I'm Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”
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What we got wrong (and right).
Last Friday, we published our annual self-review, assessing our commentary on the biggest stories in politics in 2025. The exercise is one way that we live out our values of being a transparent media organization that’s accountable to our audience; it’s also a useful tool for reflecting on how stories evolve after they fall out of the news cycle. You can read our two-part review here and here.
Quick hits.
- CBS News reported that the death toll in anti-government protests in Iran is estimated to be 12,000 — and could be as high as 20,000 — as Islamic Republic security forces crack down on protesters. Other estimates put the death toll at approximately 2,000. (The latest) Separately, President Donald Trump encouraged Iranian demonstrators to continue resisting, posting on Truth Social, “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.” (The message)
- The majority of the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office’s leadership team resigned in protest of federal officials’ handling of the investigation into the death of Renee Good, who was shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross last week in Minneapolis. (The resignations)
- Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appointed two new members to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Both appointees are OB/GYNs who have criticized and questioned the safety of vaccines. (The appointments)
- Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet with the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland at the White House on Wednesday. The foreign ministers requested the meeting following President Trump’s comments about his intent to take control of Greenland. (The meeting)
- The Trump administration announced the end of temporary protected status for Somali nationals living in the United States, requiring them to leave the country by March 17. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, “Country conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status.” (The announcement)
Today’s topic.
Transgender women in sports. During oral arguments on Tuesday, the Supreme Court appeared likely to uphold state laws banning anyone other than biological females from participating in women’s and girls’ sports. In West Virginia v. B.P.J., the mother of a transgender girl brought a challenge to a state law in West Virginia; in Little v. Hecox, a transgender woman wishing to compete at the college level challenged an Idaho law. Together, the legal challenges claim the laws violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and Title IX, a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in programs that receive federal funding. Although the justices are expected to rule similarly in each case, the Court is considering the challenges separately.
Back up: In 2021, West Virginia enacted the Save Women’s Sports Act, a statute barring students who are biologically male at birth from participating on girls’ and women’s sports teams in public secondary schools and colleges. The mother of B.P.J., a now-15-year-old girl who has publicly identified as female since third grade, challenged the statute when she learned the law would prevent her child from participating on girls’ teams in middle-school sports. A district court granted B.P.J. a preliminary injunction to compete while litigation continued, eventually siding with the state. Upon appeal, the Fourth Circuit court ruled against West Virginia, and the state appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 2020, Idaho passed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act (H.B. 500), a law that categorically barred transgender women and girls from competing on women’s and girls’ sports teams at all educational levels. Lindsay Hecox, a transgender woman and Boise State University student — along with an anonymous high-school athlete concerned about invasive sex-verification procedures — challenged the law in federal district court, which temporarily blocked the law. The Ninth Circuit affirmed that injunction on constitutional grounds. Idaho appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court.
During oral arguments, a majority of the justices indicated reluctance to find that either law violated the plaintiffs’ legal protections. Most of the arguments in Hecox and B.P.J. centered on whether the law discriminated unfairly against transgender women on the basis of sex, as well as the kind of challenge plaintiffs were bringing to the Court. In questioning, the Court’s majority seemed skeptical that the plaintiff could object to the law as it applied to her without demanding the state tailor the law specifically for them.
The Court’s three liberal justices offered questions that appeared sympathetic to the plaintiffs’ challenges. In a line of questioning to Idaho Solicitor General Alan Hurst, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Idaho law would create “a subclass of people who are covered by the law and others are not,” implying a violation of the 14th Amendment.
Below, we’ll break down what the right and left are saying about the cases. Then, Associate Editor Audrey Moorehead gives her take.
What the right is saying.
- Most on the right expect the court will uphold the state laws, arguing the challengers’ cases are thin.
- Some worry that the decision may be closer than expected.
- Others say the court has an opportunity to set a strong precedent.
In National Review, Dan McLaughlin said “[the] Supreme Court seems ready to let states ban men from women’s sports.”
“The highlight of the argument came when Justice Samuel Alito got [attorney Kathleen] Hartnett to concede that she didn’t even have a definition of what a man or woman is,” McLaughlin wrote. “This is a disastrous answer (and the audio shows how fumbling Hartnett was in navigating this exchange). Title IX uses the term ‘sex’ — you can’t bring a Title IX case without some idea of what the key statutory term means. The same is true for invoking the 14th Amendment’s cases on sex discrimination, which has its own standard of review. And you can’t ask schools and sports leagues to avoid discriminating on the basis of a line if you can’t even tell them what the line is.”
“A key problem for the challengers is that they were reduced to contending that a policy that is nondiscriminatory toward 99 percent of the people it applies to can nonetheless violate intermediate scrutiny on an as-applied basis toward a small subset of transgender athletes,” McLaughlin said. “But intermediate scrutiny has never required that a policy be perfectly tailored to avoid gender unfairness toward anyone.”
In The Federalist, Breccan F. Thies criticized Justices Gorsuch and Barrett’s approach to oral arguments.
“Gorsuch’s major contribution to the Tuesday oral arguments thus far was relatively early on, when he suggested that people identifying as ‘transgender’ should be considered a ‘discrete’ group ‘given the history of de jure discrimination against transgender individuals in this country.’ The justice essentially asked whether those who claim to be ‘transgender’ should be a legally protected class,” Thies wrote. “This really comes as no surprise for Gorsuch, who authored Bostock v. Clayton County, which essentially invented a protected class for those claiming to be ‘transgender’ with regard to Title VII workplace discrimination.”
“Despite Barrett’s writing on the issue, in Tuesday’s oral argument, she consistently referred to boys claiming to be ‘transgender’ as ‘trans girls’ and the like… Barrett also suggested that prepubescent boys have no physical advantage over prepubescent girls,” Thies said. “While the current Supreme Court majority ruled in favor of allowing state bans on the medical industry side of the ‘transgender’ debate, the issue of sports and Title IX could end differently.”
In Fox News, Madison Kenyon and Mary Kate Marshall wrote “we were college athletes. [The] Supreme Court must listen to our case and save women’s sports.”
“Each of us spent a lot of our growing-up years training our minds, straining our bodies and gaining the skills to compete against other girls and women on the athletic field. We worked hard — forfeited a lot of fun and family time — and steadily disciplined ourselves to become better, faster and stronger to win those trophies, stand on winners’ platforms and earn scholarships that could pay for our higher education,” Kenyon and Marshall said. “Then something happened that we had no way to predict or prepare for… Seemingly overnight, our country’s athletic leaders decided that men could be women, that men had every right to compete in women’s sports, and that physical differences were irrelevant, DNA was unimportant and anyone could be anything they wanted to be.”
“More than 50 friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed in these combined cases — by women’s rights groups, female athletes, scientists, dozens of other advocacy groups, 27 states and the U.S. government — all asking the justices to allow enforcement of state laws that protect women’s sports,” Kenyon and Marshall wrote. “Now, the Supreme Court will finally be able to clarify what the law already recognizes — and so protect the rights not only of female athletes but of all Americans who embrace biological reality and the simple truths of nature.”
What the left is saying.
- The left also expects the court to side with the states, and to deal a significant blow to transgender rights.
- Some say the stakes of the case extend beyond sports participation.
- Others criticize the right’s targeting of the transgender population.
In Vox, Ian Millhiser said “the Supreme Court seems poised to deliver another blow to trans rights.”
“Few of the justices appeared interested in the trans plaintiffs’ strongest legal arguments, and a surprising amount of the justices’ questions focused on a genuinely novel and difficult issue that most of the justices appeared likely to resolve against trans athletes,” Millhiser wrote. “To prevail in Hecox or B.P.J., the plaintiffs must do more than show that they are victims of sex discrimination. Their best argument is that the Constitution also prohibits public schools from discriminating against people because they are transgender. But, only Justice Neil Gorsuch showed much interest in this argument.”
“Given that Roberts and Gorsuch are the only Republican justices who have supported trans rights in the past, it’s hard to imagine the Court voting in favor of trans athletes without these two justices’ votes,” Millhiser said. “It is very likely, in other words, that Hecox and B.P.J. will end in a major loss for trans rights. The justices who heard these cases appeared to fixate on a question that the Court has not yet answered: Can a gender-based discrimination plaintiff challenge a state’s decision to classify them as male or female? And most of the justices appeared inclined to resolve that question in a way that does not help trans athletes.”
In Erin In The Morning, Erin Reed suggested the court’s ruling “could impact all trans rights.”
“While it may be tempting to view these cases as narrow disputes over sports participation, their potential impact extends far beyond athletics. Unlike Skrmetti — where the Court framed the issue as one of age classification and medical regulation, a characterization many transgender-rights advocates strongly dispute — these cases more directly confront whether transgender people are entitled to equal protection under the law,” Reed wrote. “While lower courts have ruled in favor of transgender people, there is a new push to deny transgender people any protections whatsoever.
“One argument being advanced by the far right is that Title IX not only allows for discrimination against transgender people, it mandates it. Such a ruling would mean that schools and colleges across the United States could discriminate against transgender people in education… not just in school sports, but in bathrooms, locker rooms, dormitory housing, and even admissions policies,” Reed said. “When it comes to equal protection, the consequences could be even more dire… If the court rules that transgender status is not subject to heightened scrutiny, and that discrimination against transgender people does not constitute sex discrimination, it would open the door for nearly any law targeting transgender people to be deemed constitutionally permissible.”
In USA Today, Nancy Armour argued “bans of transgender athletes [are] about erasure, not fairness.”
“The Supreme Court can issue rulings in a million cases, and it won’t make transgender people disappear. That’s what this is about. Not who gets to participate in sports or protecting women or preserving Title IX,” Armour wrote. “Erasure. Permanently removing transgender women from every social space so bigots and people who don’t care to be educated no longer have to look at or think about a group of people they don’t understand or who make them uncomfortable, while making all women adhere to a prescribed idea of femininity.”
“The transgender girls and women who participated in sports were doing so for the very same reasons as other girls and women: To have fun, to play with their friends and to benefit from the life lessons sports provide,” Armour said. “No one is forcing kids to transition. Transgender people aren’t lurking in bathrooms, waiting to assault people. Transgender women athletes aren’t stealing trophies and opportunities from other women en masse. All they want to do is exist.”
My take.
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- The left and right frame these issues very differently and always end up talking past each other.
- I heed calls for compassion for the lived experiences of others, but ultimately believe the law requires rigid definition.
- The Court will rule in favor of the states, and I think it should, but I won’t be totally celebrating this decision.
Associate Editor Audrey Moorehead: Whenever trans issues end up in the news, my overwhelming reaction is just frustration. Frustration at the challenging issues themselves, sure — but above all, frustration at the way both sides talk around each other.
Typically, the right is broadly skeptical of modern concepts of gender identity and the associated social changes that trans activists advocate for. I see the right as primarily concerned with ontological questions — that is, questions about definition and category. The right wants to know: What is sex? What is gender? What is it to be a man or a woman? And those on the right asking these questions want rigid, definable answers whose principles can be strictly applied. Defining sex based on material reality (like sexual organs) offers those answers — even though it creates unsatisfactory classifications for some.
Typically, the left is broadly supportive of personal concepts of gender identity and advocates for public accommodation of these concepts. This view eschews rigid definitions and allows for the possibility that an individual, despite having traditionally male sex organs, can actually be a woman (and vice versa). The guiding principle, though, is lived experience, and gender expression matching gender identity is critical to affirming lived experience.
Of course, it should go without saying that many people on the right and the left do not have honest intentions like the ones I’ve laid out above. Some on the left will point to cases of anti-trans hate crimes as proof of the right’s bad intentions, while those on the right point to individuals claiming trans identity to abuse women as proof of the left’s. But the existence of some bad intent on one side or the other doesn’t — and shouldn’t — condemn that whole side. I think we would all do well to remember that on this issue, those on the right and left alike are all trying to build a good society — they just have opposing understandings of how to do so.
For what it’s worth, I’m sympathetic to the left’s argument that gender identity isn’t inherently tied to biology. When I hear someone say they feel they were born in the wrong body, it implies some quintessential personhood beyond the body — say, a soul. I identify much more with that belief than I do to the rigid materialist view that we’re nothing more than our bodies. As such, though I’ve never experienced gender dysphoria myself, I think extending compassion towards those who do is good practice. I don’t think that compassion excludes questioning prescriptions for the issue — for example, I’m still skeptical of youth medical transition — but I don’t want to dismiss another’s lived experience outright.
However, when it comes to laws governing women’s sports, I think the rigid materialist, bioessentialist view has to win out in order to preserve athletic opportunities for natal girls and women — even if that means excluding transgender women.
Before we can get into the arguments themselves, we have to first understand the basic facts at issue. Male physical advantages over females are well documented. Differences in athletic performance exist before puberty and become more pronounced during and after puberty. These differences in performance are even reflected in some standardizations in men’s and women’s leagues in different sports — think the different sizes of NBA basketballs and WNBA basketballs, or the varying net heights in men’s and women’s volleyball.
U.S. constitutional law acknowledges that state laws can sometimes discriminate against men or women legitimately, in order to ensure equitable treatment. That’s exactly why separate men’s and women’s sports leagues are recognized by the law, and it’s why alleged sex-based discrimination — the issue at the heart of yesterday’s arguments — triggers intermediate scrutiny upon review, not strict scrutiny (the highest level of scrutiny applied by courts).
One of the core issues at the heart of trans participation in women’s sports is whether these sex differences still apply. In both Hecox and B.P.J., the transgender athletes argued that, due to their hormone therapies, they did not have the same biological advantages over women that other males would have. But Hecox’s argument doesn’t seem to hold water: Testosterone suppression doesn’t significantly reduce the advantage gained by athletes who undergo male puberty. As for B.P.J.’s case, we lack meaningful evidence of whether the prevention of male puberty — part of the gender treatment B.P.J. underwent — closes the gap.
Admittedly, the limitations of scientific evidence here are frustrating for both sides. The common argument from trans advocates is that other physical advantages don’t result in categorical exclusion, such as biological females who naturally overproduce testosterone. But I’m skeptical of attempts to use edge cases to justify the redefinition of a much larger category. Sure, specific women’s natural individual differences will grant them athletic advantages; but that doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of female athletes have similar levels of testosterone, bone density, and so on. It also doesn’t mean that the category of women’s sports, which rose over the course of hundreds of years of feminist advocacy and social advancement, should now be essentially redefined without significant evidentiary backing.
Of course, the question of defining women’s sports is its own fundamental issue, even separate from the scientific argument about male advantage. I mentioned earlier that I think these ontological questions — What is sex? What is a woman? — are primarily the concern of the right when it comes to gender issues; the left is content for those definitions to be more fluid. Unfortunately, fluidity just doesn’t work in the legal realm, and especially not before this Supreme Court. Law is, essentially, a superstructure of definitions. For laws to be applied and enforced, lawmakers must agree on key definitions of terms. In order to win this case, Hecox and B.P.J. needed to come in with strong definitions that clearly showed they were discriminated against on the basis of sex.
I do not think they did. Many of the justices — including the more moderate conservatives and Justice Gorsuch, whose Bostock opinion was a landmark for trans rights — didn’t seem convinced by their arguments. Justices Roberts, Barrett, and Thomas probed deeply into the definitional questions and seemed skeptical that Hecox and B.P.J. could prove this was sex discrimination. Meanwhile, Justice Kavanaugh seemed reluctant to make a broad ruling on trans athletes, when the states are split almost 50–50 on the issue, without an equally broad scientific consensus.
And, most worryingly to me — in an exchange that has drawn a lot of attention— when Justice Alito asked lawyer Katherine Hartnett (representing Hecox) to provide a legal definition of sex, Hartnett refused. ACLU attorney Joshua Block (representing B.P.J.) first said the Supreme Court shouldn’t define sex in its decisions on the case; only after tough questioning from Chief Justice John Roberts did Block concede that Title IX defines sex as “biological sex,” and even then Block argued that such a definition could cause problems in the future.
This exchange, I think, sums up the fundamental flaw with legal challenges to laws barring trans athletes’ participation in women’s sports, as well as the movement to change legal definitions of sex and gender more broadly. The failure to define sex — while Hartnett and Block argued that their clients had faced discrimination on the basis of sex — would make sex-based laws nigh impossible to apply consistently. And while sports regulations are relatively low-stakes, a legal precedent for a squishy definition of sex can quickly create high-stakes situations: if sex isn’t defined in the eyes of the law, then what happens to the decades-long arguments that have given rise to protections for women in the workplace? In prisons?
I expect that the Court will uphold these state laws — and think it has a strong legal basis for doing so — but I won’t be celebrating the result as strongly as some on the right. In the end, sports are ultimately a great opportunity to stay active, push your limits, and have fun with friends — and these state laws are prohibiting Hecox and B.P.J. from taking part in those activities. I don’t think these athletes have nefarious intentions like “stealing” opportunities from females, and I can’t help but sympathize with the pain their exclusions cause them. But at the same time, I think clear definitions about women’s sports, based on the science of physical differences, is important to preserving the integrity and value of sports for biological women, who deserve the chance to compete without worrying about unfair disadvantages.
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Under the radar.
On Monday, The New York Post reported that top aides to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer were placed on administrative leave by the department’s inspector general while they are investigated for fraudulent use of official travel for personal trips. According to a complaint filed in December, Chavez-DeRemer asked the aides to “make up” official trips to locations where she wanted to spend personal time. The complaint also accused the Labor secretary of an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate and of drinking alcohol during the workday. Chavez-DeRemer has not commented on the investigation, but spokespeople for the White House and the Labor Department both denied the allegations. The New York Post has the story.
Numbers.
- 27. The number of states with laws banning transgender students from participating in sports that align with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project.
- 4. Of those states, the number with court orders blocking enforcement of bans on transgender students’ participation in sports matching their gender identity.
- 69%. The percentage of U.S. adults who believe transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender, according to a May 2025 Gallup poll.
- 24%. The percentage of U.S. adults who believe transgender athletes should be able to play on sports teams that match their current gender identity.
- +7%. The change in the percentage of U.S. adults who believe transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender.
The extras.
- One year ago today we wrote about President Trump’s comments about Greenland.
- The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was, yet again, Isaac’s tweet about masked ICE agents.
- Nothing to do with politics: In memory of the late Bob Weir, we highly recommend his soulful Tiny Desk Concert.
- Yesterday’s survey: 4,224 readers responded to our survey on the Justice Department’s investigation into Jerome Powell with 92% saying it appeared to be unjustified. “It is an outrageous stunt and will backfire on the White House,” one respondent said. “Let’s let the investigation play out as we don’t know if it is justified or not,” said another.
Have a nice day.
The Lake Wenatchee YMCA Camp in Chelan County, Washington, has been a source of lifetime memories forged in the outdoors for nearly a century. However, in January 2025, the Wenatchee Valley YMCA board of directors voted to sell the property at the end of that summer’s camp due to financial challenges. That all changed when real estate businessman Dean Weidner purchased the property and offered to lease it back to the YMCA for $10 per year for 99 years. Weidner’s gift will allow the camp to reopen in 2027 (after taking a summer off in 2026 to regroup) and continue serving generations of Washington youth. “It’s completely surreal. I haven’t been able to stop smiling,” Dorry Foster, CEO of the Wenatchee Valley YMCA, said. The Seattle Times has the story.
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