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Ari Weitzman
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Podcast Guest / Monica Reinagle
From executive producer Isaac Saul. This is Tangle.
Ari Weitzman
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tango Podcast, the place where you get some views from across the political spectrum, independent thinking and a little bit of our take. I'm your host again for today Tango's managing editor Ari Weitzman. Back with a lot of momentum after my paternity leave and tackling another addition that's kind of in my wheelhouse, which is the Canadian Wildfires. I know this is normally a politics podcast, but sometimes there's a little bit of intersection between science and politics. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. What, if anything, can the Canadian or American governments do about all this wildfire smoke that we've been experiencing this summer and are probably going to keep experiencing? We'll get into that. We'll also get into a reader question about suing the military and a roundup of stories we chose not to cover this week. So it's a lot of stuff to get into and we're going to get right into it. I'm going to send it over to John to get us started and I'll be back for my take.
News Reader / Reporter
Thanks, Ari, and welcome everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, President Donald Trump said the US Will strike Iranian power plants or bridges as retaliation for any future attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Number two, The House voted 216 to 214 to approve a budget plan that included $73 billion in Iran war funding, $12 billion to support farmers, and $10 billion to enforce potential voting restrictions. The plan now heads to the Senate. Separately, The House voted 232 to 198 to pass a bill limiting some congressional stock trading and adopting photo identification requirements for voting. Number three, President Trump said he will impose a 100% tariff on imported generic drugs in 2028 unless manufacturers of the drugs move their operations to the United States. Trump said the tariffs will increase to 200% in 2029. Number four, the Trump administration announced it will spend approximately $5 billion to support the Energy Department's Genesis mission, which plans to leverage artificial intelligence to address long standing scientific challenges. And number five, Representative Jim Jordan, the Republican from Ohio, referred former special counsel Jack Smith to the Justice Department for prosecution, accusing him of making false statements to Congress about subpoenaing lawmakers texts during his investigations into President Trump.
Donald Trump
I told him, I mean, you got to stop these fires from coming in and you know, poisoning our air. Our air has been poisoned. I have a good relationship with Mark Carney, but, you know, we got to stop the fires up there. If we can help them, we'll help them, but maybe they should pay us some damages or something or we should do some tariffs. But it was terrible. I mean, you had businesses closing in particular Michigan. If you look at Detroit, the Detroit, Michigan area, they had to close everything. They had closed car plants and a lot of other things. So I've never remembered this happening over the last four or five years. You saw it starting to take place. I've never remembered it happening.
News Reader / Reporter
Over the past week, smoke from wildfires in Canada as well as northern Minnesota has affected air quality and visibility across the Midwest and east coast of the United States. As of Monday, air quality alerts remained in place for a large portion of the country and experts expect wildfire smoke to remain prevalent through August. The fires have raised concerns about climate related catalysts of extreme environmental events as well as scrutiny of Canada's forest management. Wildfires are a normal yearly occurrence in Canada, which contains approximately 1/10 of the world's total forest area. However, the scale of the blazes has increased in recent years. The country had its biggest wildfire season by area burned in 2023 and currently has more active wildfires than at this in the past two years. Fires in Ontario are primarily responsible for the smoke enveloping the United States over the past week, temporarily causing the air quality in Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis to be among the worst in the world. 897 fires are active in Canada as of Thursday. Meteorologists expect windy and dry conditions will likely cause wildfire smoke to continue blowing across Canada and the US for several weeks. There will be a couple of chances of meaningful rain this weekend, AccuWeather's senior meteorologist Rene Duff said on Monday. Scientists in Canada and the United States say that climate change is contributing to the more extreme fires. Warmer conditions led to drier fuels, stanford climate scientist Chris Field said. The warmer it is, the faster things dry and the drier they are, the faster they burn. Others contend that increased forest management in the remote areas where many fires originate is not feasible. President Donald Trump has blamed Canada's forest management for exacerbating the wildfires. We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their forests and brush therein, trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday. This is willful negligence and becoming a yearly occurrence, costing the United States billions of dollars, which cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the tariffs Canada is currently paying. Separately, Senator Bernie Moreno announced a plan to sanction Canada and Canadian officials over the wildfire smoke. Today we'll explore perspectives from the left, right and Canadian writers on the wildfires, and then Managing editor Ari Weitzman give his take.
Isaac Saul
We'll be right back after this quick break. Hey everyone, quick thought before we get started. If you listen to Tangle, it's probably because you're trying to escape the media echo chamber. But even when you read broadly, it's hard to see which stories are being emphasized and which ones are being ignored. This episode is brought to you by Ground News. Ground News is not a publisher. It's an app and website that gathers reporting on every news story from across the political spectrum and shows you each outlet's bias rating, factuality rating and who owns it. It's more than just an aggregator, it gives you context on every perspective in one place so that you can make up your own mind. For example, a recent story about a bipartisan border deal collapsing was covered by 50 plus outlets. One left leaning headline read GOP sinks border deal under Trump Pressure while a right leaning one said Democrats block stronger Border enforcement. Same event, very different framing. Ground News lets you compare that instantly and even flags blind spots stories disproportionately covered by one side. If you want unlimited access to these features, subscribe to the vantage plan for 40% off@groundnews.com tn that's groundnews.com tn promo code tn again, groundnews.com tn code tn for 40% off if you care about seeing the full picture, I think you'll really value this tool. One thing I love about summer is how easy everything feels. The days are a little more relaxed and I find myself reaching for the same comfortable go anywhere pieces again and again. And that's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on well made essentials that naturally become those everyday staples you actually live in all season long. Quince's 100% European linen pants and shirts are breathable, easy to throw on and the summer upgrade your rotation needs starting at just $34. Their tees are soft to live in all day and the lightweight cotton sweaters are exactly what you want when summer nights cool down. In my Quince rotation is three or four linen shirts and some Henley tees, all in different colors. They just look so good. They feel so good. I love putting them in my rotation and I'm especially excited that it's now summertime so I can rock them whenever I want. So if you want to make your summer wardrobe easier, go to quint.comtangle for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's right now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com tangle for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com tangle.
News Reader / Reporter
Alright, first up, let's start with what the left is saying. Many on the left blame climate change for the wildfires. Some say that Trump's criticism of Canada rings hollow. In the New York Daily News, Daniel Zarin wrote, global climate change is causing New York City's smoky air. Before 2023, the only comparable smoke events in NYC history were more than 100 years ago during the Adirondack fires of 1903 and 1908. It's worth asking why we were blessed with such a long smoke free interval and why we are now entering a new normal with negative impacts on public health and mortality, zarrin said. Our carbon emissions have heated the planet nearly 1.5 degrees Celsius in Canada. Temperature increases have been about twice the global average and nearly three times as high as northern Canada. The smoke filled air is a symptom of a global problem, zarin wrote. Although the 2026 Canadian wildfires will likely be linked to the Super El Nino we are entering, we are a large part of the problem. American carbon emissions per capita are nearly three times the global average and are increasing following a brief dec. If we continue to burn billions of tons of fossil carbon each year, we shouldn't expect a different result. Plants took millions of years to remove that carbon from the earth's ancient atmosphere. We're reversing that geological process in the blink of an eye. In Ms. Now, Jarvis Debary said Trump demands Canada show more concern for American air quality than he does Republicans Concerns about filthy, polluted and unhealthy air must come as a surprise to Americans whose health concerns have been utterly disregarded by Trump's Environmental Protection Agency Debary wrot. In January, for instance, the EPA updated decades of policy that assigned a rough value per human life for cost benefit analyses of pollution restrictions. The previous number was just under $12 million. Trump's EPA zeroed it out. Now all of a sudden, when smoke is wafting in from Canada, Trump says the pollution is costing the US Billions of dollars. It is inconceivable that if the situation were reversed and US Created smoke was blanketing southern parts of Canada, Trump would consider the U.S. culpable, Debary said. If a major fire breaks out during Trump's term, that could have been prevented or mitigated with better force management. Don't expect Trump or any of the Republicans accusing Canada of mismanagement to feel convicted by their own words. Why would they? They're not interested in force management or even in making it easier for Americans to breathe. They're only interested in saying something outrageous to fire up the bas. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying. Which brings us to what the right is saying the right says better forest management would mitigate the effects of wildfires. Some say Canada has been negligent in managing their forests. In City Journal, Shawn Reagan and Shawn Speier described why America keeps choking on wildfire smoke. When wildfire smoke blankets America's largest cities, as it has several times in recent years, people look for scapegoats, reagan and Speier said. Climate change is the reflexive answer. President Trump has a different culprit. In a Truth Social Post on Friday, he blamed Canada's willful negligence in failing to manage its forests and threatened to add the smoke's incalculable costs to the tariffs Canada already pays. Both diagnoses are incomplete. Climate change certainly plays a role by lengthening fire seasons and drying fuels, but the severity of fires ultimately depends on how landscapes are managed. Targeted fuels treatment, including forest thinning, brush clearance and prescribed burning, removes the dense vegetation that causes wildfires to spread and intensify. These treatments don't necessarily keep fires from starting, but they reduce their intensity, restore more natural forest conditions, and give firefighters a better chance to contain blazes once they break out. Canada does far too little of this, Raiked and Speer said. Both countries know how to make fires smaller and less severe. The question is, how many more suffocating summers will it take before their governments figure out that managing forests is better and cheaper than watching them burn? In the Daily Signal, Jason Hayes wrote, canadian wildfires prove that proper forest management beats green plans. Blaming wildfires on climate change is a handy distraction from real solutions that could eventually help manage the wildfire issue, Hayes said. Rather than admitting that their green plans exacerbate wildfire risks by stopping people from using and managing forested areas. Environmental activists double down, pretending that if they can ban gasoline and natural gas, wildfires will simply disappear. More reasonable voices must correct the narrative by repeatedly explaining how wildfires have been around for as long as the world has had forests and that while warm air can make fires more intense, it does not cause them. And while wildfires are a normal part of living in and around forests, the reality is that poor forest management practices can make them worse by allowing forests to become dense or overgrown and over mature, unmanaged forests are ripe for massive fires, especially when a disease or insect infestation kills portions of them, hays wrote, the policy takeaway is if we refuse to manage our forests, Mother Nature will do it for us, and we won't often like the results. Where possible, we should manage forests actively to reduce fuel buildup and wildfire risk, allowing active harvesting, spacing thinning and prescribed fires can reduce these fuels under controlled conditions and lessen the likelihood of wildfires and the intensity of those that do occur. Alright, that is it for what the left and right are saying. Which brings us to what Canadian writers are saying. Some Canadian writers say government reporting on climate change's effect on wildfires is exaggerated. Others argue that the government has a responsibility to address the environmental concerns underlying the wildfires. In the National Post, Matthew Lau argued government funded wildfire facts contradict reality. The Canadian Climate Institute, an organization funded to the tune of $34.9 million by the federal government over the past four years, recently published a series of fact sheets about how climate change is making heat waves, flooding, droughts and wildfires worse, Lau wrote. According to the institute, climate change threatens the safety, well being and prosperity of Canadians, and governments must take drastic action to curtail its effects, including by accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels to to limit climate heating. However, while wildfire smoke, floods and other disasters are real, these fact sheets, again paid for by the federal government, are much more alarmist than informative. The institute highlights the horrific blaze in Jasper in 2024 and suggests that reduced fossil fuel usage could mitigate the harms of such fires. But in reality, the evidence shows government mismanagement, not man made. Climate change was largely to blame. The federal government is responsible for Jasper National Park's forest management, which includes managing the stock of timber, especially in high risk zones. But it simply did not manage this effectively, lau said. Wildfires and wildfire smoke are real problems that should be understood and mitigated. But the reality about climate change is not nearly as alarming as what the government funded Canadian Climate Institute reports In the Toronto Star, Doris Grinspun and Sue Lebeau said government officials must help prevent the next wildfire while communities are threatened by catastrophic fires. Governments have a moral obligation to spare no effort or expense to protect lives, provide shelter, support evacuees and help communities recover. That is exactly what governments should do, Greenspan and Lebeau said. Wildfires have always been a part of Ontario's landscape, but climate change is making them larger, more frequent and more destructive. The tragedy is that this crisis did not emerge in a policy vacuum. It is part of a pattern that has defined the Premier Doug Ford government's approach to environmental policy, one that has consistently moved Ontario backward on responsibility for emissions reduction and climate accountability as climate impacts become more severe. Climate change is not simply an environmental issue, it is a public health emergency, Greenspan and Lebeau said. After years of weakening Ontario's climate response Ford now has an opportunity to match his words with policies and that genuinely protect people. That commitment cannot begin only when forests burn. It must start earlier by tackling the causes of climate change, preparing communities for unavoidable impacts, and putting health at the heart of public policy. All right, let's head over to Ari for his take.
Ari Weitzman
I'm going to do something abnormal for one of my takes, which is tell you my conclusion right away. That's this. Climate change is creating a higher risk of wildfires, and Canada should undertake policy changes to mitigate that risk. That's it. That's the take. But now I've got a little bit more to say. Hotter temperatures don't increase the risk of fire on their own. The weather has to be not only hot, but also dry and windy to qualify as fire weather. And that's according to the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Western Fire Chiefs association, the National Park Service, and pretty much any climatologist or park ranger that you could speak to. Hot and dry air draws moisture out of things in the forest that can burn, like trees, grasses, leaves, twigs, anything organic, and it can turn all of that organic material into potential fuel for a wildfire. Under those conditions, any spark, like lightning or downed power lines caused by high winds can ignite an inferno. High winds then stoke the flames by sending oxygen into the path of fires, and they can expand the area of the burn by blowing embers miles away from the heart of the blaze. In the summer months, the weather gets hotter and drier, and the summer's El Nino will likely bring a lot of high wind days. None of that's news, and people expect seasonal change and cyclical events like that in weather. However, North American summers have been getting hotter and drier over time, and El Ninos have been getting stronger. The shift in weather patterns over time has a name, climate change. Berkeley Earth physicist Robert Rhode released a compelling visualization in 2018, which I can't believe was already eight years ago. But I digress and showed how the hottest and driest years in California had all been the most recent ones. One of the best climate communications out there right now is named Zeke Hausfather, and recently Hausfather compiled a similar visualization for mean temperature and precipitation over burnable land in Canada, which isn't quite as dramatic, but paints a very similar and pretty clear picture. To wit, weather conditions in Canada have been getting hotter and drier. You don't even have to believe that humans are causing this, and I explained the theory of how, yes, humans are causing climate change in great detail in tangle in 2021 and I can't believe that was already five years ago. But coming back to today, all you have to do is acknowledge the trend. Weather is getting hotter and drier. On the flip side, that doesn't mean that climate change is the sole cause of these wildfires either. These are multi factor occurrences and flattening the dynamic into climate change continues to make these disasters worse. Which is a quote from Senator Chuck Schumer, misrepresents the dynamic and isn't convincing anyone who wasn't already concerned about climate change. Again, climate change will make fire weather more likely and it will heighten the risk of fires. It is not specifically causing worse wildfires. Ultimately, statements like Schumer's are pretty minor misrepresentations, but the tendency for politicians and the news media to only talk about climate change during extreme environmental events and not say when the output of climate models changes is a constant frustration of mine. To take again from Hossfather records aren't the best measure of trends. You can misrepresent a lot of trends by focusing only on extremes. But I get it. Extreme weather events drive the news and the news drives conversation. I just get annoyed about how it distorts the way we discuss and understand climate change. It also distorts the way we understand the causes of wildfires. Last year in the United States, California experienced some of the most destructive fires in the state's history. And those fires have imparted critical lessons about the wildland, urban interface and forest management, larger breaks between dense residential areas and forests, more prescribed burns, and even some intentional logging. As humans, we want to pull from our mental file of solutions indexed under wildfires and apply them anytime that there's a wildfire like today. But it's not that simple. First, the recent Canadian wildfires have burned in very remote areas where there is no urban interface with wildlands. And the concerns aren't about burned structures, but smoke that's getting swept into the jet stream and blown across thousands of miles. Second, Canada's boreal forests are different from the coniferous forests in the American West. Not only are they generally less dry, but they've also never been used in any significant way for human development. It's hard to blame poor forest management for fires in areas that were never managed in the first place and that we never expected to need to manage. Let me put it like this. Imagine you live in West Texas. Imagine the gentle sun baked desert hills around you aren't dotted by cactus, and the occasional desert willow, but covered in pine, spruce, poplar and birch. Imagine this forest stretches across the entire state, that the state is now almost totally unpopulated, and that much of it hasn't been so much as visited by humans in decades, if not longer. Now imagine you and a crew about the size of your high school class are responsible for responding to wildfires across the whole state. Oh, and if you let a fire get too big and the wind is just right, it'll cause a geopolitical crisis. That's basically what it's like to be managing Canada's wildfires right now. Simply put, Canadian forests are just not the same as ours, so the lessons learned from our fires can't be so easily mapped to theirs. I'll turn one final time to Hossfather to bring the point home. The forest management explanation is borrowed from the wrong forest. It's a real problem in the frequent fire dry forests of the Western U.S. but the Canadian Boreal is a rare crown fire system, mostly unmanaged and unsuppressed, where only about a fifth of the burned area is even on managed land, and where the fire scientists themselves say landscape scale fuel treatments can't scale or stop the megafires. Let's take it back to politics, and let's not mince our words here. If Schumer is out of the strike zone with his rhetoric President Donald Trump is throwing over the backstop. Accusing Canada of willful negligence for not properly maintaining their forests betrays a very basic misunderstanding of the problem. And tariffing Canada for smoke that drifted over the United States when it also ravaged Canada's largest city, Toronto, misdiagnoses the solution. Canada is not suffering from a lack of motivation to better mitigate these fires, so I don't think tariffs and online posturing will help. Personally, I think we do better cooperating with Canada to manage the root causes of our shared air quality problem, as the Department of Interior announced it would do in 2023 and as we still do today by sharing firefighting equipment. But that's not the way this administration handles its relationships with our allies. But I'd be wrong to say Canada has actually exhausted all its options. And I could be wrong about President Trump's tack if he catalyzes more funding and better organization for Canada's existing mitigation efforts. In 2022, Canada launched the Fighting and Managing Wildfires in a Changing climate program, devoting $346 million to increasing wildfire preparedness, then in 2024 and launched the Wildfire Resilient Futures Initiative to continue and expand this work. Problems with these programs are that they focus more on preventing property damage and localized loss of life, not wildfire smoke, and the efforts they funded aren't well organized or centralized. Also, from an American perspective, you'd probably expect the funding, about $350 million to be larger by a factor of 10. To better mitigate these air quality events, Canada will need larger landscape scale prescribed burns to reduce fuel load before fire seasons begin, and they'll need much more than the current level of funding to do that. I don't personally feel confident saying that approach will definitely help, but I do feel confident saying the scale of response from the Canadian government has not gotten within spinning distance of its theoretical maximum. So maybe Trump's kick in the pants approach will light a productive fire under the Canadian Parliament. To me, that's the best case scenario outcome of Trump's approach. Though I need to stress that the best Canada can do, even with a massive multinational preventative effort far past the scale they've ever considered before, is mitigate the risk. The conditions for wildfires aren't going to get better anytime soon because Canadian summers aren't going to just suddenly get cooler and wetter anytime soon. Climate change? It's a process that we can't easily reverse, even if our government tackles it head on, which it isn't. So I'll repeat how I started Climate change is creating a higher risk of wildfires, and Canada should undertake policy changes to mitigate that risk. And that's it. That's the take.
Isaac Saul
We'll be right back after this quick break.
News Reader / Reporter
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Ari Weitzman
Let's now answer one of your questions with the recent deaths of U.S. soldiers related to the Iran conflict, is it plausible that family members of the deceased might choose to sue the US Government for wrongful death? Using the rationale that the President did not receive congressional approval for this war and that their deaths resulted from illegal involvement? This seems like it might be a way for citizens to challenge the way in which the US has become involved and stayed involved in this conflict. And that comes from David in Atlanta, Georgia Based on current Supreme Court precedent, no military family members cannot sue the government for wrongful deaths caused in the act of military service. However, that could theoretically change at the base level. The legal principle of sovereign immunity states that private citizens cannot sue the government without its consent. That principle was explicitly limited in 1946 when Congress passed the Federal Tort Claims act, authorizing plaintiffs to obtain compensation from the United States for harm suffered or torts due to negligence by government employees. However, section 2680 of that act carved out several broad exceptions, granting the government immunity against lawsuits for any claim arising in a foreign country and any claim arising out of the combatant activities of the military or naval forces or the Coast Guard during time of war. While that language could permit a lawsuit against the military for torts outside of an official war, that isn't how the Supreme Court has interpreted the statute. In 1950, several plaintiffs attempted to sue the military for negligence or wrongful death in fairies versus United States, including one service member who said a surgeon left an 18 by 30 inch towel in his abdomen. The Court dismissed the claims, thus establishing the fairies doctrine basically that the military cannot be sued for any tort suffered during active duty. A diverse array of Justices have since rebuked this precedent, including Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Clarence Thomas. But the Court has affirmed it repeatedly, and as recently as 2018, it denied a request to hear a challenge to the doctrine. In its dissent to that 2018 denial, Justice Thomas wrote that he thought the fairies doctrine was wrongfully established, and he urged Congress to limit it. Then, as hard as this is to imagine, Congress did act. It passed the statusical act in 2019, doing exactly that, allowing claims against the military for malpractice or wrongful death at military medical facilities. Obviously, that doesn't say anything about military actions that are found to be taken outside the President's authority, but it does show that the ferry standard is not set in stone. Theoretically, a Supreme Court open to revisiting shaky precedents could revisit ferries, but realistically that would be highly unlikely given how hard even these moderate carve outs have been to achieve. It's borderline fanciful to imagine Congress or the court expanding military torts broadly enough to allow for this kind of legal action that you're suggesting. That's it for today's reader question. I'm going to send it back over to John for the rest of the pod.
News Reader / Reporter
Thanks, Ari. In this week's the Road Not Taken, the biggest story we wanted to cover this week but didn't was New Jersey Governor Mikey Sherrill's announcement that the state had discovered roughly 6,600 non citizens who were registered to vote in 2023 and 2024 due to a Motor Vehicle Commission system error after a deep dive turned up insufficient commentary on the story from the left and the right On Wednesday afternoon, we put the issue on hold for next week. We also considered a piece on the US Servicemember casualties in Iran, but opted to answer a reader question about war in today's edition instead, with a mind toward a broader Iran edition in the coming weeks. Finally, we discussed covering New York City Mayor Zoram Mamdani's comments about arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ultimately, we felt the story was a less relevant after Mamdani acknowledged he didn't have the authority to do so and b would have created a New York heavy week after we had already covered the state's one year pause on data center construction. And last but not least, our have a nice day story. Even the best radiologists regularly miss CT scan abnormalities that can be the difference between life and death for patients. Complicating matters, researchers found that radiologists subconsciously detect abnormalities that their conscious brains don't always process. Gregory DiGirolamo decided to explore how to patch those gaps in in detection. His team turned to pigeons. DiGirolamo and researchers at the College of the Holy Cross trained six pigeons to watch CT scan videos and indicate whether they showed lung nodules that could signal cancer. With a little motivation for accurate detections, the birds became remarkably successful, even applying their visual powers to other kinds of scans. Now DiGirolamo is working on translating his findings to new medical technology to assist radiologists. Popular Science has this story and you can check it out with the link in today's episode. Description alright everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please head over to readtangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We've got a fresh new episode of Suspension of the Rules out today and it is the triumphant return of the King himself, Ari Weitzman joining Isaac and Camille to talk about election integrity, Isaac's appearance on Bill O'Reilly, a twist in an old Hunter Biden story, and challenge the separating political rhetoric from reality. You can head over to Apple Music, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform, or head over to our YouTube channel to check out the full video, which has some additional related visual clips. And if you haven't checked it out already, we released a video report on the fight over Alaska's novel election system, which uses top four primary and ranked choice voting in the general election. Senior Editor Will Kabeck and I traveled to the state to talk with proponents and opponents of the system and how it's already changed Alaskan politics and what we found might surprise you. You can check that out by heading over to our YouTube channel. And while you're there, please subscribe, click like and turn on notifications. All of that helps us with getting seen in the algorithm and getting our video out to new viewers. We'll be right back in your ears next week, folks. Until then, for Issac, Ari and the rest the of to the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have an absolutely fantastic weekend y'.
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Isaac Saul
Our Executive Editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive Producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will Kbach and Associate Editors Audrey Moorhead and Billy Saw. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about tango and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@readtangle.com.
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Host: Ari Weitzman (for Isaac Saul)
Date: July 23, 2026
In this episode, Tangle explores the ongoing Canadian wildfires and their impact on the United States, especially concerning air quality. The discussion focuses on the intersection of science and policy: what is causing the increase in wildfire frequency and severity, how climate change and forest management play a role, and what actions governments on both sides of the border could or should take. The show draws from arguments across the political spectrum and includes an in-depth take from Managing Editor Ari Weitzman. Other segments include a listener question on suing the US military and a brief “Road Not Taken” news roundup.
[03:29 – 05:43]
"If we can help them, we'll help them, but maybe they should pay us some damages or something or we should do some tariffs… I've never remembered this happening over the last four or five years." (05:02)
[10:40 – 13:20]
"Global climate change is causing New York City's smoky air. ... Our carbon emissions have heated the planet nearly 1.5 degrees Celsius in Canada." (10:54)
"Trump demands Canada show more concern for American air quality than he does Republicans Concerns ... Must come as a surprise to Americans whose health concerns have been utterly disregarded by Trump's Environmental Protection Agency.” (12:15)
[13:20 – 15:16]
“Climate change certainly plays a role by lengthening fire seasons and drying fuels, but the severity of fires ultimately depends on how landscapes are managed." (13:42)
"Blaming wildfires on climate change is a handy distraction from real solutions … unmanaged forests are ripe for massive fires." (14:18)
[15:16 – 17:38]
"Government mismanagement, not man made climate change, was largely to blame." (15:29)
“…climate change is making them [wildfires] larger, more frequent and more destructive … climate change is not simply an environmental issue, it is a public health emergency.” (16:21)
[19:18 – 28:51]
Clear Thesis:
"Climate change is creating a higher risk of wildfires, and Canada should undertake policy changes to mitigate that risk. That's it. That's the take." (19:18)
Expanded Analysis:
"Flattening the dynamic into 'climate change continues to make these disasters worse'... isn't convincing anyone who wasn't already concerned about climate change." (20:58)
"Canadian forests are just not the same as ours, so the lessons learned from our fires can't be so easily mapped to theirs." (23:38)
"Accusing Canada of willful negligence for not properly maintaining their forests betrays a very basic misunderstanding of the problem." (25:15)
On Policy & Solutions:
"Climate change is creating a higher risk of wildfires, and Canada should undertake policy changes to mitigate that risk." (28:38)
[30:09 – 33:21]
[33:21 – 36:31]
| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 05:02 | Donald Trump | “Maybe they should pay us some damages or something or we should do some tariffs.” | | 10:54 | Daniel Zarrin (NYDN) | “Global climate change is causing New York City’s smoky air... Our carbon emissions… in Canada.” | | 12:15 | Jarvis DeBerry (Ms.Now)| “Trump demands Canada show more concern for American air quality than he does Republicans…” | | 13:42 | Reagan & Speier | “Climate change certainly plays a role... but the severity of fires ultimately depends on how landscapes are managed.” | | 14:18 | Jason Hayes | "Blaming wildfires on climate change is a handy distraction from real solutions..." | | 15:29 | Matthew Lau | “Government mismanagement, not man made climate change, was largely to blame.” | | 16:21 | Grinspun & Lebeau | "Climate change is not simply an environmental issue, it is a public health emergency.” | | 19:18 | Ari Weitzman | “Climate change is creating a higher risk of wildfires, and Canada should undertake policy changes…” | | 23:38 | Ari Weitzman | “Canadian forests are just not the same as ours, so the lessons learned from our fires can’t be so easily mapped to theirs.” | | 25:15 | Ari Weitzman | “Accusing Canada of willful negligence for not properly maintaining their forests betrays a very basic misunderstanding of the problem.” | | 28:38 | Ari Weitzman | “Climate change is creating a higher risk of wildfires, and Canada should undertake policy changes to mitigate that risk.” |
| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------------|---------------| | Episode Theme Introduction & Structure | [02:24–03:29] | | Wildfire News & Political Climate | [05:43–08:06] | | What the Left is Saying | [10:40–13:20] | | What the Right is Saying | [13:20–15:16] | | Canadian Writer Perspectives | [15:16–17:38] | | Ari Weitzman’s In-depth Take | [19:18–28:51] | | Listener Question: Suing US Government/Military | [30:09–33:21] | | The Road Not Taken & Feel-Good Story | [33:21–36:31] |
This episode of Tangle provides a thorough, nonpartisan exploration of the Canadian wildfires through news context, analysis from the political left and right, and Canadian voices. The key takeaway is that climate change is making wildfires more likely by increasing the prevalence of "fire weather," but forest management alone is not a panacea, especially in the unique context of Canada’s vast, remote forests. Both Canadian and American governments need to step up funding, planning, and cross-border cooperation to mitigate the growing risk—a problem with no quick or simple solution.