The midterms officially begin.
Tangle
Isaac Saul
4.7 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Tuesday, voters in Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas voted in party primaries to elect candidates for federal, state, and local offices in the 2026 midterms. In the Texas Democratic Senate primary, state Rep. James Talarico defeated Rep. Jasmine Crockett, while Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton will head to a runoff in the Republican Senate primary. In North Carolina, former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley and former Gov. Roy Cooper (D) won their respective party’s Senate primaries. Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Cotton (R) won renomination for a third term in Arkansas’s Republican Senate primary and will face farmer Hallie Shoffner (D) in the general election.
The rise of measles.
Last month, we covered measles outbreaks in different states across the country, leading the United States to the brink of losing its elimination status with the disease for the first time in over two decades. For our latest YouTube video, Associate Producer Aidan Gorman takes a look into what’s driving the rise in cases, and the role that vaccines have to play.
You can watch the video here!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. |
| 0:08.4 | Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place to get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. |
| 0:28.3 | I'm your host, Isaac Saul. And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the primary races that happened in the midterm elections yesterday. We had elections in Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas. |
| 0:40.1 | We're going to break down exactly what happened. |
| 0:42.4 | Share some views from the left and the right. |
| 0:44.4 | And then my take. |
| 0:46.1 | Before we jump in, though, a quick heads up that we just published an awesome video on our YouTube channel. |
| 0:50.9 | I just got done a final watch and some edits on it about measles. |
| 0:55.2 | It is really fantastic. Shout out to Aiden Gorman, who put it together. I think it's a great |
| 0:59.9 | explainer about the measles virus, what's happening right now in the United States, some of the |
| 1:06.3 | pros and cons around vaccination and why it's often recommended, what the risks are, why the |
| 1:16.4 | vaccination rates have changed in the United States in particular. It's super interesting, |
| 1:21.1 | kind of a historical deep dive on measles that brings it into the present day in the moment |
| 1:25.1 | we're living through. So I encourage you to go check it out. All right, with that, I'm going to send it over to John for today's main topic, |
| 1:31.3 | and I'll be back for my take. |
| 1:39.3 | Thanks, Isaac, and welcome, everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. |
| 1:43.4 | First up, Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth |
| 1:45.3 | said U.S. submarines sank in Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean amid ongoing operations in Iran. |
| 1:52.0 | Separately, the Pentagon identified four of the U.S. soldiers killed in the conflict, all of whom |
| 1:57.2 | were members of an Iowa unit in the U.S. Army Reserve. |
| 2:03.8 | Number two, the Pentagon announced that the United States in Ecuador began joint military operations against designated terrorist organizations in Ecuador. |
| 2:09.3 | U.S. troops are not believed to be taking part in ground operations, |
... |
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