John Law (5:58)

Thanks, Isaac, and welcome everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, a federal judge declined to immediately block National Guard troops from mobilizing to Chicago after Illinois and Chicago sued the Trump administration to stop the deployment. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for Thursday. Number two, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal on the conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20 year sentence for sex trafficking and other crimes related to her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Number three, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially adopted a set of recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, updating its adult and child immunization schedules and recommendations for COVID 19 vaccines. Number four, Ukraine said that it struck the Feodosia oil terminal, one of Russia's main factories producing explosives for a wide variety of munitions. At number five, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant announced the appointment of Frank Bisignano, who also serves as commissioner of the Social Security Administration, as chief executive officer of the Internal Revenue Service.

Narrator for Jay Jones story (7:11)

The Democratic candidate running to be Virginia's attorney general facing brutal backlash this morning after his vile text messages with another state lawmaker were exposed. Democrat Jay Jones wrote about violence against GOP lawmakers and urinating on the future graves of political opponents, even killing a state GOP leader with, quote, two bullets to the head. He also wished death upon the Republican lawmakers children because, quote, they're breeding little fascists and quote, only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.

John Law (7:42)

On Friday, National Review published text messages from former Virginia House of Delegates member Jay Jones sent to a Republican colleague, House Delegate Kerry Coyner, in 2022. In the messages, Jones expresses disdain for Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert, then says he would shoot Gilbert in a hypothetical scen where he could kill either him or dictators Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler. Jones went on to suggest that he wanted Gilbert's children to die from gun violence because it might prompt the speaker to change his stance on gun control. The messages, which Jones has apologized for, drew strong rebukes from local and national Republicans, many of whom have called for Jones to drop out of the race for Virginia attorney general. The controversy has also resurfaced discussions about political violence following conservative activist Charlie Kirk's assassination in September. You can read the released text messages with the link in today's episode description. In a statement on Friday, Jones said, I take full responsibility for my actions and I want to issue my deepest apology to Speaker Gilbert and his family. Reading back those words made me sick to my stomach. I am embarrassed, ashamed and sorry. He added, this was a grave mistake and I will work every day to prove to the people of Virginia that I will fight for them as attorney general. In the days following the report, Republicans and conservative influencers said Jones should drop out of the race and pressured Democrats to condemn his messages. Virginia gubernatorial candidate Republican winsome Earl Sears released an ad linking her Democratic opponent, former Representative Abigail Spamberger, to Jones, while Virginia governor Republican Glenn Youngkin said the texts were disqualifying and criticized state Democrats for their response. President Donald Trump also commented on the controversy, posting on Truth Social that Jones's texts were sick and demented and saying he should immediately drop from the race. While Virginia Democrats have denounced the texts, few have called for Jones to exit the race. In a statement, Spamberger said she spoke frankly with Jay about my disgust with what he had said and texted. I made clear to Jay that he must fully take responsibility for his words but did not weigh in on his future as a candidate. Several other state and national Democrats condemned the text in similar terms. However, on Sunday, Virginia House Speaker Democrat Don Scott suggested that voters should not be distracted by the story telling parishioners at a local church that they want us to get distracted by the text message here or something else. Stay focused. Today we'll break down the text message controversy with views from the left, right and writers in Virginia. And then Isaac's take.

Isaac Saul (10:22)

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John Law (12:37)

All right, first, let's start with some agreement. Most commentators on the left and the right condemn Jones's text and say they were inexcusable. And now for what the left is saying. The left mostly rebukes the texts, and some call on Jones to drop out. Others say the outrage from Republicans is hypocritical, The Washington Post editorial board wrote about J. Jones and political violence. Curbing the epidemic of political violence will require leaders who do not excessively inflame routine partisan conflict. But text messages that Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general, sent to a GOP legislator, which emerged Friday afternoon, cast doubt on whether he has the temperament to become the state's top law enforcement enforcement officer, the board said. Jones on Friday initially issued a statement that maligned National Review as a Trump controlled media organization peddling smears. He offered no apology. Former Congresswoman Abigail Spamberger, the candidate for governor, said she spoke frankly with Jay about my disgust and made clear that he must take full responsibility for his words, the board wrote. The commonwealth has a proud tradition of elevating sensible politicians from both parties. Gentility is the Virginia way. His texts were the opposite of that. Jones has a month to convince voters that his hateful rhetoric does not reflect how he'd behave if elected Attorney General on X. Several commentators on the left suggested that the response to the texts was overblown compared to Republicans rhetoric. Election strategist Rachel Bittacoffer shared a video of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller speaking at Charlie Kirk's memorial and wrote, dear Maga, if Jay Jones has no business being lieutenant governor of Virginia for making crude comments about political violence, then Stephen Miller, a taxpayer funded White House special advisor, has no business being in government either. Political consultant Alisa Marcos shared a video of President Trump addressing the Navy on Sunday and wrote, it's hard to care about J. Jones when you have a sitting president who speaks like this. Former Arlington County Chief Public Defender Brad Haywood wrote, the irony of all this premeditated manufactured outrage is that the more Trump's disciples lose their minds over it, the crazier the conclusions they draw and the more dire their remedies they posit, the clearer it becomes that J. Jones must win in November. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying. Which brings us to what the right is saying. The right condemns Jones, texts and criticizes Democrats for the muted response. Many call on Jones to exit the race. In his newsletter, Eric Erickson criticized Democrats, but Trump responds to the texts. If Jones were a Republican, every major news outlet in America would demand to know what the congressional Republicans think. A few years ago, a local public official who happened to be a Republican made a racist remark, and national reporters were on Capitol Hill demanding that Republican senators and congressmen denounced the man none of them had ever heard of, erickson wrote. After two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, a progressive killed Charlie Kirk for his political views and a Democrat attorney general candidate called for the assassination of a politician and the murder of his children. Democrats and the Bulwark crowd stay silent. Jay Jones, in a private text message so not public hyperbole, but a private conversation expressing candid thoughts, said he hoped the former speaker, Todd Gilbert, should have his wife watch their children die in her arms so that Todd Gilbert might reconsider his political views, erickson said. And the people who hate Trump will find lots of excuses to deflect, scream both sides and do everything possible to avoid condemning the man whom Democrats think is fit for Attorney General of Virginia the Wall Street Journal editorial board asked, will Jones withdraw? Does politics still recognize such a thing as a career ending scandal? J. Jones is the Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general. The question is whether he will remain that for long. After reports on a shocking series of text messages he sent in 2020, two months after he resigned a state legislative seat, the board wrote, the lawmaker who was sent these messages pushed back, writing that Jones had made a comment on the phone about hoping Mr. Gilbert's children died. Yes, I've told you this before, Mr. Jones replied. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy. These ought to be disqualifying sentiments from someone hoping to be Virginia's top law enforcer. Reading back those words made me sick to my stomach, Mr. Jones said. I have reached out to Speaker Gilbert to apologize to him directly, his wife, Jennifer, and their children. He said he can't take back his words, but he can take full accountability. That would mean stepping aside. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying. Which brings us to what writers in Virginia are saying. Some Virginia writers say Jones remaining in the race imperils other Democratic candidates. Others suggest that Jones candidacy may not be dead in the water. In his Any Damn Thing newsletter, Robert B. Mitchell argued Jones must drop out of the race for AG at a time when Americans crave sanity in government. The Democratic ticket in Virginia features a stark contrast between mature leadership and the incendiary rhetoric that is poisoning our politics, mitchell wrote. Former Representative Spamberger is poised to deliver an early and welcome rebuke to the dangerous and venomous conduct of President Donald Trump, which could foreshadow a winning formula for Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections. She deserves to be elected governor. And then there is Gerald J. Jones, the Democratic candidate for attorney general. We could not have politicians, no matter their party, spewing toxic rhetoric about their opponents in public as Trump does with some frequency, or in private, as Jones did. There is simply no legitimate place for this kind of language, and any politician who indulges in it deserves public condemnation, mitchell said. A Spanberger victory in the fall would represent a rejection of Trump's divisive and dangerous rhetoric. She projects responsibility. As for Jones, the most responsible thing he can do now is quit the race. In Cardinal News, Dwayne Yancey explored the political impact of the texts. Is this a fatal blow for Jones? There are two competing forces at play. We're in a partisan era where there's less ticket splitting. We haven't had a split result in Virginia in 20 years. On the other hand, in the polls that have asked about the lower ballot races, the attorney general's contest has been much closer than the top of the ticket, yancey wrote. Jones has devoted his campaign to tying Miaras to President Trump. Will voter antipathy toward Trump outweigh however voters feel about Jones texts? If voters don't seem concerned and aren't moved at all by Republican ads that are now coming, then Jones is clear. If voters instantly make up their minds that Jones isn't fit for office, there may be nothing he can do, yancy said. When the infamous blackface photo on then governor Ralph Northam's medical school yearbook was revealed, Northam had the means with which to show he wasn't a racist. He made a point of supporting lots of legislation of interest to black Virginians. Jones isn't in office, so he doesn't have that opportunity. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take.

Isaac Saul (19:49)

Alright, that is it for the left and the writer saying, which brings us to my take. So one of my favorite conservative pundits is Guy Benson. Benson writes for publications like Town hall and Fox News. He's built up a loyal following over the years while generally keeping it pretty classy. While he's established his conservative bona fides, I suspect Benson has also lost friends within his own ranks. He hasn't been shy about criticizing Republican politicians, including Trump, when he thinks they deserve it. And he came out as gay in 2015 when homosexuality was still gaining acceptance among Republicans. Given this track record, I think he has a particular kind of political depth and empathy that I think helps him see clearly. He's somebody who I trust to give, you know, fair, honest assessments of the news. And over the weekend I saw Benson post this thread on X and he was explaining a sentiment among his conservative friends to his liberal followers. He asked those on the left to consider that only a few weeks removed from Charlie Kirk's assassination, conservatives were seeing in the news, among other things, that a major statewide candidate had sent these death wish text messages about a political rival. A Biden appointed judge had handed down a lenient sentence to the person who tried to kill Brett Kavanaugh, and that New York University's law school shut down an event that commemorating the October 7th massacre because they were worried about the security situation. And yet, Benson wrote, we see many of our leftist friends tweeting and posting about how their opponents are the dangerous and authoritarian fascists. I ask you to try to contemplate, even for a quiet moment or two, how this might strike many of us. I often find myself agreeing with Benson, but I get the feeling he's following a thread of political extremism that is less common than he thinks. Here I am quite obviously deeply concerned about political violence, and I'm still deeply shaken by Charlie Kirk's murder. Yet his post felt like an implication that the left is the actual authoritarian, fascist side of the political aisle. Right now, personally, I'm much more worried about the president and the federal government's current power, responding to Kirk's shooting with some of his most divisive rhetoric yet, declaring war on U.S. cities and collecting extreme levels of power in the executive branch. When I weigh that kind of force against college protesters pressuring their university to shut down an event, or a former state delegate running for attorney general in Virginia, I have a hard time feeling like the two are equal in weight. Even with that initial reaction, I still found myself moved by Benson's call for a perspective shift. So I did what he suggested and meditated on what this moment is like for people of all political stripes right now, not just my moderate or near the middle kin. Benson's exercise was a genuine reminder that right now, fear is just everywhere. People like me fear the degradation of our constitutional norms and the lethargy of our courts. People to the left of me fear a slide towards fascism and Trump cracking down on liberal institutions, and people to the right of me fear political violence from the left and the way it is ignored or dismissed by courts and the mainstream media. And in all of this, in this, everyone is afraid for different reasons. Moment Jay Jones presents an opportunity. He offers a chance to collectively set and enforce a new red line. Jones should drop out of this race. Agreeing with this sentiment is a tremendous opportunity. Every time a new unstable person commits an act of political violence or some politician sets a new standard for obscenity, all we do is paint their whole party in that person's colors and lower the bar for what we tolerate in our allies who oppose them. Yet here we have a powerful and easy centralizing idea that could be seized for the endorse political violence and you're done. If you're a Republican. The reasoning is simple. Jones messages are genuinely obscene, and I doubt many conservatives believe they are anything short of disqualifying. Of course, it's possible Republicans waited to release the messages until now for optimal political benefit. When Jones dropping out comes with the political advantage of removing an opponent 30 days from a competitive election in Virginia, all of that makes it easier for conservatives to support. He's dropping out, but he still should. Democrats, meanwhile, seem to be hedging on whether they're going to coalesce around a call for Jones to drop out. But why not enforce this red line? The stakes for the party nationally aren't even that high. We're talking about a Virginia attorney general race from a strictly principled perspective. Someone who would send a text like this should be nowhere near the Attorney general's office, functioning as an arbiter of morality and criminal prosecution. The upside, meanwhile, is taking a genuine moral high ground, even if you're cynical enough to think the right would never do the same. The candidate in question is now so politically toxic, he might just lose anyway. Why not cut bait and be able to say, this is the new standard? If you promote political violence, you're out? That's not to say it doesn't matter if Republicans don't respond in kind. They should. That means when Representative Clay Higgins, the Republican from Louisiana, talks about dropping protesters where they stand, he should get condemned and censured. That means when we find out an employee at the Justice Department called on a mob to kill cops, we fire them. That means when Valentina Gomez, a candidate for Congress, uploads campaign videos of herself executing migrants for coming here illegally, she is disqualified and widely panned. How many more opportunities will we get to unify around a message that says political violence, even in private messages, is a taboo? So off limits it means you can't run for office? Probably not many, given everything our country has experienced over the last few years. Two presidential assassination attempts, the murder of a Minnesota state representative, the killing of a healthcare executive, arson at the Pennsylvania governor's mansion, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. We must take advantage of the opportunity and say no more. Let's make it unacceptable not just to commit political violence, but political poison to endorse or incite it. And then let's enforce that standard for everyone. We'll be right back after this quick break.

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Isaac Saul (27:39)

All right, that is it for my take. Which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Shannon in Florida Shannon said, is California SB771 passed and does it say that if the state deems a post hateful, you can be charged $500,000 or more? And if so, why is this not being considered censorship? Okay, I'm going to take those questions in order. First, California State Bill SB771 has not been passed into law yet. Though it has cleared both chambers of the state Legislature, it is currently awaiting Governor Gavin Newsom's signature to be enacted. SB771 is aimed at hateful speech online, and it does authorize fines of up to $500,000 for a reckless violation of the law and up to $1 million for an intentional knowing or willful violation. But a few details differentiate it from the way you pose the question here. First, the bill references existing California CRIM that prohibits, quote, all persons and entities, including corporations, from engaging in aiding, abetting, or conspiring to commit acts of violence, intimidation, or coercion based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, or other protected characteristics. The preamble uses the word hate three times, particularly against lgbtq, Arab and Jewish people, but it does not define punishable content as hateful. Second, the bill does not regulate posts from social media users themselves, but the content that social media platforms share with or promote to others. As the text of the proposed law states, the regulation applies specifically to a social media platform that violates existing criminal code through its algorithms that relay content to users. If the bill is signed, the platform, not users, would face fines of up to $1 million. Third, the state would not be surveilling post itself. An aggrieved party has to bring a civil suit, and a judge would then determine if it represents a violation and award a penalty. Though yes, the judge would be an agent of the state. Here to your last question. Many places do consider the bill to be censorship because it would coerce a third party, social media platforms, to restrict user speech organizations from fire to the American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee condemn SB771 on these grounds and call on Governor Newsom to veto it. However, even if the bill becomes law, the state would not be directly punishing people for their speech, which keeps the issue of how to characterize the bill firmly in a gray area. All right, that is it for my take and your questions answered. I'm gonna send it back to John for the rest of the pod. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace.

John Law (30:23)

Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. On Saturday, Circuit Court Judge Diane Goodstein's South Carolina home burned down, three people were injured and some occupants of the house had to jump out of windows to escape. In September, Goodstein temporarily blocked the South Carolina Election Commission from releasing voter files to the Justice Department in a ruling against the Trump administration, and some speculated that the fire could have been a targeted attack. However, South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel said on Monday that there was no immediate evidence that the fire was intentional, though the investigation is still active and ongoing. The Associated Press has this story and there's a link in today's episode Description alright, next up is our numbers section. The approximate number of years that J. Jones served in the Virginia House of delegates is 3. According to a September 2025 Washington Post scar school poll, 48% of registered Virginia voters said they would support Jay Jones in November's election for Virginia Attorney General. 53% of registered Virginia voters said that they would support Democratic nominee Abigail Spamberger in November's election for Virginia governor, while 40% said that they would support the Republican nominee, winsome Earl Sears. The percentage of registered Virginia voters who said economy, cost of living, jobs, housing is the most important issue in their choice for Virginia governor is 19%, the highest response of any issue polled. The percentage of registered Virginia voters who said that anti Republican, Trump, MAGA or pro Democrat is the most important issue and their choice for Virginia governor is 12%, the second highest response of any issue polled. And the percentage of registered Virginia voters who said pro Republican, anti Democratic is the most important issue and their choice for Virginia governor is 7%, the seventh highest response of any issue polled. And last but not least, our have a nice day story in the category of nameless and unstudied species scientists call dark taxa insects abound. An estimated four out of five insect species have never been formally identified due to their size, subterranean habitats, and the visual similarity between species. However, a host of new technologies are helping researchers track distinctions faster and at higher resolutions than ever before. One team at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research feeds drone collected data into machine learning software to encode and describe insect DNA. We know a lot more about what's happening, even if a lot still escapes, us, environmental scientist and WSL team member Camille Albuy said. The Atlantic has this story, and there's 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 retangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'. All. Peace.

Isaac Saul (33:25)

Our Executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive producer is John Lowell. Today's Episode episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with 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.

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