John Law (12:01)

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Isaac Saul (13:04)

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Ari Weitzman (14:13)

Hey everyone, this is Managing editor Ari Weitzman, and I'm starting with the first piece I reviewed this year, which were Biden's final acts as president from January 22. As a reminder, during the final days of his presidency, former President Joe Biden issued several executive orders on major domestic and international issues. Additionally, he commuted the sentences of nearly 2,500 criminal defendants a single day record, and he granted sweeping pardons to members of his family and other political figures. I focus my take on the Biden pardons, writing Joe Biden probably did not treasonously collude with China or Ukraine to enrich his family through his son Hunter. Dr. Fauci probably didn't commit crimes in recommending strict federal vaccination policies or covering up the origins of COVID 19 and General Mealy probably did not treasonously collude with Chinese officials. That's a far cry from saying any of those parties is above reproach. It's just to say that if there had been federal trials, I would bet money on all of them being exonerated. Even ceding all of that, these pardons are still a terrible last move for Biden's administration, not just because they close off a major pathway to determining whether wrongdoing occurred, but because they escalated the use of a new major weapon in in the partisan arms race. Blanket pardons for everyone I know for as far back as I can justify. End quote. When I look back at Biden's final days in office, I think of the outgoing president, shrouded in defeat and swirling rebukes about his mental fitness, exiting the public sphere amid a flurry of clemency actions and presidential pardons. Focusing my take on the pardons was, I think, the right call. Hindsight shows that those actions were by far the most significant of Biden's final days. On the outgoing executive orders, I was right to say they were for display purposes only and correct that they would be immediately undone by President Donald Trump. As for the blanket pardons, I also believe that decrying the terrible precedent they set was a strong take. I ended my take by arguing that presidents shouldn't even have the power to issue broad preemptive pardons at all. I stand by all of that. However, I do notice a logical inconsistency with this take on reread. I say Biden is not to blame for the bad precedence of his predecessors. But then I say he's partially to blame if Trump uses the blanket pardon precedent after he leaves office. Both of these things can't be true. So if I were to write this take again, I'd still criticize Biden for expanding presidential clemency powers, but I'd give him a lot more slack for the standards that slipped before he entered office and for playing defense against the actions of his predecessor successor. As for a grade for this take, I'd give it a B plus.

Will K (16:57)

Hi everyone, this is Senior Editor Will k. Back on February 3rd, we covered Trump's new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China when the White House announced new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, it marked the beginning of a tariff saga that would continue through the year and continues today, separate from the Liberation Day tariffs that came a few months later. These duties were described as a way to increase pressure on the three countries to address their alleged roles in allowing unauthorized migrants and illegal drugs to enter the United States. At the time I wrote that, tariffs were one of the few issues on which President Trump has never wavered, both as a politician and a private citizen going back decades. I also noted that Trump's tariffs on China in his first term failed to produce the desired results, and I covered the tariffs with general skepticism. Here's what I wrote. With Mexico, we appear to be headed for a best case scenario better enforcement on their side of the border leading to declines in drug trafficking and migration before either country feels an enormous economic impact. A similar agreement may be possible with Canada, but Trump's goals for the tariffs are harder to determine. The White House claims that fentanyl production is rising in Canada, but CBP data from the past three fiscal years shows that the amount of fentanyl captured coming from Canada makes up less than 1% of all fentanyl seized nationwide. Now, here's a reflection on that take. I think my assessment has largely proven accurate, but given all the delays and reversals the tariffs, broader impact is still very hard to determine. Trump announced these duties on February 1st, but the Canada and Mexico tariffs were delayed until March, then adjusted repeatedly. Meanwhile, the China tariffs were implemented immediately but have since been modified twice. Even for someone who follows the news as their job, keeping track of which tariffs are in effect, which are just threats, and which have been withdrawn has been a bit like playing Three card Monty. I can make a few judgments, though. In retrospect, the commitments that Canada and Mexico made in response to the tariffs were little more than symbolic. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sent 10,000 troops to the border, but according to a Washington Post report, they seized a small amount of fentanyl compared to their US Counterparts on the US Side of the border. Meanwhile, Canada appointed a fentanyl czar as part of a revamped border security program. But as I noted at the time, Canada is responsible for just a fraction of the fentanyl trafficked into the US at the same time I wrote, quote, I suspect Trump is primarily using the tariffs as a tool to address America's trade deficits, which has aged well. It wasn't long before the president dropped the pretense of illegal immigration and drug trafficking and started talking about the tariffs only with regard to trade imbalances. Above all, I was right to say that this tariff agenda risked lasting damage to our relationships with allies. Just think of how different our relationship with Canada and the European Union is today compared to this time one year ago. We'll talk more about the impact of Trump's Liberation Day tariffs a bit later on, but for this initial set at the start of 2025, I think I was on target in predicting where we were headed. With all that in mind, the grade for this take is A B.

Ari Weitzman (20:25)

On February 24, we covered the future of USAID or USAID following a week of upheaval at the U.S. agency for International Development, or USAID, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he had taken over as acting administrator of the agency and told lawmakers that he intended to work with Congress to reorganize it. USAID would officially shut down and merge its remaining operations with the State Department later that year. On July 1, in my take, I struck an ambivalent posture about the initial moves, writing, I agree with a lot of the communications that have been coming out of the federal government, especially from Rubio. If the United States government is going to be in the philanthropy business, it should be directing its funds strategically. However, I disagree with a lot of the government's communications too, especially from then White House advisor Elon Musk. Let's realign this organization to follow the national interest is completely different from let's shut this whole thing down. And dangling USAID off the sharp edge of a precipice has real consequences. There are plenty of good reasons to want to shake up usaid, but citizens and noncitizens alike shouldn't be left trying to give our best guess on what those reasons are. And government by rug pull isn't a great strategy for the most powerful person on the planet. I was broadly critical of the administration putting the entirety of USAID's budget in the crosshairs. For that, I'm saved a failing grade, but I'm left grimacing as I reread this take for several reasons. First of all, I said at the time that it was too early to judge whether USAID would be removed entirely. And sure, caution and prudence make sense, but all the signs were there, and I should have stated that it looked like the program was doomed. Second, and more importantly, I was too blase about USAID's global importance and the risk of the program getting slashed. USAID provided good value for everyone involved. It was a small part of the federal budget. It allowed us to exercise soft power through humanitarian diplomacy and gave us a good standing in relationships that counter the geopolitical interests of Russia and China. And, of course, it saved lives. And sure, the agency's functions aren't exactly extinct they're under the auspices of the State Department. But those programs are significantly hampered, and the agency itself is in the past. The bottom line is I spent too little time promoting the benefits of this program and too much time considering how a potential reorganization could be in our nation's interests. Personally, I highly value international cooperation. If all I knew about myself was what I read in this take, though, I never would have gathered that. When I give this a grade, I give it a D.

Isaac Saul (23:05)

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John Law (23:13)

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John Law (24:34)

Hey everybody, this is Executive producer John Lal. On February 25, we covered the what did you do this week? Email to federal workers. In February, we covered Elon Musk's demand that federal employees responded to an email from the Office of Personnel Management detailing their work in the past week. Here is an excerpt of what Isaac wrote about the new no self respecting person would take an email preceded by an explicit threat of losing their job, demanding they list five things they did in the last week as a fair way to be treated. Every single person regarding this would be somewhere between annoyed and enraged, and rightfully so. Imagine your reaction to getting this on a Saturday night with a 48 hour deadline to answer, and at the behest of a person you'd never met, don't work for, and who was gleefully mocking you on social media while issuing it. Of course, nothing illustrates the self defeating and ineffective nature of this directive more than Trump's own agency heads instructing their employees to ignore the email. Here's Isaac's reflection. Along with criticizing this as cruel and silly, I also pointed out that it was a pretty pointless exercise and made little sense for agencies to fire people for not responding to an email from someone who isn't their superior. I question not only the efficacy of Musk's tactic, but the usefulness of the exercise at all. Not because federal workers are all infallible, efficient employees, but because emailing 2 million people asking them what they did that week, pretending you're going through their responses and making employment decisions off of them, is just plain dumb. I think all of that aged pretty well. Most agencies ignored the email entirely, telling their employees they didn't have to reply to it. Some tried to enforce the rule not by asking them to reply to opm, but by asking them to reply to their frontline supervisors. While Trump touted the email as brilliant and Musk expressed frustration that it wasn't being done, everyone else just moved on quietly. In August, OPM ended the requirement to send the email, adding that we believe that managers are accountable to staying informed about what their team members are working on and have many other existing tools to do so. Which well, yeah, we decided to give this grade an A.

Isaac Saul (26:50)

In February, we wrote about Kash Patel and Dan Bongino now leading the FBI. We broke down their appointments and like the appointment of Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They drew some of my most critical feedback for the administration yet. Here's an excerpt. Patel, at best has some relevant experience, but I'm still not thrilled about him leading the bureau. He has openly promised retribution against Trump's political enemies. He's made his career a loyalty show to Trump. He said the figure at the center of the QAnon cult should get credit for all the things he has accomplished. He hawks dietary supplements to reverse the vax and get healthy, and he claims he's going to crack down on leakers and prosecute journalists. He also still will not admit that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Bongino leading these agents is just as hard to fathom. He's so radical again, just read a few of his sample quotes, and so power hungry that I struggle to imagine what he'll do with so much control. My only hope is that there are still enough ethical and law abiding agents and lawyers among the FBI's roughly 38,000 employees to check Patel's and Bongino's worst desires, but I can't say I'm enthusiastic about the odds. All right, reflecting on this, I wouldn't say I'm surprised I by how either of their tenures has gone. Bongino is already out and seems genuinely thrilled to be back to podcasting. As a senior FBI official, Bongino conceded that he now had to follow the facts and be careful about what he said. Imagine that. Given that he's back in the podcast chair, I presume he'll pick up where he left off, indulging all manner of conspiratorial thinking and speculation. Patel, for his part, seems to be on thin ice with even some of Trump's most ardent supporters. Not just for controversies about gallivanting on taxpayer money with his girlfriend, but more because he's like the dog that caught the car. He and Bongino both had to spend much of their first year trying to convince their biggest fans that many of the conspiracies they pushed, like the Epstein Files, didn't actually have much there, so much that their followers began wondering if they themselves had been compromised. For me, watching Bongino and Patel squirm as they had to switch from talking heads to FBI officials was genuinely cathartic and and the brief period of time where they stayed more attached to reality was appreciated. In this piece, I predicted that Bongino and Patel would be disasters. While reviewing that claim, I realized that I didn't have a great metric for objectively grading the performance of the FBI or FBI officials. But a few things come to mind. On two separate cases, Patel announced the arrest of high profile subjects, only to then have to backtrack and say they had the wrong person. The agency disbanded a key public corruption squad in its Washington office and upended how it prosecutes white collar crime and not in a good way. Despite promising unprecedented transparency, Patel has made a habit of confrontationally dodging questions in public. The FBI scaled back staffing and work on domestic terrorism. Patel has followed through on his promise to act as a personal police force for the president, including by arresting James Comey and firing an FBI agent for not perp walking him. The good news, I suppose, is that the FBI has not been so derelict under Patel for an unprecedented wave of preventable crime or domestic terrorism to break out. But the embarrassments and hiccups after just one year are notable. I'm genuinely not sure what I would write differently if I rewrote this take today, so my grade is an A.

John Law (30:15)

Next up on March 3rd, we covered the Trump Zelensky Oval Office blow up. On February 28, Trump Vice President J.D. vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met at the White House to conduct final negotiations over a mineral rights deal. Toward the end of the meeting, Vance and Zelenskyy clashed over how the administration might navigate Russian President Vladimir Putin. After the meeting, Zelenskyy left the White House without signing the minerals agreement. Isaac's take was mostly a play by play analysis of how the meeting went wrong and concluded by apportioning blame all around, isaac wrote. I really don't know what will happen now. Zelenskyy obviously still wants the deal. The Ukrainian people seem to support how he comported himself, even if they understand it may have been damaging. If Trump and Vance really do decide to end our support for Ukraine and pull out of this deal, Zelenskyy's actions will go down as one of the most catastrophic diplomatic failures I've ever seen, and for us, it'll be little more than a national disgrace. As Trump himself said on Friday, we shouldn't play games with World War three. That message is applied just as well to Ukraine's leader as it is our own. Here's Isaac's with some time between now and the incident in question, the play by play remains accurate. I wrote that comments from both sides created a maddeningly, infuriatingly unnecessary situation, and I feel the same way today. Zelenskyy should just have let it go, and Vance shouldn't have escalated. That said, I do have a few knocks on my take here. For one, my conclusion reads like I'm putting Vance and Zelenskyy on the same level. I think Zelensky had reason to push back, even if he shouldn't have, while Vance's motivations remain a total mystery. For two in my focus on the blow up, I didn't get into a broader discussion on the chances for a US Brokered peace deal to succeed. I don't necessarily feel bad about leaving that out to focus on the details, but it does seem like a big omission in retrospect. We give that grade a B. Next up on March 11, we covered Columbia University's funding cut and Mahmoud Khalil's arrest In March, we covered the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil and the Trump administration's decision to cut federal funding to Columbia University. In Isaac's take, he's reminded readers that he's often had critical things to say about student protesters, and to keep that in mind, given what he was about to write, Isaac wrote, I say all this to remind you that my views on student protesters have some nuance but are far from innately positive. I hope that gives my statement more weight when I say that the arrest of Khalil is one of the most chilling acts by the Trump administration yet. Most importantly, President Trump is infringing not just on the inalienable right of free speech, but the fundamental ethic of it. The Trump administration promised it would focus its deportation efforts on the worst of the worst, but instead are bringing the force of the state down on a Columbia University alumnus with no criminal record who just got his master's degree in international affairs and whose wife is an American citizen and eight months pregnant. No matter how you feel about Khalil, his movement, the students at Columbia, or anything else, if you value civil liberties, due process and free speech, you should find this development deeply disturbing. Here's Isaac's reflection. This take was decidedly a mixed bag. The upside for Migrade is this was a harbinger of things to come. The Trump administration has continued to infringe on free speech, not just for immigrants, but also American citizens, corporations and institutions. Waves of aggressive deportations have mistakenly caught innocent people and American citizens in their wake. Far from a focus on the worst of the worst, the Trump administration has continued to predominantly deport unauthorized migrants in the country who have no criminal record. They've targeted workers in the parking lots of Home Depot and people showing up to immigration hearings that is following the law. On the other hand, the administration has successfully pegged Khalil for an immigration crime and likely found a legal pathway to deporting him. It turns out he committed fraud on his green card application by omitting his involvement with two the United Nations Relief and Works Agency of Palestine Refugees and Columbia University Apartheid the West. He has now received a deportation order to Syria, his native country, or Algeria, where he is a citizen. Still, Khalil very obviously was punished for his speech. The Trump administration is not pursuing his deportation or fishing for violations like this is an audit of green card holders. They're doing it because they want to make an example out of him, which to me, and I hope everyone else is still a terrifying flex of government power. At the same time, I have to dock myself some points given that they have found a legitimate pathway for deporting Khalil and which I did not expect when I wrote my take. We give this grade a C. Hey everybody, this is John, Executive Producer for Tangle. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest episode. If you are not currently a newsletter subscriber or a premium podcast subscriber and you are enjoying this content and would like to finish it, you can go to readtangle.com and sign up for a newsletter subscription or you can can sign up for a podcast subscription or a bundled subscription which gets you both the podcast and the newsletter and unlocks the rest of this episode as well as ad free daily podcasts, more Friday editions, Sunday editions, bonus content, interviews and so much more. Most importantly, we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We're working hard to bring you much more content and more offerings, so stay tuned. I will join you again for for the daily podcast. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day y'.

Will K (35:46)

All.

John Law (35:49)

Peace.

Isaac Saul (35:52)

Our Executive Editor and founder is me, Isaac Sol and our Executive Producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by John Law. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will Kick and Associate editors Audrey Moorhead. Bailey Saw Lindsay Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and John Law. And to learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@readtangle.com.

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John Law (37:52)

Blood donation is now more Inclusive More people are able to donate blood with the American Red Cross through FDA guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation. The Red Cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood. There's a place for everyone in the mission of the Red Cross. The Red Cross is committed to achieving an inclusive blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply. Join us and help save lives lives. To learn more and make your appointment to donate blood, visit redcrossblood.org LGBTQ that's redcrossblood.org LGBTQ.