The U.S. measles outbreaks.
Tangle
Isaac Saul
4.7 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 28 January 2026
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last week, South Carolina officials reported that measles is transmitting rapidly in the state, with 789 confirmed cases so far. South Carolina is the fifth state to accumulate at least 100 measles cases since January 2025, joining Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas (where the first cases in 2025 were reported). During the current outbreaks, over 150 children have been hospitalized with measles; two children and one adult (all unvaccinated) have died from measles complications, the first such deaths in the U.S. in a decade.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. |
| 0:13.0 | Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of our take. |
| 0:28.3 | I'm your host for today, Tangle Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, which means the odds that you're about to hear some numbers just went up. |
| 0:36.0 | Today, we're going to be talking about the measles outbreaks across the United States |
| 0:40.8 | and the association between them or the lack thereof with vaccination rates. |
| 0:46.0 | Before we get started, though, I have a call to action, a bit of a request to share with |
| 0:50.5 | Tangle readers and listeners. |
| 0:52.5 | Lately, one of the most popular questions that we've gotten from our readers has been about |
| 0:58.7 | the Department of Homeland Security's hiring and training practices, specifically their practices |
| 1:04.8 | at their enforcement arms of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and Customs and Border Patrol or CBP. |
| 1:12.7 | We're putting together a story to better understand exactly what their hiring processes look |
| 1:18.1 | like and the experience for agents on the ground. If you or anyone you know works for DHS or ICE |
| 1:25.2 | or CBP, we'd love to talk to you and learn more. |
| 1:28.8 | We'd love it if you got in touch with us over Signal. |
| 1:31.6 | Our username is tanglenews.96. |
| 1:35.2 | That's tanglenews.96 at Signal. |
| 1:38.1 | And we're leaving a link to that in the show notes. |
| 1:40.8 | All right, I'm going to send it over for today's quick hits. |
| 1:43.2 | Then I'll be back for the rest of the show. |
| 1:52.4 | Here are today's quick hits. According to a government report sent to Congress, two U.S. |
| 1:59.4 | Customs and Border Protection agents fired their weapons during |
| 2:02.8 | the shooting of Alex Priddy in Minneapolis on Saturday. The report does not state whether |
... |
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