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Tanks in eastern Ukraine | Photo: Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, Flickr
Tanks in eastern Ukraine | Photo: Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, Flickr

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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Today’s read: 14 minutes.

💥
Russia carries out its largest aerial assault to date as Trump fumes at Putin. Plus, how are Trump's deportations different from Obama's?

The fluoride debate.

Over the last few months, a debate has reignited in America over fluoride in drinking water. For our latest video, the Tangle YouTube team decided to dive into the evidence: What are the upsides of fluoride? What are the risks? What would removing it actually do? Take eight minutes and learn everything you need to know:


Quick hits.

  1. President Donald Trump extended the deadline to negotiate a trade deal with the European Union to July 9. The president had previously said that he would increase tariffs on EU imports to 50% if a deal is not reached by June 1. (The extension)
  2. The Trump administration is reportedly canceling the federal government’s remaining contracts with Harvard University and will instruct federal agencies to “find alternative vendors” for future services. (The cancellation) Separately, President Trump said he is considering redirecting $3 billion of Harvard’s federal grants to U.S. trade schools. (The suggestion)
  3. President Trump announced he would pardon Scott Howard Jenkins, a former Virginia sheriff convicted in 2024 of accepting over $75,000 in bribes in exchange for appointing businessmen to auxiliary positions within his department. (The pardon)
  4. Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the country is open to compromises on its nuclear program but would not stop enriching its uranium stockpiles. The United States has previously insisted that Iran end all uranium enrichment as part of a nuclear deal. (The discussions)
  5. The Conference Board’s rating of U.S. consumer confidence recorded its largest monthly gain in four years, exceeding economists’ estimates. (The results)

Today’s topic.

The latest on Russia and Ukraine. Late Sunday night and into Monday morning, Russia launched its largest drone and missile attacks on Ukraine since the start of its full-scale invasion in 2022. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched over 350 explosive drones and at least nine cruise missiles in the attack, which followed a similar aerial assault one day earlier that killed at least 12 people. The string of attacks marks a setback as U.S. and European leaders attempt to broker a peace agreement between the sides. 

Hours before Monday morning’s attack, President Donald Trump sharply criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin in a post on Truth Social, writing, “I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers.” Trump also said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “is doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth causes problems.”

Russia’s government characterized the attacks as a response to Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory over the weekend. Russian spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also seemed to respond to Trump’s criticism of Putin, saying, “This is a very important moment which is connected to an emotional overload of everyone involved and emotional reactions.”

President Zelensky described the drone and missile attacks as “deliberate strikes on ordinary cities,” adding that “each such terrorist Russian strike is a sufficient reason for new sanctions against Russia… [the] silence of America, silence of others around the world only encourage[s] Putin.”

In recent weeks, President Trump has stepped up his efforts to broker a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, speaking with President Putin for roughly two hours on May 19 to discuss the conflict. Trump pushed the Russian president to accept a 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine had already accepted, but Putin refused — though he suggested he was open to resuming direct peace talks. 

Putin has also resisted calls to accept a ceasefire from European leaders, who previously threatened new sanctions on Russia if it did not reach a truce by May 12. On May 20, the European Union adopted sanctions against Russia that targeted energy revenues and imposed new trade restrictions. 

Despite their lack of progress toward a ceasefire, Russia and Ukraine recently held their first high-level talks since 2022, agreeing to a major exchange of 1,000 prisoners and signaling further discussions. The sides completed the first phase of the prisoner swap on Friday, exchanging 390 captives each, then completed two more swaps on Saturday and Sunday. 

Today, we’ll cover the latest developments in the conflict, with views from the right, left, and writers abroad. Then, my take.


What the right is saying.

  • The right is mixed on Trump’s handling of the war, with some suggesting that Biden’s policies put him in an impossible situation. 
  • Others say that Trump’s deference to Putin will only prolong the conflict. 

In American Greatness, Fred Fleitz wrote about “why it is so difficult for Trump to clean up Biden’s Ukraine mess.”

“Indeed, President Trump has not yet succeeded in ending this brutal war. Russian President Putin has indeed been difficult to deal with, has failed to abide by his commitments with Trump and his officials, and has escalated the war despite Trump’s peace efforts,” Fleitz said. “It is unfair to portray these potentially temporary outcomes as failures of Trump’s Ukraine policy, as they ignore that his peace efforts aim to address an enormous foreign policy crisis caused by his predecessor that may not be easily fixed or solved.”

“Biden emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine by ignoring the Russian leader’s fear of Ukraine moving closer to the West and joining NATO. Although Biden and his senior officials never explicitly called for Ukraine to join NATO, they dangled NATO membership before Ukrainian President Zelensky and repeatedly said this decision was up to Ukraine,” Fleitz wrote. “Biden and European leaders also pursued policies that caused the war to become a stalemate, which Ukraine will eventually lose… Trump finds the Ukraine war difficult to end because Biden’s foreign policy failures were so severe. This does not mean the war is unsolvable. But it may mean that the Ukraine mess Biden left for Trump will be far more difficult to clean up than anyone thought.”

In The New York Post, Rich Lowry argued “Trump is getting the Ukraine–Russia war all wrong — and he’s making it even harder on himself.”

“The man who instigated the war and who is the chief obstacle to peace is Vladimir Putin. Yet this enemy of the West, murderer of dissidents, and serial perpetrator of wars of territorial aggrandizement has never been subjected to the same US pressure campaign as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,” Lowry said. “One of Trump’s advantages on the world stage is that he can make use of the ‘madman theory,’ the idea that he’s so unpredictable and potentially extreme that it’s best not to displease him. Against type, Trump has been less the madman with Putin than the therapist.”

“So long as Putin believes that he’s winning and holds ‘all of the cards,’ there’s no reason for him to become more pliable. Trump and other administration officials have floated further economic measures against Russia, but these would probably be of limited utility,” Lowry wrote. “If Ukraine isn’t going to buckle and the United States isn’t going to abandon her, the Russians might reach a point of exhaustion. Short of that, Putin has every reason to think he can persevere when the world’s superpower is inclined to blame the victim of his unprovoked aggression.”


What the left is saying.

  • The left is critical of Trump’s handling of the war, with some questioning his refusal to punish Putin. 
  • Others say Putin is behaving the same as he always has, and Trump is the one who needs to change his posture. 

In The New York Times, David E. Sanger said “Trump condemns Putin’s killings in Ukraine, but doesn’t make him pay a price.”

“Mr. Trump’s rare criticism of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia came after a weekend of the largest bombardment of Ukrainian cities over the past three years, mostly aimed at civilian targets, from residential areas in Kyiv to university dormitories,” Sanger wrote. “But Mr. Trump has never linked the attacks with his own decision, reaffirmed last week, to refuse to join the Europeans in new financial sanctions on Russia, or to offer new arms and help to the Ukrainians. The result is a strategic void in which Mr. Trump complains about Russia’s continued killing but so far has been unwilling to make Mr. Putin pay even a modest price.

“The pattern is a familiar one… Mr. Trump signals he is pulling back from a conflict he often describes as Europe’s war, then expresses shock that Mr. Putin responds with a familiar list of demands that amount to a Ukrainian surrender, followed by accelerating attacks. Mr. Trump episodically insists he is ‘absolutely’ considering sanctions, including on Sunday,” Sanger said. “Missing from Mr. Trump’s zigzags is any explanation of why he has been unable to use his relationship with Mr. Putin to persuade him to halt the violence, even for a 30-day cease-fire.”

In CNN, Matthew Chance wrote “no, Trump. ‘Crazy’ Putin hasn’t changed. The question is, have you?”

“The Kremlin leader seems pretty much unchanged, despite the urgings of the White House, merely continuing his policy of grinding war in Ukraine, in which aerial assaults have become an all-too-regular feature. The real question is whether Trump has changed, or at least if his attitude toward Putin has started to shift amid what looks like an increasingly futile US effort to forge peace in Ukraine, something Trump bragged he could do – let’s not forget – in short order,” Chance said. “This is the sixth time this term that Trump, who consistently says he has a strong relationship with Putin, has publicly expressed impatience or downright annoyance with the Kremlin boss.”

“So far, there has been no real sign that Trump is prepared to use the substantial economic leverage at his disposal to force the Kremlin to rethink its hardline stance. Not so in the US Senate, where a cross-party bill has been introduced to make it more difficult for Russia to fund its war. The bill, now backed by 81 senators, not only proposes more direct sanctions on Russia, but also secondary sanctions, such as a massive 500% tariff on countries that buy Russian energy,” Chance wrote. “Trump could now throw his weight behind the bill, or perhaps a watered-down version of it. But that would be a huge change in direction, given his consistent reluctance to confront and punish the Kremlin so far.”


What writers abroad are saying.

  • Some writers abroad suggest the war will only end through military defeat for Russia. 
  • Others commend Trump for his push to end the war, but say diplomacy is an inadequate strategy at this juncture. 

In The Kyiv Independent, Andreas Umland wrote about “why Washington failed to end the Russo-Ukrainian War.”

“The Russian war economy and population's military mobilization are now so far advanced that they cannot be easily stopped. Moscow is not any longer able to abruptly discontinue warfighting,” Umland said. “What would happen to Russia's hundreds of thousands of enlisted soldiers, large-scale weapons production, and routine bellicose as well as intense Ukrainophobic campaigns in many spheres of Russian social life (education, media, culture etc.), if there is suddenly a permanent peace? These and similar signals from Moscow allow only one conclusion: To end the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russia needs to experience a humiliating defeat on the battlefield.”

“Russian imperialism will not be neutralized by negotiations, compromises, or concessions. Instead, such approaches only promote further foreign adventurism in Moscow and military escalation along Russia's borders,” Umland wrote. “The Kremlin will one day end Russia's expansionist wars as well as genocidal terror against civilians in Ukraine and elsewhere. Yet for that to happen, the Russian people first need to start believing that such behaviour cannot lead to victory, may trigger internal collapse, and will be resolutely punished.”

For The Atlantic Council, Peter Dickinson argued “Putin aims to destroy Ukraine and has zero interest in a compromise peace.”

“It is no surprise to see mounting unease in Western capitals over the US push to end the Russia-Ukraine War. Since Trump first initiated peace talks in February, Ukraine has agreed to an unconditional ceasefire and signaled its readiness to make major territorial concessions. In contrast, Russia has consistently rejected calls for a ceasefire while proposing new conditions of its own and creating various obstacles to any meaningful progress,” Dickinson said. “[Putin] continues to insist that any settlement must focus on eliminating what he refers to as the ‘root causes’ of the war. This is generally understood to mean Ukraine’s international neutrality and disarmament, along with the reestablishment of Russia’s former imperial dominance in every sphere of Ukrainian public life.”

“Putin is understandably happy to exploit the Trump administration’s enthusiasm for peace talks. This allows him to buy time, divide the West, and reduce the flow of weapons to Ukraine. But it is already abundantly clear that he has no real interest in ending his invasion,” Dickinson wrote. “Trump deserves considerable credit for seizing the initiative and attempting to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. At the same time, his current approach is obviously not working. The time has now come to stop seeking compromises with the Kremlin and start speaking to Putin in the language of strength.”


My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

  • Since taking office, Trump’s diplomatic effort has largely been a failure.
  • I’m glad Trump is calling Putin out for Russia’s violence, but dismayed that it took him so long.
  • Don’t lose the plot: This war is Putin’s fault.

Do you remember the Oval Office blowup between Trump and Zelensky?

I know it feels like a millennium ago (it’s really been less than three months), but the confrontation merits revisiting today. As we wrote at the time, the moment the entire meeting went up in flames came just after Vice President JD Vance said that President Biden “talked tough” on Putin for years before Putin invaded Ukraine, adding, “The path to peace is maybe engaging in diplomacy.” Candidly, the line was delivered in a rather smug tone that implied this path had never been tried before. 

At this, Zelensky could no longer bite his tongue. And I didn’t blame him. This is how he responded:

He [Putin] occupied various parts of Ukraine in 2014. During that time, it was President Obama, then President Trump, then President Biden, and now it’s President Trump and he will stop him [Putin]. But during 2014, nobody stopped him. He just occupied and took. He killed people. From 2014 till 2022, the situation was the same — people have been dying on the contact line and nobody stopped him. We had a lot of conversations with him, including a bilateral conversation. As a new president in 2019, I signed with him a ceasefire deal alongside Macron and Merkel. All of them told me that he will never go. We also signed a gas contract with him. But after all of that, he broke the ceasefire. He killed our people, and he didn’t exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners, but he didn’t do it. What kind of diplomacy, J.D., are you speaking about? What do you mean?

“I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that is going to stop your country from getting destroyed,” Vance responded, before the whole discussion went off the rails: Vance called Zelensky “disrespectful” for his response, criticized him for litigating the issue in front of the media, and everything devolved from there.

After nearly three months, Trump’s attempts at tough talk and diplomacy have achieved precisely nothing, and Zelensky’s entire point — that Vance could not describe what kind of diplomacy would stop Putin from murdering Ukrainians — has been vindicated. Putin hasn’t stopped. He has only gotten more aggressive

Trump’s response on Sunday — finally, briefly, and (hopefully not) fleetingly seeing Putin clearly — is as encouraging as it is frustrating.

As I’ve been loudly saying for over three years, we cannot lose sight of the most basic story of this war: Vladimir Putin believes a nation of 40 million free Ukrainians belongs to him, based on the delusion that Russia has a historical right to the entire country. Ukrainians are now dealing with the consequences of this belief. Europeans in surrounding nations fear that Putin’s delusions apply to them, too — so they have taken precautions. They have joined NATO, or beefed up their alliance with the United States, or generally tried to batten down the hatches at their borders. 

To be clear: These countries are acting defensively, as they were before this war. Construing their defensive posture as instigation, as Putin (and at times, Trump) has done with Ukraine is merely an empty excuse to launch a war, not a genuine retelling of history. Which, by the way, was always nonsensical. It’s a bit like me threatening to punch someone in the face, then getting upset when they put a helmet on, then saying I had to punch them in the face because they were putting on the helmet. 

That’s the basic plot; but we should also take into account the most recent events in this story, starting with Trump taking office. As Fred Fleitz noted under “What the right is saying,” this war did start under Biden, and Trump has only been in office for four months. Trump is trying to clean up a mess that Biden could not. However, Trump’s strategy to contain Putin has been as ineffective as Biden’s. In fact, the fighting in both the Russia–Ukraine and Israel–Gaza wars is more ferocious now than when Trump was inaugurated — despite his promises to quickly wind down each conflict.

A simple timeline of events shows that the escalation is probably not coincidental. In the first few weeks after taking office, Trump repeatedly framed Zelensky as the leader most uninterested in ending the war, describing him as a dictator forcing his people to conscript. Then came the infamous Oval Office blowup. Then the Trump administration invited Putin and Zelensky to Turkey for peace talks; Zelensky agreed and showed up, Putin said he’d come, didn’t, then kept bombing Ukraine. Then Trump bragged about his “excellent” two-hour phone call with Putin, and a few days later Putin launched the largest attack on Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion. At least Trump was able to get Ukraine to agree to the mineral-rights deal — but aside from that there has been little progress, and the deal clearly isn’t proving to be the deterrent I thought it could be.

So, when Trump says “I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,” my honest response is, “Where the hell have you been?” I’m relieved he seems to have finally realized that Putin wants to take all of Ukraine (maybe this will change Trump’s approach?), but I also wonder why it took this long for him to see it. Putin has not dramatically changed in recent days; he talked about taking Ukraine for years before the invasion; his troops have been bombing Ukrainians in major civilian centers and kidnapping their children since then; and before that Putin was disappearing dissidents, authorizing chemical weapons attacks, and annexing various other territories in the region. 

What matters now is whether Trump’s realization will last or impact his approach in any meaningful way. My theory of Trump is that he is often most compelled by the last argument he hears; if Putin keeps doing what he’s doing (which he will), and the people around Trump describe things as they are, that could provide a pathway towards peace without major Ukrainian concessions. That might lead Trump to wash his hands of the conflict and completely withdraw, but it could also allow Zelensky to draw the U.S. into an international coalition backing Ukraine and putting more pressure on Putin. 

I am hopeful about that possibility, but my predominant reaction is dismay — dismay for all the time we’ve wasted as a country bickering over who Putin really is, and all the time this administration burned on a false narrative about the two leaders in question, and how far we now need to go to find a lasting solution. 

Take the survey: When do you think Russia and Ukraine will come to terms on a peace deal? Let us know!

Disagree? That's okay. My opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.


Your questions, answered.

Q: So I came across a Snopes article the other day that stated as fact that 74% of those deported under President Obama were done so without due process.  How is that different from what is going on now?

— Rob from Appleton, WI 

Tangle: That’s basically true — President Obama did deport 3 million people from the United States, and the Snopes article does a very thorough job of breaking down data from the Department of Homeland Security to show that an average of 74% of those removed did not receive a hearing or trial.

However, deporting people without a trial is not the same as denying due process. That may seem a bit like hair-splitting, but the distinction is pretty important.

U.S. law allows for deportation without trial legally under certain circumstances: reinstatement of removal (for people who reentered the U.S. illegally after being previously deported), administrative removal (for noncitizens with felony convictions), and expedited removal (which Obama used to remove unauthorized migrants detained within 100 miles of the border who were present in the U.S. for less than 14 days, but which Trump is using for any unauthorized migrant in the country for less than two years). Obama used all three of those tools heavily.

President Trump, however, is attempting a new mechanism. He has claimed that some foreign gangs represent an invading force that justifies the removal of their alleged members under the Alien Enemies Act. When he ordered the removal of alleged gang members to a prison in El Salvador, the removed prisoners weren’t technically deported — they were accused of being part of a criminal organization and then jailed without a trial to determine their guilt.

Put differently, they were denied their due process. They were not deported under legal mechanisms, they were imprisoned abroad for crimes they were not found guilty of in court.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.


Under the radar.

Through the first three months of 2025, 2.2 million Americans who missed payments on their student loans have had their credit scores drop more than 100 points, about the same amount as the penalty for a personal bankruptcy filing. At the same time, rejection rates for auto loans, credit cards, and mortgage refinancing all increased in February compared to the year prior. The rise in missed payments follows the expiration of the Biden administration’s pause on repayments at the end of September, and this month, the Trump administration has started to collect on defaulted student loans. “This is the beginning of something big,” Dominik Mjartan, CEO of American Pride Bank, said. “There’s a very high cost to having a low credit score in America. Your cost of living goes up — your cellphone bill, your utilities, your insurance payments, everything. And that trickles down through the economy.” The Washington Post has the story.


Numbers.

  • 20%. The approximate percentage of Ukraine occupied by Russia as of May 2025, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. 
  • 4,168. The amount, in square kilometers, of Ukrainian territory gained by Russia in 2024.
  • +23%. The percent change in civilian casualties in Ukraine from March to April, according to the United Nations.
  • 13,134. The approximate number of civilians killed in Ukraine since February 2022. 
  • 1.22–3.58 million. The estimated decrease in the number of Russian military-aged males (ages 20–44) in 2035 compared to 2025, according to the U.N. Population Division. 
  • 250,000. The average number of new artillery shells produced by Russia per month in 2024.
  • 83,000 and 30,000. The average number of new artillery shells produced by European Union member countries and the United States per month, respectively, in 2024.
  • 67% and 23%.  The percentage of Democrats and Republicans, respectively, who say the United States has a responsibility to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s invasion, according to a March 2025 Pew Research survey. 

The extras.


Have a nice day.

Parkinson's Disease is the second-most common neurodegenerative disorder in the world, affecting coordination, balance and speech, and it currently does not have a cure. However, a nonprofit called UpENDing Parkinson’s employs an unconventional form of therapy: rock climbing. "[Parkinson’s] makes you feel very small. You make small movements, you're hunched over. And [rock climbing] makes you feel like you can accomplish the world," Jon Lessin, a former doctor with Parkinson’s who originally proposed the idea, said. The therapy has provided positive results, helping climbers maintain their fine motor skills for longer. CBS News has the story.


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