The mission of Tangle is to be a big-tent media organization — and one way we do that is by exposing people to a wide range of opinions.
In each edition, someone on our staff also writes “My take” as a way to share our own perspective on the day’s topic. Last year, our process began to evolve when I had my first child in January and spent a portion of the start of the year on paternity leave. Throughout 2025, we continued featuring more takes from other writers on the team, and we debuted our “staff dissent” section.
I never intend to be the authoritative, final voice on any issue — though of course I feel more strongly on some topics than others. Rather, I think of it as an act of transparency for me (or a staff member) to share their own views, and as an opportunity to try to offer unique and fresh perspectives that may not exist elsewhere.
One of the things I loathe most about the media generally — and one of the reasons I created Tangle — is that outlets too often let their pundits fire off hot takes with zero accountability. This lack of accountability extends beyond media spaces and pervades society, from the halls of Congress to the executive offices of our biggest corporations.
So, in my ongoing attempt to live my values, I started a tradition of dedicating the first Friday edition of every new year to grading some of my previous writing. Here’s our process: A couple of months ago, my team and I started looking through our archives to flag instances where we took a strong position on a defining story in the past year. I also sorted through reader criticisms, feedback, and suggestions about articles to revisit.
Of course, if you spend a year analyzing hundreds of issues, you are bound to get a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong. Yet, to my delight, this year was our best year yet in terms of our overall “grades.” I think the growth of our team has genuinely made us more reliable and measured — and it’s fun to see the results.
Below, we’ll share key excerpts from our writing, a brief “reflection,” and then a grade on the A-to-F scale (that the writer of the take and editors have agreed on). We’ve had the writer reflect on their own work, and then came up with final grades as a team.
Since we couldn’t fit all the editions we thought we should review in one newsletter, we’ll be releasing a Part 2 later today at 1:00 PM ET, so keep an eye out for it in your inbox.
You can find our previous annual reviews of our work here: 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 Part 1 and Part 2.
With that, let’s jump in.
Executive Editor Isaac Saul: In January, we covered Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing with a skeptical tone about his readiness for the job. In March, we revisited that take after Hegseth shared war plans in a Signal group chat that included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. Here is what I wrote after his confirmation:
As I’ve said in the past, we — as Americans — have been remarkably safe in the post-9/11 era from foreign threats, and we are totally unaware of how good we have it here in the U.S. Our soldiers are in about as little danger as they’ve ever been in my lifetime, we’re pulling back from many major conflicts, and the vast majority of the issues facing our Department of Defense involve wasteful spending, inventory issues, shaky leadership, and the fact we are falling behind on advanced military technology. I don’t see any reason to believe Hegseth — who as a leader of several smaller, less complicated organizations has been followed by allegations of poor leadership, disorganization, sexual misconduct, poor financial management, and drunkenness — is the right person to solve these issues.
And after the Signal controversy:
The most disappointing part about the entire episode is that there has been no accountability. This administration has made meritocracy a central point of its entire ethos. President Trump repeatedly and rightly criticized President Biden on the campaign trail for not firing anyone for major mistakes in his administration, like the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal… Hegseth, whose mantle of meritocracy was always something I was skeptical of, has completely dodged any ownership of how bad this looks. Will the administration pay for this, politically? It seems unlikely. If you watch a few minutes of Fox News’s coverage of the story, you get the sense that much of Trump’s base won’t have to grapple with the seriousness of what happened.
Reflection: I feel pretty good about this one. Hegseth’s first year has been marred by controversies, constant leadership shake-ups in the military, resignations, and fresh military engagements. It’s been rocky in many of the ways I expected it to be, and we now have a more aggressive military with soldiers more in danger than we did a few months ago.
Yet, I give him credit on three counts: 1) He made some waste-cutting reforms; though small in the grand scheme, they amounted to more than $5 billion of cuts to contracts, grants, etc. 2) I genuinely did not expect him to last through 2025, but I never made that prediction publicly. And 3) We’ve had two high-profile military engagements (Iran and Venezuela) that were tactical successes, which is really his job (I will note, on Venezuela, that Hegseth spoke passionately just a few weeks ago about the end of regime change and feckless nation building).
Still, my point has always been that Hegseth was the wrong person to address the biggest problems the military has: Wasteful spending, inventory issues, and shaky leadership; and he risked putting our relatively safe soldiers into more danger. The Pentagon just failed its eighth straight audit, and it’s not clear to me what Hegseth plans to do about it. At the same time, we’re now witnessing a military buildup around Venezuela, we just had two National Guard soldiers killed in Syria, and we seem poised for more military entanglements in the Western Hemisphere.
Grade: B-
Executive Editor Isaac Saul: In January, we covered the ceasefire deal negotiated between Israel and Hamas. The agreement was designed to end the war through a three-phase process that included the return of hostages, disarming of Hamas, a total removal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and a Gaza reconstruction plan. Here is an excerpt of “My take” from that piece:
I wish I could tell you this war is over, but I can’t; the hard part doesn’t start until the first stage is completed. Negotiations for phase two will begin on the 16th day of phase one, and will require Hamas to coordinate the release of all its remaining living hostages and Israel to commit to a lasting peace and total withdrawal from Gaza. We are a long way out from a more secure future — this agreement in many ways is a baby step. Sadly, even that small step is off to an inauspicious start.
In October, months after that peace plan had fallen apart, we covered another Israel–-Hamas peace plan — this one, Hamas and Israel both eventually agreed to. I wrote in support of the fundamentals of the 20-point plan, and then said this:
To be here, now, almost feels unbelievable. I am swimming in skepticism; we had a multi-phase deal earlier this year that never came to fruition, and Israel was still striking locations in Gaza over the weekend. I’m just waiting for the news that some agreed-upon condition has been violated, that some bad actor dynamites this agreement, that some part of the progress was misreported. But, I’m tentatively hopeful that we may finally have a light at the end of the tunnel.
Reflection: Hope springs eternal, and can also die quietly. I try to maintain my optimism, but it’s hard to. Both sides have leveled credible accusations about the other side violating the ceasefire, but Israel’s violations have been — plainly — more egregious and violent. One single day of strikes in late October killed over 100 civilians and militants after Israel said Hamas killed an Israeli soldier near the Rafah border. For context, about 151 Israeli soldiers died in all of 2025 — and around half of those died of accidents, various diseases or suicide (i.e. not in combat). In other words, Israel killed more people in Gaza in a single day after the ceasefire than Israeli soldiers died in combat in all of 2025.
At the same time, terrorist attacks in Israel have begun anew while, with all eyes on the tenuous “ceasefire” in Gaza, Israeli extremists are continuing to escalate land grabs in the West Bank, squeezing Palestinians into smaller and smaller enclaves across the region. It’s all so ugly, so desperate, so horrifying, that most of the world has simply moved on (Tangle has not covered the war since the October peace plan was announced, in large part due to how the story has faded into the background amid other major international events).
As it stands today, Hamas has now returned all but one of the hostages (alive or their remains). This was always a key focus of ending the war, and a critical demand from the Israeli government and Israeli citizens — something I’ve supported in Tangle. Yet the strikes, clashing, and violence continues. Israel has not left the strip; it still controls 53% of Gaza, per the first phase of the ceasefire deal. Soldiers still roam the streets, drones still infiltrate every part of Gazan life, and the so-called “yellow line” that demarcates military zones has been expanding.
In short: For all intents and purposes, there is no ceasefire in Gaza. My skepticism in January was warranted, as it was again in October, and I’m despondent enough now that I can hardly fathom a realistic-sounding solution.
Grade: B+
Managing Editor Ari Weitzman: During the final days of his presidency, former President Joe Biden issued several executive orders on major domestic and international issues. Additionally, he commuted the sentences of nearly 2,500 criminal defendants — a single-day record — and granted sweeping pardons to members of his family and other political figures. I focused my take on the Biden pardons, writing:
Joe Biden probably did not treasonously collude with China or Ukraine to enrich his family through his son Hunter, Dr. Fauci probably didn’t commit crimes in recommending strict federal vaccination policies or covering up the origins of Covid-19, and General Milley probably did not treasonously collude with Chinese officials. That’s a far cry from saying any of those parties is above reproach, it’s just to say that if there had been federal trials, I would bet money on all of them being exonerated.
Even ceding all of that, these pardons are still a terrible last move for Biden’s administration. Not just because they close off a major pathway to determining whether wrongdoing occurred, but because they escalated the use of a new major weapon in the partisan arms race: blanket pardons, for everyone I know, for as far back as I can justify.
Reflection: When I look back at Biden’s final days in office, I think of the outgoing president — shrouded in defeat and swirling questions about his mental fitness — exiting the public sphere amid a flurry of clemency actions and presidential pardons. Focusing my take on the pardons was, I think, the right call; hindsight shows that those actions were by far the most significant of Biden’s final days.
On the outgoing executive orders, I was right to say they were for display purposes only and correct that they would be immediately undone by President Donald Trump. As for the blanket pardons, I also believe that decrying the terrible precedent they set was a strong take. I ended by arguing that presidents shouldn’t even have the power to issue broad, preemptive pardons like these. I stand by all of that.
However, I notice a logical inconsistency on re-read: I say Biden is not to blame for the bad precedents of his predecessors, then I say he’s partially to blame if Trump uses the blanket-pardon precedent after he leaves office. Both can’t be true. If I were to write this take again, I’d still criticize Biden for expanding presidential clemency powers; but I’d give him a lot more slack for the standards that slipped before he entered office — and for playing defense against the anticipated actions of his predecessor (and successor).
Grade: B+
Senior Editor Will Kaback: When the White House announced new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, it marked the beginning of a tariff saga that would continue through the year (and continues today). Separate from the “Liberation Day” tariffs that came a few months later, these duties were described as a way to increase pressure on the three countries to address their alleged roles in allowing unauthorized migrants and illegal drugs to enter the United States.
At the time, I wrote that tariffs were one of the few issues on which President Trump has never wavered as both a politician and private citizen (going back decades). I also noted that Trump’s tariffs on China in his first term failed to produce the desired results, and covered the tariffs with general skepticism:
With Mexico, we appear headed for a best-case scenario: better enforcement on their side of the border, leading to declines in drug trafficking and migration before either country feels an enormous economic impact. A similar agreement may be possible with Canada, but Trump’s goals for the tariffs are harder to determine. The White House claims that fentanyl production is rising in Canada, but CBP data from the past three fiscal years shows that the amount of fentanyl captured coming from Canada makes up less than 1% of all fentanyl seized nationwide.
Reflection: I think my assessment has largely proven accurate; but given all the delays and reversals, the tariffs’ broader impact is still hard to determine. Trump announced these duties on February 1, but the Canada and Mexico tariffs were delayed until March (then adjusted repeatedly), while the China tariffs were implemented immediately but have since been modified twice. Even for someone who follows the news as their job, keeping track of which tariffs are in effect, which are just threats, and which have been withdrawn has been like playing Three-Card Monte.
I can make a few judgments, though. In retrospect, the commitments that Canada and Mexico made in response to tariffs were little more than symbolic. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sent 10,000 troops to the border, but according to a Washington Post report, they seized a small amount of fentanyl compared to their U.S. counterparts. Canada appointed a “fentanyl czar” as part of a revamped border security program, but (as I noted) Canada is responsible for a small fraction of the fentanyl trafficked into the U.S.
At the same time, I wrote, “I suspect Trump is primarily using the tariffs as a tool to address America’s trade deficit[s],” which has aged well. It wasn’t long before the president dropped the pretense of illegal immigration and drug trafficking and started talking about tariffs only with regard to trade imbalances. Above all, I was right to say that this tariff agenda risked lasting damage to our relationships with allies — just think how different our relationship with Canada and the European Union is compared to this time one year ago. We’ll talk more about the impact of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs later on, but for this initial set at the start of 2025, I think I was on target in predicting where we were headed.
Grade: B
Managing Editor Ari Weitzman: Following a week of upheaval at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he had taken over as acting administrator of the agency and told lawmakers that he intended to work with Congress to reorganize it. USAID would officially shut down and merge its remaining operations with the State Department on July 1. In my take, I struck an ambivalent posture about the initial moves:
I agree with a lot of the communications that have been coming out of the federal government, especially from Rubio. If the United States government is going to be in the philanthropy business, it should be directing its funds strategically… However, I disagree with a lot of the government’s communications, too — especially from Musk. “Let’s realign this organization to follow the national interest” is completely different from “let’s shut this whole thing down,” and dangling USAID off the sharp edge of a precipice has real consequences… There are plenty of good reasons to want to shake up USAID, but citizens and non-citizens alike shouldn’t be left trying to give our best guess on what those reasons are — and “government by rug pull” isn’t a great strategy for the most powerful person on the planet.
Reflection: I was broadly critical of the administration putting the entirety of USAID’s budget in its crosshairs — for that, I’m saved a failing grade. But I’m left grimacing as I re-read this take, for several reasons.
First of all, I said at the time that it was too early to judge whether USAID would be removed entirely. Sure, caution and prudence make sense, but all the signs were there, and I should have seen that the program was doomed. Second, and more importantly, I was too blasé about USAID’s global importance and the risk of the program getting slashed. USAID provided good value for everyone involved. It was a small part of the federal budget, allowed us to exercise soft power through humanitarian diplomacy, and gave us good standing and relationships to counter the geopolitical interests of Russia and China. And, of course, it saved lives.
Sure, the agency’s functions aren’t exactly extinct — they’re under the auspices of the State Department — but those programs are significantly hampered and the agency is in the past. The bottom line is this: I spent too little time promoting the benefits of this program and too much time considering how a potential reorganization could be in our nation’s interests. I highly value international cooperation; I would never have gathered that about myself just through reading this take.
Grade: D
Executive Editor Isaac Saul: In February, we covered Elon Musk’s demand that federal employees respond to an email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) detailing their work in the past week. Here is an excerpt from what I wrote about the new rule:
No self-respecting person would take an email (preceded by an explicit threat of losing their job) demanding they list five things they did in the last week as a fair way to be treated. Every single person reading this would be somewhere between annoyed and enraged — and rightfully so. Imagine your reaction to getting this on a Saturday night, with a 48-hour deadline to answer, and at the behest of a person you’d never met, don’t work for, and who was gleefully mocking you on social media while issuing it. Of course, nothing illustrates the self-defeating and inefficient nature of this directive more than Trump’s own agency heads instructing their employees to ignore the email.
Reflection: Along with criticizing this as cruel and silly, I also pointed out that it was a pretty pointless exercise and made little sense for agencies to fire people for not responding to an email from someone who isn’t their superior. I questioned not only the efficacy of Musk’s tactic, but the usefulness of the exercise at all. Not because federal workers are all infallible, efficient employees, but because emailing two million people asking them what they did that week, pretending you are going through the responses and make employment decisions off of them, is just plain dumb.
I think all of that aged pretty well. Most agencies ignored the email entirely, telling their employees they didn’t have to reply to it. Some tried to enforce the rule, not by asking them to reply to OPM but by instructing them to reply to their frontline supervisors. While Trump touted the email as “brilliant” and Musk expressed frustration that it wasn’t being done, everyone else just moved on. Quietly, in August, OPM ended the requirement to send the email, adding that “we believe that managers are accountable to staying informed about what their team members are working on and have many other existing tools to do so.” Which, well… yeah!
Grade: A
Executive Editor Isaac Saul: In February, we broke down the appointments of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino to lead the FBI. Like the appointments of Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., these drew some of my most critical feedback of the administration yet. Here’s an excerpt:
Patel, at least, has some relevant experience, but I’m still not thrilled about him leading the bureau. He has openly promised retribution against Trump’s political enemies, he’s made his career a loyalty show to Trump, he’s said the figure at the center of the QAnon cult should "get credit for all the things he has accomplished," he hawks dietary supplements to “reverse the vaxx n get healthy,” and he claims he’s going to crack down on leakers and prosecute journalists. He also still will not admit that Joe Biden won the 2020 election…
Bongino leading these agents is just hard to fathom. He’s so radical (again, just read a few sample quotes above) and so power hungry that I struggle to imagine what he’ll try to do with so much control. My only hope is that there are still enough ethical and law-abiding agents and lawyers among the FBI’s roughly 38,000 employees to check Patel’s and Bongino’s worst desires. But I can’t say I’m enthusiastic about the odds.
Reflection: I wouldn’t say I’m surprised by how either of their tenures has gone. Bongino is already out — and seems genuinely thrilled to be back to podcasting. As a senior FBI official, Bongino conceded that he now had to follow the facts and be careful about what he said (imagine that). Given that he’s back in the podcast chair, I presume he’ll pick up where he left off, indulging in all manner of conspiratorial thinking and speculation.
Patel, for his part, seems to be on thin ice, even with some of Trump’s most ardent supporters. Not just for controversies about galavanting on taxpayer money with his girlfriend, but more because he’s like the dog that caught the car. He and Bongino both had to spend much of their first year trying to convince their biggest fans that many of the conspiracies they pushed (like the Epstein files) didn’t actually have much “there” there, so much so that their followers began wondering if they themselves had been compromised. For me, watching Bongino and Patel squirm as they had to switch from talking heads to FBI officials was genuinely cathartic, and the brief period of time where they stayed more attached to reality was appreciated.
In this piece, I predicted that Bongino and Patel would be disasters. While reviewing that claim, I realized that I don’t have a great metric for objectively grading the performance of the FBI or FBI officials. But a few things come to mind:
- On two separate occasions, Patel announced the arrest of a high-profile subject only to then have to backtrack and say they had the wrong person.
- The agency disbanded a key public corruption squad in its Washington office and upended how it prosecutes white-collar crime (and not in a good way).
- Despite promising unprecedented transparency, Patel has made a habit of confrontationally dodging questions in public.
- The FBI scaled back staffing and work on domestic terrorism.
- Patel has followed through on his promise to act as a personal police force for the president, and even fired an FBI agent for not perp-walking him.
The good news, I suppose, is that the FBI has not been so derelict under Patel for an unprecedented wave of preventable crime or domestic terrorism to break out. But the embarrassments and hiccups after just one year are notable. I’m genuinely not sure what I’d write differently if I re-wrote this take today.
Grade: A+
Executive Editor Isaac Saul: On February 28, Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met at the White House to conduct final negotiations over a mineral-rights deal. Toward the end of the meeting, Vance and Zelensky clashed over how the administration might navigate Russian President Vladimir Putin. After the meeting, Zelensky left the White House without signing the minerals agreement.
My take was most a play-by-play analysis of how the meeting went wrong, and I concluded by apportioning blame all around:
