby's sex was acceptable. The editor said throughout the course of its legal battle, MCPS showed just how dedicated it was to dogmatic left wing ideology. MCPS took up this case as a culture war battle. Parents, notably, didn't object in court to the district's stated goals of diversity and tolerance, and they simply asked for the right to remove their children from lessons that contradict their religious beliefs. In the Daily Signal, Thomas Jipping and Daniel Davidson said the ruling means parents can follow their faith in raising children. The district and appeals court denied their request by utilizing a very narrow concept of what burdens religious exercise. Nothing short of the government compelling someone to abandon their religious beliefs, they said, can burden the exercise of religion, a standard that reduces the exercise of religion to little more than private religious beliefs or perhaps formal religious worship, jipping and Davidson wrote. The First Amendment prohibits an establishment of religion and protects the free exercise of religion. The Constitution's framers thought of religious establishment narrowly and religious exercise broadly. Many parents have no choice but to send their children to a public school, a decision that should not require them to surrender their constitutional right, Chipping and Davidson said. As Alito pointed out, these materials are unmistakably normative, designed to promote certain values and beliefs and discourage others regarding sexuality and gender. The threat to parents ability to guide their children's instruction on such sensitive matters is obvious. Thankfully, the Supreme Court has never adopted the narrow, crabbed view of religious freedom. In the Baltimore Sun, Jeffrey S. Trimbath wrote, the Supreme Court affirmed what Maryland parents have always known the government does not have the authority to override parents when it comes to shaping a child's moral, religious and sexual development. And when public schools attempt to do so, especially behind parents backs, they cross both legal and ethical lines. Trumbath said the court agreed. In doing so, it reinforced nearly a century of precedent, from Meyer vs. Nebraska to Pierce vs. Society of Sisters to Troxell vs. Granville, that affirms the constitutional right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children. This is not just a matter of religious liberty, though it is a central concern. It's a matter of basic human dignity and trust. This case was never about banning books or stigmatizing students. It was about the rights of parents to educate their children according to their values. If Montgomery county truly wanted to honor the diversity of its communities, it would have created materials that reflect a wide range of views, not just those aligned with progressive sexual ideologies and provided opt outs for parents whose sincerely held religious views differ. Instead, the program selectively promoted one viewpoint while silencing others, effectively teaching children that religious beliefs about sexuality and gender are outdated or even hateful. Alright, that is it for what the right is saying. Which brings us to what the left is saying. The left is critical of the decision, with many suggesting it imposes the religious views of a few on the entire public school system. Some say the ruling contains key ambiguities that could have far reaching consequences. Others suggest progressives are choosing the wrong fights to bring to the court. In Slate, Heidi Lee Feldman said that the ruling means some Americans have a constitutional right to to insist on theocracy. With its decision in Mahmud vs. Taylor, the court licensed private parties to compel theocratic governmental policies. These will now proliferate at the command of private actors and with scarcely any overt governmental action. Feldman wrote. There have been other times in this country's history when private actors have sought to impose their anti democratic visions of the United States on the rest of us. Then Congress passed still operative laws empowering their victims to sue in court and recover damages for harms they suffered. In our day, the highest federal court in the land responded by announcing without any basis in law that some Americans have a constitutional right to insist on theocracy, people hold and attempt to instruct their children in all manner of religious beliefs. Some atheists maintain that belief in the existence of a supernatural deity is dangerously antithetical to ideals of human dignity filled with said yet it seems unlikely that the six Justice Mahmud majority is prepared to require schools to provide notice and opt out accommodations to these parents or, in the alternative, remove from the curriculum and the classroom books ranging from 10 Little Christmas Presents to Once upon an Eid to Happy Diwali. In Vox, Ian Millhiser argued, the Supreme Court just imposed a don't say gay regime on every public school in America. The Mahmood case highlights the Republican justice's impatience to remake constitutional law in a more socially conservative image, especially in cases involving religion. It is certainly possible for public school instruction to violate a religious child's constitutional rights, millhiser wrote. The Constitution, for example, forbids government institutions like public schools from coercing students into violating their religious views. As Justice Samuel Alito notes in the Mahmud opinion, the Constitution also forbids teachers from openly mocking a student's faith. While it is somewhat unclear how Mahmood applies to parents who object to fantasy novels or working women, the decision quite clearly limits schools ability to teach books with queer characters. Nor is it clear when a book crosses the line from merely mentioning a gay character to celebrating some aspect of gay culture. So schools that want to avoid lawsuits will need to exclude these sorts of books from their classrooms altogether, Millhouser said. The Supreme Court, in other words, has decided that in order to accommodate one identity group, religious conservatives, schools should be hypercautious about teaching books that feature members of another identity group. LGBTQ people in the Atlantic, Duncan Hosey wrote, liberals are going to keep losing at the Supreme Court for many progressives, ambitious, doctrinary Republican appointed justices are systematically dismantling liberal precedents over the impassioned but impotent dissents of their Democratic appointed colleagues. This account obscures a difficult truth. Progressive lawyers paved the road to these losses, Hosey said. Mammoth vs. Taylor offers a cautionary tale of initial liberal wins turning into bigger defeats. From the outset of litigation, the school district should have seen the warning signs. The Beckett Fund, a powerhouse religious liberty organization that has won eight and lost zero Supreme Court cases in the past decade, represented the parents in their suit. A strategic retreat restoring the opt out and pursuing legal maneuvers to moot the case, including after the court granted certiorari, would have shown prudence, not capitulation hosey wrote. Instead, the district pressed on its temporary wins at the trial and appellate stages, then teed up the Supreme Court reversal that has now reshaped constitutional doctrine nationwide. In ruling for the parents, the Roberts court extended a nearly unbroken streak of favoring free free exercise claimants, largely conservative Christians. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take.
- [20:10]
Isaac Saul
All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So yesterday we covered the Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Trump administration on universal injunctions, and I said that I thought they were right on the legal argument and that the outcome would be positive. Today, I think the Supreme Court is on very shaky legal footing and the practical outcome is going to be very, very bad. Let me start by saying that when I first read about the ruling, my instinct was to agree with the Supreme Court and side with the plaintiffs. I've been a general subscriber to the parental rights movement for a long time, and I see a lot of upside to parents having a healthy level input and control over what their kids are taught in places like school. Specifically, the descriptions of the nine picture books involved in the case make it easy to understand why religious families, and frankly, any parents may want to opt out. It's reasonable to not want your second grader to read a book like Pride Puppy, which contains a search and find list of words like drag queen, king, leather and lip ring, or be taught that people simply guess the gender of a newborn child as if there is no relationship between sex and gender. Like many others, I think the LGBTQ rights movement and many progressives have consistently shot themselves in the foot by trying to normalize fringe progressive ideology in schools or by taking that ideology to court. These parents made the basic argument that they or anyone teaching their kids that marriage is between a man and a woman, or that there are only two genders and should be able to opt their kids out of lessons that teach them otherwise. A sturdy legal precedent forbids government institutions like public schools from coercing students into violating their religious views, and these lessons seem to qualify. So when the court ruled 6:3 in favor of the parents, I initially thought, that makes sense. I probably would have voted the same way. I think my reaction was partially informed by the age of the children in question. Candidly, I'm not sure why any of these books whose narratives center on sexual or gender identity need to be taught until fifth or sixth grade at the earliest, when sex education is first broached. But as I read about this specific case, I started to doubt my priors. First of all, the material facts of the parents argument for how their religious rights were being violated seem almost entirely hypothetical. As Ian Millhiser wrote, the case record contains no information about how any teacher or school employee has has actually used any of the storybooks in the parents children's classrooms, how often the storybooks are actually being used, what any child has been taught in conjunction with their use, or what conversations have ensued about their themes. That's according to a lower court that initially ruled against the parents. The storybooks were physically in the school, yes, and they were being taught from. But how teachers incorporated them into their lessons or quote unquote coerced kids is totally unclear. In fact, as Sotomayor explained in her dissent, the school board publicly laid out many reasonable boundaries for teaching the books, even including a section on how to respond to a student who says being gay is against their religion. Teachers are told to reply like this, I understand that is what you believe, but not everyone believes that we don't have to understand or support a person's identity to treat them with respect and kindness. School is a place where we learn to work together regardless of our differences. In any community, we'll always find people with beliefs different from our own, and that is okay. We can still show them respect. Legally, does that instruction violate a parent's right to their child's free expression of religion? And morally, is that really something we are afraid to teach our kids? Furthermore, the school district had already tried the opt out process voluntarily. It had worried that kids getting up and leaving the classroom anytime certain books are being taught would be disruptive and cause social stigma or isolation for the children of LGBTQ parents, which seems like a reasonable expectation. One of the most persuasive pieces I read about this ruling was written by Heidi Lee Feldman in Slate under what the Left Is Saying. Partisan slant aside, Feldman's legal arguments are buttoned up. For instance, she asked us to consider how this court would view an atheist who didn't want their child to absorb all manner of books depicting children happily celebrating religious holidays, which could make it difficult for their parents to teach them their religious outlooks at home. This resonates for me. I was raised Jewish, and my childhood education in public school contained endless references to Christmas and Christmas themed activity. Would my parents have had a right to remove me from class anytime a book happily portraying Christians was being taught? I honestly hope not. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor laid out in one of the more scathing and convincing dissents I've read in a long while, which I will pull from heavily today. The majority vastly overstated the implications of these books being in classrooms and contorted previous free exercise decisions to apply to this case. Here is one section from Sotomayor's dissent that has been widely shared. She said, quote, in the majority's eyes, reading aloud Uncle Bobby's wedding is just like the compulsory high school education considered in Yoder. That assertion is remarkable. Reading a storybook that portrays a family as happy at the news of their gay son's engagement, the majority claims is is equivalent to a law that threatened the very survival of the Amish community in the United States. To read that sentence is to refute it, end quote. On the most basic level, the free exercise clause of the First Amendment is about preventing the government from prohibiting the free exercise of religion. It is about what the government cannot do to the individual, not about the government itself being subject to individual or familial preferences. There is a library of Supreme Court precedent for this view, which again, Sotomayor's dissent lays out. From a legal perspective, I'm far more convinced by her argument than Alito's. Now for this ruling's implications, which are far worse than the legal rationale. Again, Sotomayor lays out the potential outcomes here. She said books expressing implicit support for patriotism, women's rights, interfaith marriage, consumption of meat, immodest dress, and countless other topics may conflict with with sincerely held religious beliefs and thus trigger stringent judicial review under the majority's test. Crucially, the ruling says nothing about how the standard enforced in this ruling should apply to idiosyncratic religious beliefs, which the Constitution forbids the government from treating differently than more common ones. How are public schools supposed to navigate this new burden? How are they going to stand up to the inevitable litigation from disgruntled parents of different religious persuasions? How are classrooms supposed to function when any number of children can walk out anytime a teacher reads from a book their parents don't want them exposed to? On the most basic level, my biggest bias here is that I have a hard time empathizing with this kind of parenting. You are not preparing your children for the real world by insulating them from the reality that gay or trans people exist. Happily, the same way a gay couple wouldn't be preparing their child for the real world by pretending religious beliefs against same sex marriage don't exist. Exist. We have a pluralistic, free society in America, and that's a good thing. Young kids should not be shielded from this reality but taught to navigate it. Unfortunately, the conservative justices seem to have chosen their destination before mapping the route to get there. I don't say that often about this court, which I think has received a lot of unwarranted criticism. But this ruling's combination of the legal ambiguities, the incredible burden it puts on schools, and its lack of hard facts depicting infringement on the free exercise of religion all make me incredibly skeptical of it and fearful about its broad implications. We'll be right back after this quick break. 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- [29:05]
Narrator
We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature, whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to or the succulent that adorn our homes. Nature makes all of our lives, well, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it, but the outdoors is closer than we realize. With alltrails, you can discover trails nearby and explore confidently with offline maps and on trail navigation. Download the free app today.
- [29:44]
Isaac Saul
All right, that is it for my take. Which brings us to your questions answered. Again a reminder that we are doing a three part answer to a question we got from an anonymous reader in Syracuse. That reader said we hear so much about the humanitarian situation going on in Gaza, but so little about other global conflicts. I know that there's a dire situation in Sudan, but I don't know how bad it is or what is on going causing it can you explain what's going on in Sudan? So yesterday we devoted our answer to this question to briefly describing Sudan's history and today we're going to talk about the lead up to the current Sudanese civil war. So this is part two of our three part answer to this reader question. Today's Sudanese civil war was ostensibly started to fill a power vacuum that left the government non functional, similar to what we saw last year in Haiti. Like in Haiti, the government crisis created a lack of international support leading to violence and armed struggle for control. The current situation started to escalate in 2011 when South Sudan seceded from Sudan. In the decade that followed, the Sudanese put mounting pressure on Omar Al Bashir, the dictator who came to power in 1989, to step down. Domestic pressure came to a head in 2019 resulting in a military coup to depose Al Bashir. The coup was carried out jointly by the Sudanese Armed Force, the country's official military led by General Abdel Fattah Al Buran and the Rapid Support Forces, a militia led by Mohammad Hamdan Hamadi Dagalo. Al Bashir initially created the RSF to counter the SAF as a coup proof power structure. In practice he used the RSF as a border guard and to suppress minorities in Darfur. The SAF leader Albaran led a transactional committee which included RSF head Hanedi and other military leaders to select an interim prime minister. In 2019, the committee chose deputy executive secretary of the UNECA, Abdallah Hamdaq. However, the SAF and RSF orchestrated another coup against Hamdaq in October 2021, causing the United States, the World bank and the International Monetary Fund to pause urgently needed aid and debt relief. After briefly becoming Prime Minister again in 2021, Hamdok resigned in 2022, leaving Albaran effectively in control of the Sudanese government. After negotiations throughout 2022, the SAF and RSF agreed to a two year plan to install a civilian led government in Sudan which immediately sparked backlash from the population. The Sudanese citizens protested the plan's length, its lack of accountability for the military leaders and its elevation of Hamadi to essentially Albaran's equal. Tensions rose between the SAF and RSF resulting in an all out war between the two groups in 2023, which is what we are living through right now. All right, that is it for part two of our three part reader question which has been a fun thing to tackle this week. Apologies also if I've butchered any of those names. I practice them so I'm hoping I haven't done any injustice here, but Sudanese names are really tough for my English speaking self and I think. I think I'm doing okay. I'm gonna send it back to John for the rest of the pod and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace.
- [32:58]
John Lowell
Thanks Isaac. Here's your under the radar story for folks the Department of Homeland Security, in collaboration with the Department of Government Efficiency, recently upgraded a network of federal databases to allow state and county election officials to quickly check the citizenship status of their entire voter lists. The tool was built to help election officials ensure only citizens are voting and it is believed to be the first searchable national citizenship data system. However, some legal experts have expressed concern that the upgrades were rolled out without public notice, suggesting the government may have not followed proper procedures for collecting and using Americans personal data. NPR has this story and there's a link in today's episode Description all right, next up is our numbers section. The number of amicus briefs filed in Mahmoud vs. Taylor is 71. The total number of schools in the Montgomery County, Maryland school district is 210, according to U.S. news & World Report. The number of elementary schools in the district is 140. The total number of students in the district is 160,554. The percentage of US adults who think parents should be able to opt their children out of learning about sexual orientation and gender identity if doing so conflicts with the parents personal views or beliefs is 54%, according to a November 2023 Pew Research survey. The percentage of U.S. adults who think parents should not be able to opt their children out of learning about sexual orientation and gender identity if doing so conflicts with the parents personal views or beliefs is 31%. The percentage of Republicans who think parents should be able to opt their children out of such lessons is 79%, and the percentage of Democrats who think parents should be able to opt their children out of such lessons is 32%. And last but not least, our have a nice day story. On June 20, a group of people named Ryan gathered at Coors Field in Denver, Colorado to attempt a world record the most people of the same first name to attend a sporting event. Ryan's from 31 states and Canadian provinces took part in the Colorado Ryan Meetup 2025, which included a coordinated effort to support the four Ryan on the Colorado Rockies and one visiting Ryan on the Arizona Diamondbacks. While the attempt fell short of the 2,325 Ivins who set the world record in 2017, it still produced a bounty of laughs, gimmicks and heartwarming stranger connections. ESPN has the story and pictures written, edited and photographed entirely by people named Ryan, and we have 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 readtangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership or a bundle membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day y' all. Peace.
- [36:01]
Isaac Saul
Our Executive Editor and Founder is me, Isaac Saul and our Executive Producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with CP Senior Editor Will K. Back and Associate Editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead Bailey Saw Lindsay Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@readtangle.com.
- [36:40]
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