One of my primary goals with Tangle is to build the most trusted political news outlet in the world. 

Two important ways we’re working towards that goal are 1) responding transparently to audience feedback, and 2) creating a special place for our community to interact, debate, and learn from each other.

Today, we’re making a series of announcements in service of those two objectives. 

First, we’re making several updates to our editorial guidelines — the first time we’ve done so since 2023. As we’ve learned at Tangle, it’s not just what we say but how we say it. I don’t think any news outlet is thinking harder about the ways in which we communicate on controversial issues; we are a big-tent media organization, and we are trying to win the trust of Americans from across the political spectrum. Language choice and editorial standards in service of this goal were the subject of my 2024 TED Talk, and they’re part of how we continue to evolve for the widest, most politically diverse audience possible. 

Additionally, we’re going to share some explanations and commentary about internal dialogue that led to the choices we’ve made. Rather than just telling you what we’re doing, we hope to build some trust by explaining why we’re doing it. Given that we rarely have unanimous agreement on any of these decisions, we recognize some are bound to upset certain readers or groups. Our sincere hope is that if we explain our thought process, even if you don’t agree with our choice, you’ll be able to understand it. 

Second, we’re going to be making some adjustments to the structure of our newsletter. We always want to grow and evolve our core product, which means evaluating it periodically. We also want to remain true to what works and what our readers are getting value out of, so we aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel. A number of these changes we’ve already begun implementing — and we’re always willing to review whether our practices are working or not.

Third, we’re announcing our first-ever moderation policies for the comments section. As with our editorial guidelines, we have put a tremendous amount of consideration into how to best build commenting rules that align with our mission. We want to embody the spirit of free speech and exchange while also trying to create a space for genuinely quality dialogue. The guidelines we’re laying out today, I think, meet that goal. But this is also the first time we’re doing this, and we’ll consider the feedback we get from our audience and adapt into the future to continue to pursue that quality space. 

We are also announcing that, starting next week, we’ll be making the comment section on our website accessible for members only. I know some readers will be disappointed about the decision to gate the comments. In anticipation of that feedback, we’re dedicating the first section of this edition to explaining our rationale and new policies for commenting. 

So, with that, let’s get into it: Our new moderation policy for the comments section, our newest editorial guidelines, and some updates on the structure of the newsletter. 

— Isaac Saul, Tangle Founder and Executive Editor

Commenting policy.

Today, we are announcing the rules behind our first comment-moderation policy. We are also announcing, in conjunction with these rules, that commenting privileges will only be available to paying Tangle members who are logged into the website. This policy will go into effect on Monday, March 30.

We first want to explain how we came to the decision to begin paywalling our comments section:

1. We believe having a members-only comments section will encourage buy-in to our mission. If someone is paying to support or access our work, they are more likely to care for the space and conduct themselves in a way that comports with our vision. Given our affordable subscription price and our policy of giving free subscriptions to people who have financial barriers, we believe we can do this without creating unreasonable burdens, which is a core priority for us. 
2. Free spaces to comment on Tangle already exist. An active Reddit community is constantly discussing our work. Platforms like X, Instagram, and Facebook offer readers more places to interact. Given that these spaces are out there, we think we can and should strive to make something special and distinct on our own website. This is our space, so we should own it.
3. In the process of monitoring our comments and preparing to embark on the moderation journey, we realized the people who are most likely to do or say things that degrade the quality of the space are overwhelmingly users who do not pay for our work (some of whom are not even subscribed at the free level). These are not people who level harsh criticisms about us, but people who intentionally use inflammatory language and sling insults at fellow Tangle readers. In short: We think forcing these people to either invest in the community or be unable to comment will improve the quality of the discourse on our website. Of course, this will also immediately box out the trolls and rabble-rousers who find our work online and show up in the comments just to be disruptive. 

Our goal is to create a robust community for dialogue that is unique from other spaces on the internet. In service of that goal, in addition to adding a paywall to the comment section, our team has agreed to a series of commenting rules and guidelines. While they represent our blanket positions on comment section behavior, they come with an important caveat: We will avoid drawing lines on live debates about what is and isn’t an acceptable view.

Comments like “Boys can’t become girls” or “Trump supporters are all racists” are certainly offensive to some, but they will be allowed on our page (provided the comments do not otherwise violate our rules).

We reserve some right to issue warnings or delete posts that we feel violate the spirit of the guidelines and the community standards we are trying to enforce. Additionally, we may disable commenting altogether for anyone who continues to post outside of these guidelines. 

We’re a small team, and comment moderation is time-consuming work. While we will enforce these guidelines as best we can, we can’t guarantee that we will catch and remove every violation, or that we will do so promptly.

Ideally, our comments section will be a self-policing space — the less we have to get involved, the better. Making these rules is a difficult, fraught process, and as with any other Tangle decision, we’re open to reader feedback and may update our guidelines as we see the rules play out in practice.

Rules.

1. No direct name-calling. This is pretty simple. Saying “Republicans are stupid” is permissible — saying “Kevin, you’re stupid” is not. Additionally, directing slurs of any kind at other commenters is unacceptable.
2. No inciting violence. Also pretty simple. Saying “Democrats want to burn things down” is allowed; saying “we should burn things down” or “I will punch you in the face” is not.
3. No gratuitous obscenity. Our obscenity standard is pretty relaxed. Swear as much as you want, but comments explicitly describing sexual actions or bodily functions will be removed.
4. No sharing violent multimedia imagery. We reserve the right to determine if graphic footage of violence is newsworthy and to share or reference it within the newsletter as we see fit. Discussion of graphic content in the comments section is fine, but direct links to footage and imagery will be removed.
5. No spam, self-promotion, or advertising. Comments advertising products, promoting your own work, or that are otherwise unrelated to the main article or ensuing discussion in comment threads will be removed.
6. No excessive reports. Unnecessary reports make it more difficult for us to find and take down actual violations. Do not report comments just because you find them offensive or you think they should be rules violations; report them only if you think they are already legitimate violations of the rules laid out above.

Guidelines.

If your comment isn’t in line with our guidelines, you may receive an email reminding you to keep these best practices in mind when posting.

1. Be persuasive. Our goal is to encourage dialogue across political lines. While commenting “Democrats are stupid” is allowed, it won’t change anyone’s mind. If you feel you need to say this, why not explain why you think Democrats are stupid?
2. Approach arguments with curiosity. We hope that you encounter ideas that you don’t agree with in the comments section. When you do, rather than dismissing them outright, we encourage you to ask questions about the points being made. Think of it as a conversation, not a post.
3. Hold one another accountable. If someone isn’t engaging in good faith, you can call them out directly. This is ultimately your community, and we want you to feel empowered to set high standards and expect rigorous conversation. Of course, you can always report a comment when someone oversteps. 

Again, all of these rules and guidelines are our attempts at making the comments better for everyone. If you think one of them isn’t working, or others will be more helpful, be sure to let us know. And we’ll see you in the comments!

Language choices.

Fascist and authoritarian.

From the start of President Donald Trump’s campaign for president in 2015 up to the present, some scholars, writers, and critics have labelled Trump and his policies as “fascist” or “authoritarian.” We want to offer some clarity on these terms and our usage of them going forward. For our purposes, we’re focusing specifically on fascist and authoritarian political figures and governments — rather than, say, fascist art or authoritarian parenting. 

Fascism is a far-right form of governance that expresses hard power through the state. Fascist ideas originated in 19th-century European writings in response to rising progressivism and secular liberalism, but it wasn’t until the interwar period that the paradigmatic fascist governments we think of today — Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy — came into power. Encyclopedia Britannica notes that there is no universally agreed-upon definition of fascism, but finds several shared characteristics among fascist figures and governments: extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy, and subordinating individual interests to the good of the nation.

Arguments promoting Trump as a fascist figure center on his reinstatement of Schedule F reclassification of federal workers, his targeting of immigrants and DEI programs, his attempted removal of birthright citizenship, and his domestic deployment of federal troops and masked DHS agents. Since the start of Trump’s second term, many readers have asked us whether we think these actions amount to fascism. We don’t, for a few reasons. The United States under Trump remains a healthy democracy with free and fair elections and a working judiciary. And although Trump is amassing executive power, he is largely doing so through existing legal avenues such as executive orders, which can be overturned by the next president. 

Encyclopedia Britannica defines “authoritarianism” as a form of government that has no mechanism for transferring executive power and that affords its citizens little to no rights. In authoritarian governments, all power lies in the hands of a single person or a small group of people. Modern authoritarian governments persist across the globe in North Korea, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia, among other places. 

We’ve defined our own markers of a shift towards authoritarianism in the United States: prosecution of political enemies, using the military against peaceful protestors, the erosion of free and fair elections, the collapse of a legitimate opposition party, and genuinely restricted free speech. In previous writing, Executive Editor Isaac Saul has argued Trump is checking the first two of these five boxes.

America.

We refer to the United States of America as “United States,” or “U.S.” for short, and typically use “U.S.” as an adjective. However, we find it to be an awkward usage in many cases, as in “U.S. citizen” instead of “American.” Not only is it wordier, but it’s inexact — nationality is not the exact same thing as citizenship, and we should have a general word to refer to someone who is a legal and long-term resident of the United States of America.

As such, we have adjusted our policy to allow for the use of the word “American” to refer to U.S. citizens or as an adjective describing U.S. governance or culture. A common criticism of this term is that “American” can refer to a resident of any number of countries in North America or South America. However, in practice, this criticism is pretty unconvincing, for three reasons:

First, we rarely (if ever) hear people say “American” when they mean “North American” or “South American.” Second, it’s similarly rare to hear anyone use the word “American” to refer to residents of both continents at once. Lastly, nobody would refer to a Canadian or a Guyanan as an “American” when that person could just be referred to by their nationality; meanwhile, without the word “American,” the United States of America would have no such easy demonym. 

This usage of “American” has a history dating back to the pre-revolutionary British colonies. To use one particularly beautiful example, in Rob Chernow’s biography Washington: A Life, Chernow quotes a British soldier watching how Americans behave once the British officially withdrew from New York City: “Here, in this city, we have had an army for more than seven years, and yet could not keep the peace of it … Now [that] we are gone, everything is in quietness and safety. The Americans are a curious, original people. They know how to govern themselves, but nobody else can govern them.”

Indeed.

Governmental nomenclature.

Speaking of America, we have made the editorial decision not to use new names for geographical places or government entities that a presidential administration has decided to use — unless, or until, an act of Congress officially acknowledges those changes. That means in our coverage, the “Gulf of America” will remain the “Gulf of Mexico,” the “Arabian Gulf” will remain the “Persian Gulf,” and the “Department of War” will remain the “Department of Defense.” This is not intended as an oppositional stance against the Trump administration, but as a precedent that would apply to any president who unilaterally renames geographical places independent of Congress.

Suicide language.

As a general guideline, if our word choices can theoretically decrease the odds of terrible behaviors being repeated, we will make those choices. That “contagion effect” drives our decision not to reprint the names of perpetrators of mass shootings, which we say every time we cover such an event in Tangle. We also refer to recommendations from professional groups to help guide our choices. On the flip side, we have a policy against using terms that feel or sound nicer just to protect the sensitivities of language users (as we have written about before). And we do not follow recommendations dogmatically — if a suggested guideline is not supported with sound reasoning and evidence, we won’t reflexively follow it over other alternatives. 

We very deeply want to make choices that could prevent suicides. And coming from that position, we want to commit to two important editorial choices.

First, following the recommendations from the nonprofit Reporting on Suicide (RoS), we are going to avoid describing suicide attempts as “successful,” “failed,” or “completed.” As the nonprofit describes, the contagion effect of suicides is real, and referring to the act of taking one’s life as something that can be done “successfully” could frame suicide as a goal to attain and arguably contribute to copycats. Deciding to follow that guideline is a relatively easy and straightforward decision for us.

Our second decision is to use the phrase “killed themself” when describing an act of suicide, a phrase which is also recommended by RoS. We considered other possible alternatives, but ruled them out for different reasons. 

RoS also recommended the phrase “died by suicide,” but we believe that phrase goes against a common journalistic standard of avoiding passive language. The group also recommends against the term “committed suicide,” saying that it uses language consistent with crime or sin (as in “committed murder” or “committed adultery”) and that connotation can create a stigma that makes it less likely for suicidal people to seek help. However, several members of our staff found that justification unconvincing. And after combing through the research Reporting on Suicide has compiled, we found the data to be inconclusive that avoiding the term “committed suicide” would be preventative — meaning this phrase is unlikely to influence behavior in either direction. The best study we can find on this term is a survey of “adults affected by suicide” about what terms they prefer; as shown below, the study found no association on the acceptability of the term among this group whatsoever, meaning there’s no demonstrated reason to avoid it. 

At the same time, the data also shows no relationship with the phrase “killed themself.” And since several members of our staff also felt that the stigmatization theory provided good reason to avoid the term “committed suicide” on its own, even if the data is inconclusive, the available reasonable alternative gave us an acceptable solution.

We know this is a particularly sensitive and difficult area, and we don’t consider ourselves to be the sole arbiters of what is right and wrong. These guidelines only represent the decisions that we’ve come to for our own writing, and for now. We are always very willing to hear other arguments from readers, and we will never enforce our preferred wording choices on others in the comments section.

Political orientation.

We’ve recently been paying closer attention to how we describe the political orientation of politicians, pundits, and public figures. While this impacts our word choices in a variety of ways, we’re making a particular effort to differentiate between conservatives, right-wingers, and Republicans, as well as between liberals, left-wingers, and Democrats.

It has already been our practice to use “Republican” and “Democrat” only to refer to active or former U.S. party members or party-specific policies. The parties are a formal aspect of the American political system, and each party has represented a shifting variety of political ideologies over time. “Republican” is not interchangeable with “conservative”; nor is “Democrat” interchangeable with “liberal.”

Moving forward, we will also be more specific in referring to ideologies across the political spectrum. Using the definition from Encyclopedia Britannica, conservatism is “a political doctrine that emphasizes the value of traditional institutions and practices.” More specifically, American conservatism has long been defined by commitments to free-market policies and opposition to government expansion. Liberalism is defined by Britannica as “tak[ing] protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics.” In the U.S., liberalism is also associated with the use of government programs to address broader societal restrictions on individual freedoms, such as poverty and inequality.

However, traditional American conservatism is not the only right-wing ideological position, and traditional American liberalism is not the sole ideology on the political left. Furthermore, ascendant figures on the left and the right increasingly represent ideologies that break from traditionally conservative and liberal ideals.

Going forward, we will use “liberal” and “conservative” to describe figures and ideas in line with the traditional American understanding of these terms, and use “left” and “right” as umbrella terms to discuss other relevant political ideas and figures.

Immigration.

In our 2023 guidelines, we wrote about our decision to use “unauthorized migrant” in place of “illegal alien” or “undocumented immigrant.” It was a straightforward compromise, avoiding two terms that felt politically loaded for another that adequately described what we were talking about at the time: people who crossed the border without authorization. 

However, over time, we have discovered a few reasons why this term wasn’t the catch-all solution we had thought it could be. When we landed on the phrase, border crossings were at an all-time high; now, they’ve shrunk to their lowest levels in recent history. Many of the people who crossed over during that elevated period of migration are now living in the country, legally or illegally. As such, we’re going to start using “unauthorized immigrant” as a default to describe “people who crossed into the United States illegally or residents who are not in compliance with their legal restrictions.” This term is also imperfect, because “immigrant” implies a person who has moved with the intention to repatriate to another country, but it’s as close as we can get without being too wordy. 

Lastly, we will always be as precise as possible when describing a person or group. So if we’re talking about “residents” or “H-1B visa holders” or “asylum-seekers,” or even the original term "unauthorized migrants” in the appropriate context, then we will use those terms. And if we are talking more generally about people not from the United States, we will use the terms “noncitizen” or “foreign national.” But again, and for clarity: When discussing “people who crossed into the United States illegally or residents who are not in compliance with their legal restrictions,” we will be using the term “unauthorized immigrant” — and may also use the phrase “immigrants here illegally” or describe someone as “in the country illegally.”

Structural choices.

Staff dissents/concurrences. 

We rolled out the “staff dissent” feature in September 2025, describing it as a way to “highlight the viewpoint diversity on our team” and “articulate criticisms from our audience that are often argued internally, but never seen.” Those tenets remain the same, though we’d add that dissents also serve to highlight areas of an issue that a staff member (or members) thought the take writer may not have sufficiently addressed. 

Separately, we recently debuted a “staff concurrence” feature to highlight areas where one of us agrees with the thrust of the take but wants to add additional color or reasoning on a related issue. In other words, it’s a new line of thought but not a substantive disagreement with the main argument. For example, in our first-ever staff concurrence, Managing Editor Ari Weitzman added a thought to Isaac’s take on the Senate primary results in Texas. Ari’s concurrence offered an additional lens through which to view the election, but didn’t disagree with Isaac’s main conclusions. 

These features were inspired by Supreme Court rulings. We aspire to be something akin to the “Supreme Court of the media,” with robust ideological diversity among our staff and comfort in publicly sharing our disagreements (and different methods of reasoning) when they arise. The Tangle community seems to appreciate it, too; in fact, these features are the most popular additions we’ve made to the newsletter in some time. 

We should also note that if you don’t see a dissent after a take, that doesn’t mean the entire staff was in agreement. In many cases, the take writer will moderate or adjust their argument in response to internal feedback they found compelling. In others, we decide the level of disagreement is not significant enough to warrant a full dissent (it might be a dispute about how an issue is described, a minor difference over framing, or something else in that vein). Broadly, an internal debate merits a dissent when one or more staff members disagree outright with a core part of the take’s argument, and at least one member of staff doesn’t feel like their disagreement gets reflected in edits on the take. In cases where multiple staff members have separate disputes, we’ll publish two dissents (though likely never more than that).

Dissents and concurrences will arise on an edition-by-edition basis. That said, we’ll never add one for the sake of keeping up a consistent cadence, only when it’s merited along the lines described above. 

Alternating sections. 

Editors are famous (or infamous) for telling writers to “kill your darlings” — accepting cuts to passages, characters, or story arcs that they personally love but don’t serve the overall piece. We value each newsletter section, but we recognize the time has come for a change. And if we want to experiment with adding new features, some things have to go.

The good news: Nothing is going away permanently. Instead, we’re going to start rotating the sections around our main story to make the newsletter more dynamic, visually appealing, and digestible. Quick hits, the introduction to the day’s main story, what the left and right are saying, my take, the reader question, and the extras will remain fixtures. The other sections — under the radar, numbers, and have a nice day — will rotate in and out depending on what we want to prioritize in a given day’s edition (and to ensure we’re slimming down the overall length of the newsletter). 

Furthermore, we’re going to be working in some new sections. Some initial ideas include:

• A quote, chart, or feel-good picture of the day
• A spotlight on a new piece of Tangle original content
• A highlight from the Tangle team Slack
• A staff recommendation for a book, TV show, movie, recipe, or something else
• A historical look back at this day in history 
• An original puzzle
• A notable international story
• A notable hyper-local news story 
• A cool personal fact or story from a member of the Tangle community

If you have other ideas for new sections, send them in. We’re planning to roll out some of these ideas over the next few months, so don’t be surprised if you notice a section missing one day — or see something entirely new. 

Flex topics. 

Over the past six months, you may have noticed us occasionally choose to cover a thought-provoking topic outside of the current news cycle, like the debate over physician-assisted suicide or sports betting. Internally, we call these “flex topics.” 

Our criteria for these stories are straightforward: They should involve an issue that’s relevant to national U.S. politics, inspire debate across the political spectrum, and address a topic our audience has expressed interest in. Flex topics also comprise meaty enough issues that we don’t think they can be sufficiently addressed in a response to a reader question. 

We like having the flexibility to dip out of the news cycle from time to time, especially when the week’s dominant stories are ones we’ve recently covered, and the response to these pieces has been broadly positive. You can expect to see flex editions more often going forward, but we’ll always prioritize stories in the present news cycle. 

A final note: Please send in your ideas! We solicit them internally every week, but we’d love to build out a deeper queue of potential topics, and we want to know what issues you think would be interesting to tackle with the Tangle method. 

2-2-2 format. 

When we cover stories that involve a specific group of people, a region or an area of technical expertise, we’ll break from our “three views from the left, three views from the right” format and add a third section of commentary with two arguments from each group. This “2-2-2” format allows us to share perspectives relevant to the story that don’t fit neatly into political boxes. Most often, these will be views from outside of the U.S., but we’ve also used this format for stories centered on American states, policy debates, and industries. We look to use it whenever possible to bring in views that you usually don’t encounter in national political punditry, but we don’t always have enough commentary to include it. 

AI.   

Tangle is a people-first organization. We do not rely on artificial intelligence to create any of our editorial content on any platform. We do the hard work of gathering sources, analyzing the research, and then refining our position through thoughtful debate with the rest of the team.

Currently, we use AI in one step of our editorial process: fact-checking. After the newsletter and YouTube scripts have been through multiple rounds of edits and human fact-checks, we run the content through an AI fact-checker as a final review. AI isn’t perfect for this use case; it still flags things as incorrect that aren’t and misses things that human editors later catch. We think of AI as one of our team, but it certainly cannot replace any one of our team.

We also use AI to assist with certain research tasks, like pinpointing information we’re looking for in long documents, synthesizing summaries of events, and identifying interview targets for reported pieces. We’ve found the technology helpful and efficient for these uses and haven’t encountered significant downsides when used with human oversight. 

Outside of fact-checking and research support, though, we don’t expect to meaningfully incorporate AI into other aspects of our work.