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Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the T Podcast. A place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of our take. I am your HOST TODAY Senior Editor WILL K. Back and today we're going to be busting out of the news cycle a little bit and talking about an issue that isn't as tied to what President Trump or Congress or the government is doing, and that is the betting scandal that is currently engulfing the National Basketball association and really all of professional sports. So last week, the FBI announced arrests in two separate cases related to gambling. The first is more serious for the NBA. It involves alleged match fixing and a current NBA player and a former coach. The other case isn't as directly tied to the league, but it does involve a current coach. But the story as a whole raises some really interesting questions about the impact of legalized betting in the United States. And so we're going to get into arguments about what the proponents of legalized betting are saying, saying and what they have argued in the past, what the opponents are saying and how they're seizing on the current scandal to make their point. And then I'm going to kind of break down both sides of the debate and tell you what I think about legalized sports betting. So, again, a super engaging topic. We hope you enjoy breaking out of the normal format a bit and getting to have a little bit more of a philosophical debate about these societal issues. And of course, let us know what you think about this kind of coverage before we jump in, though. Very excited to share some new video content with you. I'm guessing that some, if not many of you listening today are here because of a podcast episode that was produced by Question Everything and then featured on this American Life, which was about Tangle and the work that we're doing. Central to their story was a couple, Dick and Emily, who said that Tangle helped save their marriage during the 2020 election because they disagreed on a lot politically, particularly whether that election was stolen from President Trump. The story went viral and it led to hundreds of thousands of new readers and listeners to Tangle. Well, last weekend at our event in Southern California, we actually got to meet Dick and Emily in person for the first time. It was a genuinely moving experience. I can say that for me and on behalf of the entire team who was there and Isaac got to sit down for a short interview with them and hear an update on their story. So you can watch that interview on our YouTube channel and we'll drop the link to it in today's show notes. Really excited to share that one with you guys. And please do check it out. All right, now I'm going to pass it over to John for today's quick hits and our main story, and then I'll be back to read my take in a bit.
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Thanks, Will, and welcome everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, Hurricane Melissa made landfall as a Category 5 storm in Western Jamaica before making a second landfall as a Category 3 storm in eastern Cuba, where approximately 735,000 people were evacuated from their homes. Forecasters predict the hurricane will move into the Bahamas later today. Number two, Israel launched airstrikes in Gaza accusing Hamas of violating the US Brokered ceasefire in the enclave. The Hamas controlled Gaza. Health Ministry said one hundred and four Palestinians were killed in the strikes and Hamas has said it was not involved in the attacks on Israeli forces that prompted the response. On Wednesday, Israel said it would resume compliance with the ceasefire. Number three, A federal judge indefinitely blocked the Trump administration's attempt to lay off thousands of federal employees during the ongoing government shutdown, extending a previous order that temporarily blocked the layoffs. Number four, the Senate voted 52 to 48 to end an emergency declaration made by President Donald Trump to levy 50% tariffs on Brazil. The House of Representatives will now vote on the resolution. And number five, President Donald Trump announced that the United States has agreed to accept increased investments from South Korea in exchange for lower tariff rates. The President also said that he expects to discuss tariffs and technology investments in his upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday.
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This morning, a major gambling scandal sending.
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Shockwaves through the NBA. I'm just ashamed that they put themselves and put their family and put the NBA in this position. All players are well aware of, you know, what they're allowed to do, what they're not allowed to do. Head coach for the Portland Trailblazers Chauncey Billups, released on bond late Thursday. The hall of Famer now among the more than 30 people charged with money laundering and wire fraud for allegedly rigging.
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Poker games backed by the mob.
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Last Thursday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced it had made arrests in a pair of investigations into illegal gambling involving National Basketball association players and coaches. Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier is among those charged in the illegal sports betting case, while Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billupson several others are charged with participating in rigged poker games with ties to the Mafia. According to FBI Director Kash Patel. The Bureau has arrested 34 people as a result of the multi year investigations, which covered 11 states and involved tens of millions of dollars. Billups and Rozier have been placed on leaves from their games and the NBA announced a review of its gambling rules in the poker games case called Operation Royal Flush. The FBI alleges that NBA players were used as face cards to lend credibility to fixed games run by members of organized crime syndicates York, Las Vegas and Miami. Organizers then allegedly fixed the games using rigged shuffling machines and X ray technology to read cards. The FBI also says that members and associates from three different La Cosa Nostra crime families took part in the scheme and used threats, intimidation and violence to coerce victims who refused or were unable to pay millions of dollars in losses. Meanwhile, in the illegal sports betting case or operation Nothing But Bet, six people, including Rosier and former NBA coach Damon Jones, were accused using insider information to profit from illegal bets. According to authorities, the NBA players passed on injury status and intention to alter their upcoming game performance to bet makers to allow for favorable wagers. This was a sophisticated conspiracy involving athletes, coaches and intermediaries who exploited confidential information for profit, U.S. attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. Said. Billups, Rozier and their co defendants have been indicted on charges of wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. Billups is scheduled to appear at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn in November and Rozier's next scheduled appearance will be in December. Separately, members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent a letter to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver requesting a briefing on the scandal by the end of the month. The pair of scandals has put the relationship between the sports industry and gambling companies under heightened scrutiny. Since the Supreme Court struck down a prohibition on online gambling in 2018, several illegal betting scandals have been uncovered. Prominent sports betting apps, sponsor leagues and networks for contracts that can exceed a billion dollars. And the industry has accrued over $50 billion in lifetime revenue. Today we'll get into what proponents and opponents of sports betting are saying. Then Senior Editor Will Kbach will give his take. We'll be right back after this quick break.
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Alright, first up, let's start with some agreement. Proponents and opponents criticize those involved in the scandals and say the conspirators deserve harsh penalties if convicted. And now to what the proponents are saying. Proponents believe legalized gambling itself isn't to blame for the NBA scandals. Some say legalized betting help expose the scandal. Others argue that legal betting is helping to reduce the influence of criminal networks in sports. In the Philadelphia Inquirer, David Murphy argued the arrests in the NBA gambling scandal are proof that the new world is better than the old. One thing that nobody will dispute is that Thursday was a victory for the all at once. They logged on and logged in and limbered up their Twitter fingers and sent them dancing across the keyboard like Herbie Hancock on the ivories, murphy wrote. But the skolds are wrong. A world where people can gamble openly with reputable companies that operate within the jurisdiction of federal law enforcement and in cooperation with sports leagues is a world where any bad actors are likely to be caught. That is not the world as it used to be. Nobody knows the old world as well as the NBA. Two decades ago, the league found itself mired in the biggest scandal of them all when it learned that referee Tom Donaghy had spent four years wagering on games that he officiated. His gambling was eventually uncovered by an FBI investigation that resulted in prison time, but only after he'd inflicted four years worth of reputational damage on the league. Murphy said the cases of Rosier, Billups and Porter are an indication that the world still isn't perfect, but it is silly to suggest that stuff like this was less prevalent in the old world. We were just less likely to find out about it. In Reason, Jason Russell wrote that the scandal shows how legalized gambling actually helps root out corruption. Critics of legalized sports betting have been quick to dunk on the NBA for getting involved with sports betting. But legalized sportsbooks and their cooperation with the NBA and law enforcement are likely a big reason the scheme was uncovered at all, russell said. In the March 2023 game, Rozier left the game early with an injury after playing for only 10 minutes. That same game had a suspicious amount of betting activity on the unders for Rozier's player prop bets, with Rozier's co defendants allegedly betting a combined $200,000. Had that betting activity been placed with illegal bookies or offshore sportsbooks, it probably would have gone unnoticed. But when sports betting is legal, sportsbooks won't be afraid to flag suspicious activity like this to sports leagues and law enforcement, russell wrote. The answer is not to push sports betting back into the shadows of bookies and offshore bets. It's to keep sports betting in the light so that perpetrators can be brought to justice. In 2014, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver made the case to legalize and regulate sports betting. There is an obvious appetite among sports fans for a safe and legal way to wager on professional sports events. Mainstream media outlets regularly publish sports betting lines and point spreads, silver wrote. Outside of the US Sports betting and other forms of gambling are popular, widely legal and subject to regulation. In light of these domestic and global trends, the laws on sports betting should be changed. Congress should adopt a federal framework that allows states to authorize betting on professional sports subject to strict rules, regulatory requirements and technological safeguards. The requirements would include mandatory monitoring and reporting of unusual betting line movements, a licensing protocol to ensure betting operators are legitimate, minimum age verification measures, geo blocking technology to ensure betting is available only where it is, legal mechanisms to identify and exclude people with gambling problems, and education about responsible gambling, silver said. Any new approach must ensure the integrity of the game. I believe that sports betting should be brought out from the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated. Alright, that is it for what proponents are saying. Which brings us to what opponents are saying. Opponents believe the scandal is indicative of the widespread problems with sports gambling. Some argue that the scandal will hurt the integrity of sports overall. Others argue that Congress and the NBA should introduce stricter gambling regulations. In National Review, Rich Lowery wrote about America's gambling problem. This scandal is obviously a blow to the NBA's reputation. The league can't have fans thinking that every time a player sits that a shady associate has placed a pricey bet on draftkings that he'll score fewer than 10 points, Lowery said. There have been sports gambling scandals before Shoeless Joe Jackson, I'm looking at you, yet we've created out of nothing an enormous industry that is inherently corrupting, encourages people to waste their money and ruins lives. The market is a powerful thing and one of its greatest strengths is creating ever more alluring products. In this case, that product, lavishly marketed and constantly innovative, is what has been traditionally considered a vice and rightfully so, lowry wrote. At the very least, states should restrict so called proposition bets on the individual performance of players, which is much more easily gamed than the outcome of a contest depending on the efforts of an entire team. Once a relatively marginal phenomenon, sports betting is now part of the American mainstream and we haven't seen the last of the scandals. In the Washington Post, Will Leach said he was shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on in the NBA. Professional sports leagues and television networks have embraced gambling for financial reasons, despite a century of gambling being so forbidden. After the Black Sox scandal of 1919 that Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle were banned from baseball simply for being casino greeters, leach wrote. Now it is impossible to watch any sporting event without being inundated with gambling advertisements to the point that they are integrated within the broadcast. There's nothing quite like an announcer telling you where on your phone to gamble on the free throw you're about to watch someone else shoot, or even broadcast by the actual gambling establishments themselves. For all the signs across clubhouses and locker rooms that players who gamble on their own sports face serious consequences, you can hardly blame a player for wondering how seriously such rules are supposed to be taken. If leagues are trying to emphasize how awful gambling is to its players, they're doing a terrible job of it, leitch said. The one thing sports can't survive are fans who no longer trust the games to be on the level. If you do not believe that players and their teams are playing only to win, that you are watching a fair competition with everyone trying their best, then there is no reason to watch sports at all. In Bloomberg, Adam Minter said the NBA deserves some blame. The NBA is taking a serious reputational hit from the news, but it's hardly an innocent bystander. By embracing and promoting sports betting, it helped foster the culture that made this scandal possible, minter wrote. For most of its history, the NBA, like other American sports leagues, feared that sports betting could undermine its credibility with fans. But in the early 2010s, the rise of online gambling changed minds. By the early 2000s, the league's focus seemed to expand beyond merely preserving the game's integrity to finding ways to profit from Americans growing zeal for gambling. Still, there are practical steps that the league and others could take to course correct and help prevent future gambling crises. Minter said a national system would be better equipped to regulate and enforce interstate and online gambling while setting consistent minimum standards. But even without federal action, the league still has the power to make meaningful reforms on its own. First, the NBA should require its sportsbook partners to eliminate all under bets on every player's stats. Next, the league should urge its media partners to reduce the visibility of gambling related sponsorships and advertisements during games. All right, let's head over to Will for his take.
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Thanks, John. All right, hopping back in here with my take 10 or so years ago, going to a sporting event went something like this. First you'd figure out transportation, perhaps public transit in a big city or carpooling with friends in a smaller market. Next, you'd try to time your arrival so you could watch the pre game show while grabbing a drink or a bite at a nearby restaurant. Or get to your seats early to watch the players warm up. Then showtime. And if you're lucky, it ends up a close game and your team wins in 2025. The basics of that experience are still the same, with one major difference. If you take the subway to the game, you're likely to see advertisements for DraftKings plastered throughout the train. If you drive, it's billboards for FanDuel along the highway at the nearby restaurant. The pregame show is sponsored by BetMGM and most segments are dedicated to building parlays around individual players stat lines. At the stadium, you're encouraged to check out the new dedicated betting lounge where you can place bets on the game you're there to see and plenty of others. The fans sitting around you are chattering less and looking down more, tracking their bets on their phones. And even if the game comes down to the final possession, people seem more focused on whether a certain player can score one more time and hit their points over. If you've attended or watched a professional sports game in the past few years, this experience should feel pretty familiar. Gambling has become ubiquitous in professional Sports in the seven years since the Supreme Court's Murphy vs. NCAA decision, and it should come as no surprise that more betting scandals have followed. The match fixing case engulfing the NBA this week is really just the tip of the iceberg. On the surface, the FBI's case looks terrible for the league, especially considering Terry Rozier's alleged actions directly impacted the outcome of a game. It calls into question the entire competitive enterprise. Now, who could blame fans if they see a player miss a wide open layup and suspect the game might be rigged? Dig deeper, though, and these cases actually highlight the benefits of legalized gambling. Legalization has allowed betting to be monitored and regulated in a way that makes these schemes almost impossible to execute at any significant scale without detection. Like reasons Jason Russell argued, I think this scandal actually illustrates how regulated gambling is an aid to authorities trying to sniff out illegal schemes and makes law enforcement more effective than when betting was confined to the sports underworld. As soon as massive bets started coming in on Rozier's unders for the game in question, an integrity monitor firm immediately flagged the unusual activity to the NBA and betting companies, prompting an investigation that eventually led to Thursday's charges. Sports leagues, betting companies and law enforcement all share an interest in preventing match fixing, and the resources in place to root it out are clearly effective. In another case, NBA player Jontay Porter was caught in a similar scheme last year, then banned from the league for life and now faces up to 20 years in prison. The details of these high profile arrests will probably dissuade other athletes from throwing games, though I'm confident that the vast majority of professional athletes don't need much incentive to risk their multimillion dollar careers. Now, college sports is a separate issue, and frankly, I'm more concerned about the influence of gambling in this arena as student athletes make much less money if they make any at all, and a match fixing scheme for, say, a college volleyball match seems much more difficult to detect. But that's a thornier discussion for another time. As for the scandals like the ones impacting the NBA, they demand a forceful response from professional sports leagues, and I expect the NBA will ban Rozier for life. But at the same time, I don't think they're pervasive enough to call into question the integrity of the sport. The question it does raise for me is whether organized sports should be embracing organized betting. As I described earlier, gambling has become inescapable for sports fans, many of whom have turned from fans into gambling addicts. A 2025 study found that the introduction of retail sportsbooks led to a 33% increase in gambling addiction searches during the five months before online sportsbooks launched. Other studies have found that Bankruptcies increased by 28% in states with legalized sports betting. And the percentage of Americans who see legalized sports betting as bad for society rose from 34% in 2022 to 42% in 2025, according to Pew Research. Athletes themselves are also speaking up about the effect of legalized gambling on their relationships with fans, and their testimonials are genuinely unnerving. On the whole, it seems like sports league's and network's embrace of betting has made us meaner, more impulsive, and less responsible. All of this worries me much more than a few players and coaches trading on insider information. But do I think we should roll back the clock and outlaw sports betting? No, outlying betting wouldn't make it go away. Despite widespread sports betting legalization, Americans still wagered an estimated $84 billion on sports with illegal bookies and offshore sportsbooks in 2024. Gambling, to me, falls in the same category as drinking alcohol or consuming tobacco or cannabis. It's an undeniable vice, but something that adults should have the ability to choose for themselves. This logic could be extended to other vices like prostitution or hard drug use, but I would put those in a separate category, as I think the associated harms abuse, exploitation and random violence are more serious and couldn't be adequately addressed by legalization. So while I think that banning sports betting would be ineffective, I do think lawmakers should pursue two major reforms at the federal level. First, severely restrict how betting companies advertise and market their products. I would simply regulate sports betting promotions like we do tobacco, with a required emphasis on the dangers of use and restrictions on where and how companies can advertise. While I believe gambling should be legal for adults, I don't think we have any obligation to allow mass advertising campaigns and sponsorships that present betting as a fun, exciting, and harmless game. And for what it's worth, I would support regulating alcohol advertising in the same way. Second, I would ban prop bets. Now, these are wagers on specific outcomes within games. For example, I might bet on the number of three pointers a player will make or whether a player will hit a home run. All of the major NBA betting scandals to date have involved prop betting, and it's no coincidence an individual player like Rozier would have a really hard time throwing an entire game, but he can easily control his own performance. Prop bets are also updated and adjusted during games, creating limitless opportunities to bet on every conceivable outcome down to a granular level like which team or player will score first. Accordingly, this kind of betting lends itself to addiction. Rather than simply betting on which team will win, you can bet on all sorts of outcomes throughout the game. Furthermore, props are a relatively new phenomenon, but online sportsbooks have huge teams dedicated to creating and updating these bets. Mid game and shoestring bookies wouldn't be able to replicate it if it was illegal. Banning or significantly restricting prop betting would be akin to regulating the levels of THC concentration in cannabis, which many states do. As with all policies, these solutions involve trade offs, and no amount of regulation would eliminate the potential for gambling addiction or match fixing. But I think these two reforms would provide a more sensible framework for legalized betting. Sports leagues will never implement these reforms on their own, so we need our representatives to act to ensure a healthy future for sports leagues and their fans.
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We'll be right back after this quick break.
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All right, now let's move on to Today's reader question. Dominick's from Sacramento, California, asks, What's the deal with ExxonMobil suing California? Why are climate change laws an infringement on freedom of speech? Here's our response. On Saturday, ExxonMobil sued California over two laws the state passed in 2023 as part of its Climate accountability package. The First, Senate Bill 253, requires companies with annual revenues exceeding $1 billion that operate within California to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, including those incurred in the supply chain and distribution processes. The second, Senate Bill 261, requires companies with annual revenues over $500 billion to disclose how they quantify and mitigate risks they incur due to climate change. The second Senate Bill 261 requires companies with annual revenues over $500 million to disclose how they quantify and mitigate the risks they incur due to climate change. Exxon Mobil contends that these laws violate the First Amendment because they amount to compelled speech or forcing private companies to adopt a narrative of climate change that conforms with the state's. The company argues that this is viewpoint discrimination, violating the Constitution's prohibition on government mandated ideological speech. Ensuing ExxonMobil is attempting to block the laws before their enforcement begins in 2026. Now, the suit mirrors a similar one filed by the U.S. chamber of Commerce, California Chamber of Commerce, and American Farm Bureau Federation over the same laws in 2024. In that case, U.S. district Judge Otis Wright II dismissed the plaintiff's request for an injunction, stating that they had not demonstrated either that they had suffered harm or had their rights violated. That case will go to trial in October 2026. In our view, it doesn't seem like ExxonMobil has a great argument. Submitting to regulation is not the same as being compelled to endorse an ideology. The company has a history of fighting all manner of climate change legislation, and while they could be hoping to land in front of a sympathetic Supreme Court, their argument may not be able to withstand moderate legal scrutiny. All right, I'm going to pass it back over to John for the rest of today's newsletter. Thanks as always for listening and we'll talk to you soon.
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Thanks, Will. Here's your under the Radar story for today, folks. On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that a federal agent had attempted to bribe Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's private pilot, General Bittner Viejas, to secretly divert the President's plane to the United States for Maduro's arrest. According to the report, the agent, Edwin Lopez, was tipped off about information on Maduro's pilots and met Viejas in the Dominican Republic in 2024. Lopez corresponded with Viejas for 16 months, pressuring him to help bring Maduro into custody and highlighting the Justice Department' $50 million reward. However, Viejas eventually rejected the request and the Venezuelan government has since celebrated Viejas for his loyalty. The Associated Press has this story and there's a link in today's episode Description alright, next up is our numbers section. The total number of people who were arrested in the two gambling investigations was 34, according to FBI Director Kash Patel. Of those arrested, 31 were allegedly involved in schemes to rig illegal poker games. Six were allegedly involved in an illegal betting scheme that relied on insider information from NBA players and coaches. Three individuals were arrested in both schemes. Seven NBA games were identified in the indictment in which gamblers were alleged to have used non public information to place bets. The approximate amount of money the defendants allegedly stole in the rigged Poker Games was $7.2 million, according to the American Gaming Association. Approximately $99.1 billion is the amount of money Americans legally wagered with sports betting companies in the first eight months of 2025, up 12% from the same period last year. According to a July 2022 Pew Research poll, 8% of U.S. adults think legalized sports betting is good for society, while 34% think it is bad for society. And According to a July 2025 Pew Research poll, 7% of U.S. adults think legalized sports betting is good for society, while 43% think it is bad for society. And last but not least, our have a nice day story. Gayle Noble developed a reputation in Oceanside, California for her random acts of what her daughter Niecy called aggressive kindness. Often seen in a Grateful Dead T shirt and her signature plush hat, the 77 year old would spend her time in retirement dropping off baked goods at different storefronts and trying to make everyone's day a bit brighter, sometimes literally throwing cookies at employees who were reluctant to receive them. Noble passed away this year, but her legacy lives on through those she inspired. Not only do I feel a huge sense of peace and growth, but there are hundreds of thousands of people across the world who are feeling that too, niecy said. CBS News has this story and there's a 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 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. And a reminder that on our YouTube channel we have a new video featuring Emily and Dick from the Question Everything and this American Life episode. It's the first time that Isaac got to meet Emily and Dick in person. We all got to meet them at the live event. It was a really inspiring and incredible moment and we're excited to share that video with you. So head over to our YouTube page to check that out. You can also get there with a link in today's episode description. We'll be right back here tomorrow for Isaac, Will and the rest of the crew. This is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'. All. Peace.
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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.
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Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will Kbach and Associate Editors Hunter Caspersen, Audrey.
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Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsey Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to.
- [36:00]
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- [37:46]
C
Pro, you know managing devices, identities and applications can feel overwhelming and honestly, risky. That's where Trelica by1Password comes in. It helps conquer SaaS, Sprawl and Shadow it by discovering every app your team.
- [38:01]
B
Uses, managed or not.
- [38:02]
C
With pre built app profiles, you can assess risk, manage access, and even optimize your software spend.
- [38:10]
B
Plus, it simplifies onboarding, offboarding and compliance, all while cutting costs by eliminating unused licenses.
- [38:17]
C
Take the first step to better security for your team. Learn more@1Password.com special offer.