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Grow Therapy Announcer
the to do list doesn't stop, and neither does the pressure to keep up with it if you've been running on fumes. Grow Therapy makes it easier to find care that's covered by insurance and actually built around you.
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Whether it's your first time in therapy
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or your 50th, grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you,
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not the other way around. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability and get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost or Grow helps you find therapy on your time. Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans. Sessions average about $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan.
- [01:16]
Visit growththerapy.com acast today to get started. That's growththerapy.com acast growtherapy.com acast Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
- [01:32]
Lemonada Media Promoter
48 million people in the United States are adolescents between the ages of 14 and 24. They're working, parenting, leading, sometimes all at once.
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Young Adult Testimonial
I'm balancing work and being a mom at the same time, and I'm still on track to graduate with my bachelor's next year.
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Lemonada Media Promoter
So what do today's young people need to truly thrive? Tune in to good things from Lemonada Media to hear the six part Thrive series.
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Grow Therapy Announcer
From executive producer Isaac Saul.
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Lemonada Media Promoter
This is Tangle.
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Isaac Saul
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. Today is Wednesday, May 20, and we are going to be talking about Tuesday's election results and some other primary news we've had in the last week or two. Specifically on the Republican side, we're going to break down exactly what happened, share some views from the left and the right, and then of course, my take before we get in though. I got a do a quick promo at the top. I am super, super excited to announce that we are coming to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia on June 13 and June 14 for a special VIP dinner and a live taping of our weekly podcast, Suspension of the Rules. Tickets are on sale now. There is a link in today's episode description. You can go to readtangle.com live. You can check out the newsletter and click the link in there. And I want to talk about why. Why Berkeley Springs? Why now? First of all, Berkeley Springs is an American gem. It was incorporated in 1776. There is history everywhere. George Washington used to famously visit Berkeley Springs with his ill brother because he believed the warm springs would improve his health. It's now kind of just known for greenery, spas, resorts. Speaking of history, we're going to be recording live inside the historic Starr Theater. Berkeley Springs is also very centrally located in this part of the country. It's just a few hours from D.C. philly, Pittsburgh, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio. I'm going to be driving from North Jersey, even parts of Virginia and North Carolina easily accessible. So if you're looking for a summer weekend getaway, this is a good option. Also, right now, this is the only live event on our schedule. We're hoping to have a couple more before the year's out. But if you want to really get an opportunity to see the squad, this is it. And uniquely, most of the Tangle team will be in attendance, which is unusual. Unlike past events where it's just been me and a few others, this is actually shaping up to be a full team event, which I'm really excited about. Now, on that note, we've already sold over half our VIP tickets. General admission tickets are going fast. This is a small theater, so I encourage you to secure your tickets now before there is a sellout. All right. And finally, one last thing. A big shout out to our hosts in West Virginia, Paul Johansen and Trey Johansen, who are the owners of the Star Theater. They own a restaurant, a beautiful restaurant in Berkeley Springs where we're going to be hosting this VIP dinner the night before the event. So the VIP dinner is Saturday evening. The event is actually Sunday afternoon. So we're going to do this VIP event, then we're going to do the actual show. We're really excited for it and it's going to be awesome. I'm excited to see you guys out there. Please come check it out. It's going to be an awesome opportunity to hang out with the team, and we want to sell out this little Theater in West Virginia and prove that we can take tangle not just to New York City or LA or Philly or whatever other big metropolitan area we go to, but also out into the middle of the country to places like Berkeley Springs where folks want to see us. And we're hoping this is a use case for that going forward. All right, and with that, I'm going to introduce Ari Weitzman, our managing editor, who's going to break down today's main story and then pass it back to me for my take.
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Ari Weitzman
Thanks, Isaac. Here's today's quick hits. The Justice Department expanded its settlement of President Trump's lawsuit to include provisions preventing the government from pursuing existing tax audits for previously filed returns against Trump and his businesses and his family members. First, the Justice Department expanded its settlement of President Trump's lawsuit to include provisions preventing the government from pursuing existing tax audits for previously filed returns against Trump, his businesses and his family members. Second, The Senate voted 50 to 47 to advance a resolution to limit President Trump's war powers in Iran. Republican Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul and Bill Cassidy joined 46 Democrats in favor of the resolution, while Senator John Fetterman was the lone Democrat in opposition. The resolution has now been discharged from committee and will face further votes on the Senate floor. Third On Tuesday, the Pentagon announced that it would be pausing a planned deployment of 4,000 troops to Poland. Vice President J.D. vance said the pause was only a temporary delay, not a permanent reduction. Fourth, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing, where the two leaders expressed the desire for deepening ties between the two nations and, according to Chinese state media, an end to host hostilities in Iran. According to the Congolese Health Ministry, the current Ebola outbreak in Central Africa has killed at least 131 people and infected 531. The U.S. state Department strongly urges against travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan or Uganda, and it has announced it will fund up to 50 Ebola response clinics.
- [07:44]
Political Segment Narrator
Voters in six states made their voices heard to determine who will be on the ballot in November. The primaries are also a chance for President Trump to demonstrate his influence.
- [07:54]
Ari Weitzman
The midterm primaries officially began on March 3, and on Tuesday, primaries were held in states across the country. Elections in Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama drew particular focus where Republican candidates were facing challenges from President Trump or crowded fields from the party's nomination. In Kentucky, Trump backed candidate and former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein decisively defeated incumbent Representative Thomas Massie in the primary for the state's 4th congressional district by roughly 10 percentage points. The president was frequently at odds with Massie, whom he called the worst Republican congressman in history. Massey's defeat comes days after a contentious race in Louisiana where Representative Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming defeated incumbent Senator Bill Cassidy, both advancing to a runoff in June. Cassidy had also drawn the ire of President Trump for voting to convict him in his January 6 impeachment trial. Trump ultimately endorsed Letlow. In Georgia on Tuesday, Representative Mike Collins finished first in the Republican Senate primary but did not secure 50% of the vote. Collins went out advanced to a runoff with former football coach Derek Dooley. The winner will face Senator John Ossoff in the general election. Elsewhere in Georgia, lieutenant governor Burt Jones and healthcare executive Rick Jackson are also headed to a runoff. In the Republican gubernatorial the winner will face former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who prevailed in her Democratic primary. In Alabama, Representative Barry Moore, who was endorsed by Trump, placed first in a crowded primary race for Senate, which is now headed to a runoff with either State Attorney General Steve Marshall or former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson. The three are competing for the Senate seat vacated by Senator Tommy Tuberville, who opted instead to run for governor. Tuberville won his primary easily and will face Senator Doug Jones in November's election. And finally, in Texas, President Trump did not initially endorse a candidate in the Republican Senate primary, where State Attorney General Ken Paxton is challenging Senator John Cornyn. After neither candidate secured 50% of the vote in March, the race moved to a runoff to be held on May 26th. President Trump officially endorsed Paxton on Tuesday. The winner of the runoff will face State Representative James Talarico in the general election. Today we'll get into what the left and right are saying in reaction to the performance of Trump backed challengers in the Republican primaries. Then Executive editor Isaac Tsull will give his take.
- [10:28]
Isaac Saul
We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [10:34]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
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- [10:54]
Grow Therapy Announcer
The to do list doesn't stop and neither does the pressure to keep up with it. If you've been running on fumes, growtherapy makes it easier to find care that's covered by insurance and actually built around you.
- [11:05]
Whether it's your first time in therapy
- [11:07]
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- [11:12]
not the other way around. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability and get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. Grow helps you find therapy on your time. Whatever challenges you're facing.
- [11:29]
Grow Therapy is here to help.
- [11:32]
Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan.
- [11:41]
Visit growththerapy.com acast today to get started. That's growthherapy.com acast growth acast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance.
- [12:04]
Ari Weitzman
Here's what the left is in Common Dreams Robert Reich suggested that the GOP is now Trump's Trump's purge of Cassidy comes in the wake of Trump's purges of House Republicans who stood up to him, such as Wyoming's Liz Cheney. Reich said today's Republican Party no longer has any purpose other than achieving whatever Trump wants, which is making Trump richer and more powerful. The GOP is now Trump's. It is no longer America's. Today's Republican voters, by contrast, are showing increasing frustration with Trump. Yet for elected Republicans, survival now depends on personal loyalty to Trump, Reich wrote. For Trump, the first and most basic sign of loyalty to him, and therefore survival as a politician in Trump's Republican Party, is a willingness to publicly proclaim as truth what we know to be two big lies that Trump won the 2020 election and that he did not seek to overturn its results by illegal means. As a result, almost all congressional Republicans are now election deniers. In New York magazine, Ed Kilgore said, after purging Cassidy, Trump sets his sights on Massey. Donald Trump's efforts to assert total control over his party despite his sinking overall popularity achieved a landmark victory on Saturday with the resounding defeat of two term Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, kilgore wrote. Massey is the next presidential intraparty target. This is a heavily Republican district in a heavily Republican state, so the primary will be the final word for this particular House seat, but its national resonance is unmistakable. If Massie goes down, it will continue Trump's successful May vengeance tour. More generally, we won't know until November whether the political capital Trump has expended this year to enforce discipline in his own party ranks would have been better spent on the general election, kilgore said. Perhaps he's as focused on the power of his MAGA movement within the GOP as on the GOP's power over the country. Or maybe he'd just prefer not to think about November, which, if polls are to be believed, will make a mockery of all the post 2024tALK OF TRUMP bestriding the country like colossus. In the New York Times, Michelle cottle argued that Mr. Trump's petty project has been bad for the GOP. Massie's loss to Mr. Gallrein, an unknown, undistinguished challenger expected to be a much more reliable presidential bootlicker, is the latest warning to other Republicans about the dangers of crossing Mr. Trump. Even now as his popularity is on the slide, cottle wrote. It should also serve as a vivid and very expensive reminder, especially to Republicans, of how little Mr. Trump cares about the current or future well being of his chosen party. Destroying the GOP might suit his purposes even better. Mr. Trump's pettied project has been bad for the GOP, a spectacular waste of resources that could have been put to better use in any number of races and places, Cottle said. Mr. Trump is clearly thrilled to the idea that the Republican Party cannot survive without him, that there can be no such thing as a post Trump gop. The suggestion that he will ever see the stage gracefully is laughable. Everything we've seen in the past decade suggests that until the bitter end of his presidency, maybe even beyond, he will work to ensure that the Republican Party remains entirely his creature. The more pathetic the better. Now here's what the right is. In the Washington Times, Kelly Sadler said Republican voters want team players. Bill Cassidy's disloyal vote to impeach Mr. Trump in his first term compounded Republican voters frustrations, sadler wrote. Rank and file Republicans understand that the Democratic Party will do anything to seize and hold power, and they also understand the need to fight fire with fire. They want a party unified around policy goals with the ruthlessness to accomplish them. This includes ending the filibuster, redistricting and passing bills that align with the president's agenda. Still, many elected Republicans do not seem to get it, Sattler said. Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky is one of them. Mr. Massie's base of anti war leftists, anti Israel activists, libertarians, online activists and Epstein file conspiracists is not made up of rank and file Republicans. Mr. Massie voted against Mr. Trump's one big beautiful bill act, which delivered tax cuts to working class families. Many observers of these party expul Russians assume it is Mr. Trump's control over the base. They are wrong. It is Republican voters controlling their elected officials. In National Review, Jeffrey Blair said Donald Trump still commands the loyalty of his troops Although my many libertarian friends have found nice things to say about Massie over the years, I will miss him significantly less. Many of my colleagues are convinced he is a barely veiled anti Semite. I merely think I'm crazy and have grown tired of crazy people in Congress. What Massie called principle ended up expressing itself in little more than mindless oppositionalism, blyard wrote. I never thought Massie would survive direct presidential intervention, especially not after having genuinely enraged many of his own constituents by conspiring with Democrats to force a release of the so called Epstein files. It was one step too far. Don't weep too hard for Thomas Massie. He has long promised that if he ever lost, he would be happy to idle away his days on his hand, built home on his secluded estate, appreciating the beauties of life off the grid and away from the hugger mugger of it all. And now he will get his chance, blair said. Instead, weep for the tens of millions of dollars squandered in internecine warfare, and all to prove a point nobody disputes. Even amidst his national political ruin, November is now shaping up to be a butchering of World War I level proportions. Donald Trump still commands the loyalty of his troops. In the Dispatch, Nick Cartaggio described the real lesson of the Cassidy disaster Don't cross Trump is not the lesson of Bill Cassidy's defeat. Lots of Republicans have crossed Trump since 2016 and live to tell the tale, cottaggio wrote. What Cassidy was naive about was his fate that Republican voters could not possibly be so morally wretched that they would still be worshipping that blob five years later, still seeking revenge on the senator in 2026 for having cast what was obviously a brave, correct and honorable vote and Donald Trump's party conscience kills. That's the real lesson of the Cassidy disaster. And the senator tried to learn it, albeit too late. The easiest way to understand his vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. S health secretary is as a formal repudiation of his own conscience, Cartaggio said, having failed the supreme loyalty test five years ago, though, he couldn't unfail it now. Cassidy chose the Constitution over Trump, and he would never be forgiven for it. There's no hope for America as long as the right remains what it's become. Bill Cassidy didn't know that in 2021. He knows now. Okay, that's it for what the left and right are saying now. I'll pass it back over to Isaac for his.
- [19:11]
Isaac Saul
All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying. Which brings us to my take. First of all, President Trump's level of control over the Republican Party has become one of the most tired talking points in American media, a new wave of questioning whether this is the moment Trump's grip will loosen. It seems to pop up every few months, and then when the moment inevitably passes, we all talk about how the GOP is still his party. And the cycle repeats a few months later, starting about a month ago, much hype has been made about whether Trump could oust some Indiana state legislators or send Senator Bill Cassidy packing and raise enough money to beat Representative Thomas Massie in a primary. He did all three, and his endorsed candidates in Georgia and Alabama perform well, too. It is Trump's party, and if you cross him, it's at your own peril. Whether this is a good or bad thing is a matter of perspective. But it's silly to spend time examining the question of whose party it is, as that has now been answered over and over and over. So with that, here are eight other thoughts on the last week of midterm politics. Number one, speaking of worn out talking points, could Texas actually be up for grabs this time? President Trump's endorsement of Ken Paxton has Republicans reeling, and rightfully so. Trump just sent one of the most openly corrupt and politically vulnerable candidates that I can remember to a Senate primary. Senator Jerry Moran said Trump's endorsement saddened him and he was unsure what you can complain about on Senator John Cornyn. Senator Susan Collins from Maine said she didn't understand it. Senator Lisa Murkowski said the seat is now in jeopardy. Senator Lindsey Graham said it will cost three times more to defend Texas than it would have otherwise. James Talarico, of course, is probably too left for the state, but he's certainly got a better chance against Paxton than he would have had against Cornyn, which everyone but Trump seems to understand. Number two, while Trump's grip on the Republican voters remains strong, his grip on Republican senators is a different story. Well ahead of November, we may be in for a sea change of dynamics. Just yesterday, the Senate advanced legislation to block President Trump from from further military action in Iran. The deciding vote was Senator Bill Cassidy, the Republican from Louisiana who notably flipped sides on the vote after Trump ousted him in a primary just last week. Senator Cornyn, meanwhile, now has little reason to post pictures of himself reading Trump's book and pretending to be interested. Senator Thom Tillis from North Carolina has been a thorn in the administration's side since announcing his plans to retire. And with the independent streaks of Senators Murkowski and Collins, which they already had, this supposed 53 to 47 Senate majority feels much more like a split with a number of live swing votes. Or as one senior Republican put it to notice, now Trump doesn't have a governing majority. Trump could be headed out for an oddly premature lame duck presidency a few months ahead of the midterm elections all of his own making. Speaking of pre midterm weirdness, what do you think Thomas Massie is going to do now? He was already unafraid to buck the party line, but I imagine the last few months of his 14 year congressional career are going to be totally unrestrained. Here is one quote he offered up to the press on Tuesday by the way, while gas is almost $5 and diesel is almost $6, they're talking about this big ballroom they're going to build. It looks like the Roman Empire architecture from the Roman Empire. I see a few analogies there and people are just trying to make ends meet. End quote. Massey is representative of an ascendant faction on the right, an anti Israel, anti war libertarian group of former Trump voters who seem to be voiceless at the national level. Right now I'm watching to see if Massie can voice their perspectives in the twilight of his tenure in the House. While all the focus was on Republicans in the south on Tuesday, one of the most interesting races was in northeastern Pennsylvania, where progressive Democrat Bob Brooks won a primary race in one of the most divided districts in America. He will now face first term Republican Ryan MacKenzie in the general election. Why did this Pennsylvania House race catch my eye? Because Brooks, a retired firefighter and union leader who now runs a lawn care business, would become one of the few House Democrats without a college degree in Congress if he prevails in November. He also pulled together a fascinating coalition. He was endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, and spent the last few weeks campaigning with Governor Josh Shapiro and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Brooks shares a lot of similarities with Graham Platner, a gruff looking masculine candidate with working class appeal who seems a little out of place in stuffy D.C. circles. He's even complete with the controversial old social media posts where he expressed conservative views and called Colin Kaepernick a douchebag. Yet none of that stopped him from winning. Is this a new Democratic faction in the making or a return to the old one? Meanwhile, a Yale educated college professor and Democratic socialist named Chris Raab won his primary in a deep blue Philadelphia district and seems locked in for a congressional seat. Republicans have already fought their internal battles and know they will be sailing under the Trump banner to 2028. But rounding up a coalition within a party that runs the gamut from Bob Brooks to Chris Raab is a lot for a future Democratic leader to have to wrangle. If working class, non college educated versus Ivy League socialist doesn't interest you, there's also another primary runoff next Tuesday in Texas, where a Democrat named Maureen Galindo will be fighting for the nomination in the state's 35th district. Last week, Galindo promised to convert ICE detention centers into internment camps for American Zionists, adding that it will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists, end quote. She finished first in the crowded Democratic primary race in April with 29.2% of the vote. That's fine, right? Number seven, it kind of fell under the radar, but a lot of votes were cast on Tuesday that literally won't count for a variety of reasons. In Georgia, Representative David Scott, the Democrat, appeared on the ballot posthumously. He died at the age of 80 while seeking a 13th term, becoming the fourth Democrat in just this term to die while in office. This devotion to staying in office as long as possible has genuinely hurt Democrats ability to function as a minority party. Meanwhile, over 100,000 people cast ballots in four of Alabama's seven congressional districts that may not count after Republican Governor Kay Ivey moved to postpone the election. Ivey is hoping to redraw Alabama's maps on the backs of a Supreme Court ruling. And if successful, instituting a redraw will mean voiding the ballots cast on Tuesday. And finally, number eight, bon voyage to Brad Raffensperger, who deserves a tip of the cap and whom history should remember favorably. Raffensperger, you might recall, was the Georgia secretary of state Trump pushed to find 11,000 votes to flip the state in his favor in 2020. Raffensperger declined, then spent the last six years dutifully trying to prove that the Georgia election was fair and legal. Three recounts and many hearings later, a lot of voters still believe something was amiss. But Raffensperger never wavered in his resistance to election denialism, and he never stopped trying to prove the legitimacy of his state's election. His attempt to become governor failed on Tuesday, likely ending his political career. But I can almost guarantee he will publish a book about the insanity of the last six years and and it's going to be a fascinating story. We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [27:28]
Aramco Announcer
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- [27:58]
Grow Therapy Announcer
the to do list doesn't stop, and neither does the pressure to keep up with it if you've been running on fumes, GrowTherapy makes it easier to find care that's covered by insurance and actually built around you, whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th. Grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around.
- [28:17]
You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability and get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. Grow helps you find therapy on your time. Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans. Sessions average about $21 with Insur and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan.
- [28:45]
Visit growththerapy.com acast today to get started. That's growtherapy.com acast growtherapy.com acast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance.
- [29:09]
Isaac Saul
All right, that is it for my take. Which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Peter, who submitted the question through Subtext, our SMS service. He said the amount of unsolicited texts I've gotten from PACs asking for donations or contributions to random state or local level elections on the other side of the country has absolutely skyrocketed in the last few months. Is that something y' all would ever report on somewhere? Okay, so happy to expound on this. Simply put, you're getting these texts because it's primary season. Political messaging ramps up when the elections are underway, and perhaps the most cost effective way for candidates to communicate with you is through text messages. One SMS text costs senders between one and five cents, making it much cheaper than mailers or TV ads. You're getting more texts now because, as Alex Culici, the CEO of call blocking company umail, put it, if you see more of something, that means it's working. That low cost distribution allows political action groups or PACs more overhead to pay for the really expensive part, which is getting your data. Political groups paid 37 data brokers over $23 million to access voter data during the 2020 election. That number excludes major players like Meta and Google, meaning it's only a fraction of what the PACs are actually paying in total. PACs can also get a lot of data cheaply through their voter rolls or from national fundraising platforms like ActBlue or WinRed. The Telephone Consumer Protection act forbids campaigns from contacting you with autodialers and requires services to allow you to opt out. However, the TCPA does allow campaigns to text potential voters without their permission. That means after you opt out of one campaign, PACs can just sign you up for different but very similar campaigns through peer to peer services, as long as an actual perm person runs them. To make matters worse, a 2021 Supreme Court ruling exempted campaigns from the TCPA if they simply manually feed numbers into an automated system. Worse still, political calls are exempt from the Do Not Call registry, meaning campaigns can legally contact registered voters even if they've opted out of commercial calls. The upshot is that as long as people keep clicking these messages to donate, we're all going to keep getting them. And since Peter asked this question through our messaging service, now is a good time to remind you that Tangle never shares your information with anyone and if you opt out, we will never re enroll you without your consent. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to Ari for the rest of the podcast and I'll see you guys a little later. Have a good one.
- [31:48]
Grow Therapy Announcer
Peace.
- [31:54]
Ari Weitzman
Here's today's under the radar story. Last Tuesday, May 12, officials at the recently opened immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades told vendors it would be shutting down. The center, known as Alligator Alcatraz, was opened in July 2025 and held 1,383 detainees as of the most recent report in April. Florida's Division of Emergency Management projected last year that the facility would cost $1.1 billion to operate and expected a $608 million reimbursement from the federal government, which has not come We've saved taxpayers money, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said. We've saved taxpayers from medical care and schooling of unauthorized immigrants and all of these different things. A report found that unauthorized immigrants had cost the state roughly $660 million in health care costs in 2024. DeSantis has not confirmed where the facility's detainees will be sent once it closes. The New York Times and WLRN Florida have more information on this story, and we'll have links to that in the show. Notes. Since we're talking about primaries for the midterms today, Here's a deeper look on the history of primaries in American politics. Political candidates for a general election weren't always decided by primaries. In the early days of the United States, elections weren't even decided by parties at all. Initially, those seeking office didn't announce their own candidacies, but were customarily nominated for office by others for higher offices like the Senate, Governor, or president. Party caucuses of sitting legislators often chose nominees as national parties began to form congressional caucuses nominated candidates for the presidency. This changed with Andrew Jackson's populist mass appeal movements of 1824 and 1828, which shifted the power center away from party elites and more towards the masses. In 1831, shortly before the 1832 Democratic convention, which nominated Jackson for president, the anti Masonic party held the first national nominating convention, which ironically nominated a Freemason. Shortly thereafter, Crawford County, Pennsylvania held the first direct primary election for a local office in 1842. What would be known as the Crawford county system went on to become the norm, replacing the smoke filled backroom nomination process with one that was out in the open for the participation of any party member. Now for today's have a nice day story. For decades, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or fafsa, was notoriously long and difficult to fill out, creating a barrier for many American high school students, especially first generation or lower income students, to afford college. In 2020, the Department of Education began overhauling the FAFSA system in an effort to simplify the form, but the new system's rollout was plagued with difficulties, however, and still, despite issues with the rollout, the simplified system resulted in about 570,000 additional students gaining eligibility for federal aid in 2024-2025, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. The most substantial increase occurred for students and households with incomes ranging from $40,000 to $80,000. Ed Source has more about the story and you can check that description in the show notes.
- [35:13]
John Law
All right everybody, that's it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, Please go to readtangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a 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'.
- [35:30]
Aramco Announcer
All.
- [35:30]
John Law
Peace.
- [35:32]
Isaac Saul
Our Executive Editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will Kaback and Associate Editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsey Knuth and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@retangle.com.
- [36:12]
Lemonada Media Promoter
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Lemonada Media Promoter
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