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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As part of the Tangle ethos, we solicit reader questions about politics and our work every day in our newsletter.
And every few months, so many questions pile up on the back end that we decide to answer a bunch of them at once in a members-only reader mailbag. Today is one of those days. We think this is a healthy exercise that not only allows us to critically examine some of our own writing, but also provides readers with more perspectives that help us fulfill our core mission.
If you want to read more about what we’re building here, two weeks ago we wrote about the whole point of Tangle.
As always, we want to thank those of you who write in with thoughtful questions or raise challenging criticisms that help us improve. We hope you enjoy today’s mailbag!
Q: My personal favorite Tangle piece you've ever done is "Seeing Ghosts," which I actually re-read last night to lower the temperature for myself. But how do we know when the ghosts are real? I get how tired and overblown the Hitler comparisons are, but there is plenty of room for innovation on human and civil rights violations. What would a political candidate that could undermine American democracy or its protection of citizens to bring America its own Tiananmen Square, or Holocaust, or some other, fresh horror, look like? Would there be warning signs? And how would they be different from the warning signs Trump is currently showing us?
— Jacob from Boston, MA
Isaac Saul, Executive Editor: First of all, thanks for highlighting that piece. It’s one of my favorites I’ve ever written, and one I’m thinking about expanding on down the road.
Second, let me give you one example of why I might chuckle at relating the Holocaust or Tiananmen Square to Donald Trump. As I was thinking about this question, I got a push notification from The Wall Street Journal that a well-respected federal judge had just ordered Trump to reinstate thousands of fired workers. The lawsuit was brought by a group representing tens of thousands of federal employees across six agencies fired by the DOGE crew and Russell Vought. They sued, and they won.
I don’t know what will happen next. Maybe Trump will challenge this ruling up to the Supreme Court. Maybe he will comply and let it be. I suspect the former. But to explain my point in a quippy way: Some people are worried about Trump becoming the next Hitler when he can’t even fire federal workers. I really don’t mean to be glib, but this is genuinely what I think when I see this stuff.
The truth is I just have a lot of trust in our systems — in our courts, our people, and, yes, even our Congress (to the degree they are good at jamming each other up). One of my most conservative or conservative-coded views (I increasingly struggle to know what is conservative or liberal anymore) is a general reverence for our founding fathers and a continued wonder at how much their theories of government have continued to apply to our modern era in a way that preserves democracy. Thankfully, I think the worst instincts of Trump, the people in his orbit, and past presidents like him are all checked pretty well by the system we have. It’s truly remarkable.
At the same time, it’s not impossible to conceive of things becoming increasingly more dangerous. Genuine danger signs for me would include these five things:
1) The DOJ or FBI actually attempting to prosecute or imprison Joe Biden or prominent Democratic leaders, especially those potentially running for office in 2028, presuming the charges aren’t accompanied by material evidence (for instance, Democrats like Bob Menendez and Eric Adams deserved to be charged). Trump’s supporters would of course suggest this already happened to Trump, but my view is that Trump at least deserved to be charged for election interference and the theft of classified documents, given just the publicly available information (though I would have reserved judgment on his guilt until the cases were complete).
2) Using the military, especially with excessive force, against peaceful protesters. I do not mean clearing out a single small protest in Washington, D.C., but actually deploying soldiers against demonstrators who were assembling peacefully against some action he took in office.
3) The eroding or ending of free and fair elections. I’m fairly certain Democrats will win back the House in 2026, and I think they have a good shot at the White House in 2028. If we’ve learned anything these last 20 years, it's that Americans love change, and I don’t see the MAGA movement maintaining its force after Trump leaves office. But if Republicans meaningfully erode or end free elections through legislation in the next two years — or begin to seriously entertain the prospect of Trump 2028 — we’ll call it out early and often. I don’t just mean gerrymandering, which is a bipartisan crisis, or voter ID laws, which I support — I mean an actual electoral restructuring that prohibits Democrats or Democratic groups from being able to participate in elections.
4) Democrats folding. By folding, I mean complete submission to Trump and MAGA. A defining characteristic of authoritarian regimes is their utter lack of any meaningful opposition. For instance, countries like North Korea or Russia have no real opposition party. Every election is a sham. In countries like Hungary, opposition exists, but it has been totally defanged and severely weakened. The United States still has a genuine and capable opposition to Trump — and Republicans represented a genuine and capable opposition to Biden. I don’t love the duopoly, but that makes me much less nervous about any kind of authoritarian takeover.
5) Genuinely restricting or chilling speech. Good examples might be banning newsrooms from reporting on the White House because they don’t use the White House’s preferred language, powerful figures in the administration threatening newsrooms with jail, or the arrest and deportation of legal permanent U.S. residents for speech. In case you are not catching my drift… yes, this one is actually already happening. And as I’ve said, I think it’s one of the most disturbing developments yet.
Q: You’ve said before that Trump won with the majority of votes (not true, it was a plurality), that he has a positive approval rating (not true, it’s under 50%), and that he has a mandate on crime and immigration. How can he possibly have a mandate if he was barely elected?
— Tori from Los Gatos, CA
Ari Weitzman, Managing Editor: Let’s take each of these in order.
You’re right, Trump did not win a majority of votes, he won a plurality. We got this wrong in January and can only blame it on conflating “winning the popular vote” with “winning a majority of votes.” That was just sloppy on our part.
As for the approval rating, it’s actually a misconception that a positive approval rating is the same as having over 50% approval. Instead, a positive approval rating is one where more people approve than disapprove (disregarding those who are unsure or have no opinion). Still, depending on when you’re looking at Trump’s approval rating and who was doing the polling, our claim was arguably wrong. We put a good deal of trust in the polling from Pew Research Center, and in their first approval rating poll of Trump’s current term in February, the president was indeed underwater at a net -4. We also put a lot of trust in Gallup, and they’ve also yet to show Trump with a positive approval rating so far in his term. However, RealClearPolitics — whom we should probably trust the most, based on their success in the 2024 election — had Trump polling at over 50% approval until February.
I want to briefly pause here to address these first two fact checks. It’s fair to ask us to be careful and accurate, and we never want to put a word wrong in anything we publish. This isn’t to make excuses, and it isn’t to minimize the pushback, but I do want to say that the thrust of the claims we’ve been making about Trump’s popularity is still true: A great deal of people liked what Trump sold them in the campaign, and they now believe he’s delivering on what he was selling.
As for the “mandate” question, I don’t think there’s a more subjective statement you can make in electoral politics. However, we haven’t said that President Trump was given a blanket mandate in a sweeping election (but it’s not like he was “barely elected,” either — winning the popular vote and running the table in swing states is a pretty decisive victory). We’ve only ever made specific and qualified claims in two areas. 1) That if he has a mandate on anything, it’s immigration. 2) That his efforts to fire federal workers and inspectors general could be seen as part of a mandate to reorganize the federal government.
Q: I am struggling with how to be 'brave' enough to have a conversation with someone who has a different opinion or reality from mine. I am referring to a person whose conversational style is to be loudly and verbally dominant with no intention of listening to the thoughts of a conversational partner who thinks differently. President Trump's interaction with Zelensky when Zelensky couldn't get a word in edgewise during the recent 'negotiation' is an example. Do you have any suggestions that would help to turn the conversation around so it could end without damaging a relationship?
— Mary from Vermont
Ari Weitzman, Managing Editor: I appreciate the courage it takes to ask this question! And I also appreciate that sticking up for your own point of view is much harder than it sounds, especially when you have to consider maintaining a healthy relationship with the person you’re arguing with (or, as the case may be, who is arguing with you). For myself, I’ve found these strategies to be really helpful when talking with someone who is bellicose:
1) Ask questions. More than anything else, when you’re conversing with someone who likes to do the talking, prodding them with genuine curiosity can help you get your disagreements across quickly and tactfully. These can range from the benign (Why do you think that?) to the borderline confrontational (Wouldn’t that contradict your earlier point?).
2) Don’t do it all at once. One of the most helpful pieces of advice I ever received was to be okay leaving a discussion on uncertainty, or on the promise to think more about something and come back to it later. If you start planting seeds of doubt in another person’s mind and get them to think, not only will they come back to you with a more considered viewpoint, but they’ll learn that you’re a person who makes them think! As long as you can do that without being obnoxious, people will tend to like talking with you. But be forewarned: You have to be willing to do the same. Conversation is a two-way street. Even if this person has been sending all the traffic your way, if you’re going to end a conversation by asking them to really consider a different point of view, you’ve got to be willing to do the same.
3) Ask yourself if it’s worth it. Sadly, some people are going to require more time and patience to connect with than it’s worth, and it may be the right strategy to placate them and accept surface-level interactions with them for the foreseeable future. Ten years ago, I was moving to another state and had to sell my car somewhat quickly. I met someone at a party who had a friend who was looking to buy, and I was all too happy to meet him at a notary to receive the money and sign the title over. I was less happy when I had to sit in my former car for twenty minutes while he drove me home. The whole way, he was explaining to me how the bluish tint in some headlights was caused by those cars moving more quickly towards us and compacting the amplitude on the headlights’ wavelengths to make them appear blue. I tried to push back, but he told me that he read it in a book and asked, “Are you calling the science wrong?” It was 15 more minutes to my apartment. For those 15 minutes, I just let him wrongly explain blueshifts and the Doppler effect — he was only robbing himself of understanding.
4) Ask yourself if it’s possible. If the person you’re speaking to is always emotionally charged, then you might not be able to get through to them. You could try changing the subject or setting boundaries on what you’re willing to discuss, but a lot of people (sadly) aren’t interested in hearing other opinions. As a friend of mine once wisely told me, “You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.”
Q: Have a question that has been swirling around in my mind for a bit, but curious, with the 5-year anniversary of the start of the COVID lockdowns in the US next week, whether there has been any sort of post-mortem or overarching nation-wide review of what the best practices were for the COVID response? With each of the 50 States having been more or less free to determine when they shut down, for how long they shut down, how they shut down, and responsible for their own response tactics, it seems like we have a bit of a natural experiment on our hands as to what method(s) were best. Did an early shut down, but early opening work best? Did Florida's "open for business" policy lead to being further ahead economically now relative to other states? Were "blue" states or "red" states better off? There is always a threat of another pandemic around the corner and it feels pertinent to have some lessons learned ready for future generations.
—Tyler from Lexington, KY
Will Kaback, Senior Editor: Several studies have examined the best and worst practices from the U.S. Covid-19 response. Most have found that social distancing and lockdowns were effective measures to reduce the spread of Covid in non-healthcare, community-based settings. Other papers found that handwashing, mask-wearing, physical distancing, and limiting gatherings were associated with reductions in the incidence of Covid.
However, one 2024 paper, which assessed 94 scientific reviews of public health and social measures during the pandemic, found “low- to very low-certainty” evidence that handwashing, mask-wearing, physical distancing, and school and business closures were effective (though they did not claim that these measures were ineffective either).
Additionally, we’re continuing to learn about the social and emotional effects of pandemic response measures. In particular, school closures had serious negative impacts on children’s learning and socialization; it may be many more years before we grasp the full significance of these setbacks, but the data we already have is alarming.
Covid health outcomes had some links to politics. A 2023 study in The Lancet found, “The political affiliation of the state governor was not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 infection or COVID-19 death rates, but worse COVID-19 outcomes were associated with the proportion of a state's voters who voted for the 2020 Republican presidential candidate.” The paper’s authors suggest that lower vaccination rates among Republican voters were primarily responsible for this disparity.
Separately, the Council on Foreign Relations published a thorough review of state-level responses to the pandemic, ranking each state (and Washington, D.C.) on their Covid response based on health outcomes, economic and educational outcomes, and a weighted combination of the two. Overall, New Hampshire, Washington, Maine, Hawaii, and Vermont scored the highest in this assessment, while New Mexico, Nevada, Washington, D.C., Wyoming, and Alaska scored the lowest. Notably, the states that kept deaths and infections the lowest were roughly split between states with Democratic governors (six) and Republican governors (four). We recommend reading the piece in full to get a full sense of the methodology and results, but the key takeaway was that the best-performing states did not have to sacrifice health outcomes for economic or educational ones, and vice versa.
Q: Much of the start of his new administration feels well planned and thought out. Isn't much of what Trump has done so far right in line with Project 2025? If not the people behind Project 2025, who are the planners and thinkers that have gotten this administration off to such a fast start? Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
— John from Rockville, MD
Isaac Saul, Executive Editor: Since the Trump administration got moving, a lot of Tangle readers on the left have been writing to me about our explainer on Project 2025 from before the election.
In that piece, I made a few key arguments: 1) Project 2025 was an expansive plan for taking over the government, and it represented a lot of fringe conservative views. 2) On net, given how radical some of the proposals were, I did not support the document as a whole — though I pointed out some ideas that I liked. 3) I expected Trump to adopt some of the policies, leave others behind, and try (but fail) to adopt others.
Since Trump has come into office, those Tangle readers have been suggesting that I was wrong about Project 2025 — that it was the plan, is the plan, and we are seeing Trump adopt it wholesale. To be sure, they have some pretty good arguments. For one, Trump immediately made Russell Vought, a Project 2025 author, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, which administers the federal budget and coordinates policy initiatives across executive agencies. Also, conservative commentators like Matt Walsh and Steve Bannon immediately joked after Trump won that, yes, Project 2025 really is the goal.
But going back and reading our writing, I actually think our coverage of Project 2025 has aged really well. Trump is also doing exactly what I said he would: He’s taking some ideas, abandoning others, and failing to incorporate some.
For instance, one of the biggest areas of concern we highlighted in our piece was attacking the federal civil service. Indeed, Trump and DOGE have gone after the federal workforce with mass layoffs. Trump did not enter office with a plan to bypass Biden-era regulations that made it harder to implement Schedule F, which would strip civil servants of protections from being fired, but they’re now gearing up for that fight. Trump is trying to wind down the Education Department, but he’s already delayed signing one planned executive order over fear of backlash.
At the same time, Project 2025 advanced plenty of policy prescriptions that Trump hasn’t even attempted. Most notably, he has not adopted any of the platform’s recommendations on abortion; in fact, he has continued to push for the expansion of IVF and has tried to pull Republicans towards the center on the issue. He has not invoked the Insurrection Act (though there is reporting the administration is still mulling it over). He has not conducted mass deportations (deportation levels were lower in February than they were during Biden’s last full month in office). He has not disbanded the Department of Commerce (in fact, he is trying to expand its power and core functions under Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick). He also has not disbanded but instead empowered the Department of Homeland Security.
As I said in our initial piece, Trump was lying when he claimed to know nothing about Project 2025. He was glad-handing with many of its authors and has since brought a few of them into the administration — he always had deep connections to its organizers. But he also hasn’t bound himself to all of their plans. Trump's agenda and Project 2025's were not the same, and they still aren’t the same.
Q: Why are Israelis "hostages" and Palestinians are "prisoners and detainees"? The majority of the 90 released were never charged with a crime. They were 69 women and 21 boys, some as young as twelve years old.
Let’s put aside the 99.7% conviction rate for Palestinians and the fact that they are tried in military courts and not civilian courts like Israeli Jews living in the West Bank—if you take a 12 year old boy from their family and imprison them and put them through a military court system without parents or a lawyer, that’s kidnapping. And they are hostages and the victims of terrorism. The abuse they then see is beyond words.
— Marwan from Dublin, Ireland
Will Kaback, Senior Editor: For reference, this question relates to Quick Hit #1 in our January 21 edition, which read, “The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas began on Sunday with Hamas releasing three Israeli hostages. On Monday, Israel released 90 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.”
Some quick background: Many of the Palestinians released over multiple exchanges during phase one of the Israel–Hamas ceasefire had been detained in Israel for security-related offenses, which include everything from throwing stones to attempted murder to actual murder. These cases are often tried in military courts, and as you note, the conviction rate is about 99%. Furthermore, Palestinians accused of security offenses can be imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial. This “administrative detention” policy has been condemned by human rights groups as an abuse of a security law that was designed to be used sparingly.
Of course, plenty of those released in the hostage exchanges were given due process and convicted of heinous crimes; for instance, of the 183 Palestinians released in a February swap, 18 had been serving life sentences for perpetrating deadly attacks. But as you note, many others have not been afforded due process, and a lot of these detainees are children who were imprisoned for years without a trial.
Why refer to these Palestinians differently than the Israeli hostages, then? It’s a question we’ve discussed at length internally. We’ve landed on using “imprisoned Palestinians," which is a technically accurate term (they are imprisoned, whether justified or not) that doesn’t carry the guilty connotation of “prisoner.” We don’t think it would be accurate to say “kidnapped Palestinians” or “Palestinian hostages” because, as noted earlier, many of those released in the exchanges were arrested for good reason and convicted of crimes. There is, in our mind, a clear difference between “unjustly detained” and what happened to Israelis on October 7 — they were kidnapped, taken across the border, and held as hostages in a pre-planned attack.
This term isn’t a conclusion for us, but something we're still working to get right. This, obviously, is not an indication of support for one side or another, but rather a transparent explanation of how we came to the language choice we did. As with other editorial policies on controversial subjects, we’re always open to reader feedback on how our language choices can improve.
Q: In your take on Trump establishing a cryptocurrency reserve, you indicated you had bought and made a profit from a cryptocurrency. It seems to me that cryptocurrency is a giant Ponzi scheme as you only make a profit if someone buys your cryptocurrency. What am I not understanding? I’m very puzzled.
— Anonymous from Laguna Niguel, CA
Isaac Saul, Executive Editor: Well, if you define “Ponzi scheme” as “you only make a profit if someone buys your asset” then, yes, I suppose it fits pretty nicely. Though I think that definition would also apply to stocks or a home, which I don’t think are Ponzi schemes. Genuine Ponzi schemes are investment schemes in which early investors are paid off with money put up by later ones in order to encourage more and bigger risks, often when no underlying company actually exists.
That being said, I think your general instinct touches on something that is very true, and basically a joke at this point: Cryptocurrencies continue to struggle to find purpose. And some cryptocurrencies really do seem like giant Ponzi schemes (I wouldn’t put Bitcoin or Ethereum into this category, but there are a lot of “memecoins” that hinge entirely on being able to convince more people to buy).
The reality is crypto was not supposed to be just an asset. Crypto was built on a digital ledger system known as the “blockchain,” which keeps a log of transactions in a peer-to-peer network of computers. The idea was that this ledger was indelible, which would allow it to be used for all kinds of things like contracts or business deals that could never be undone or tampered with.
For a long time, vast blockchain use cases were promised up and down, and the technology was supposed to change the future of transactions. That has not come to pass, and instead cryptocurrencies have just been bought and sold like assets. I think that gap, for a lot of people, has created the impression of a Ponzi scheme.
Q: How do you pick the authors and sources that show up in the “what the left/right are saying” sections? I anticipate you’ve answered this in the past and if so maybe you can direct me to that previous answer, however as more and more information flows from sources with questionable pedigree I wonder if you’ve reassessed the criteria, or will be reassessing?
— Jeffrey from Cleveland, OH
Will Kaback, Senior Editor: Here are the basics of our process. After the newsletter is sent out at 12pm ET, the editorial staff convenes to finalize the next day’s topic if we haven’t decided yet. The key considerations in that process are:
- Is the story generating interest across a variety of news outlets?
- Is there a strong range of opinion pieces on the topic from writers on the right and left?
- Have our readers expressed interest in the topic?
After we make our decision, we begin researching commentary for “what the left/right are saying.” We have a running list of over 100 sources that we consult, and we also search for opinion pieces across multiple search engines and social media platforms. Once we’ve pulled together all of the commentary we can find and organize it based on the perspective of the writer, we typically have 20–40 pieces to choose from.
Our editorial team then reviews all of these articles and begins to cull the list — we try to distill our top choices based on how representative and prevalent they are among the complete list of options. For example, in Thursday’s edition on the continuing resolution to fund the government, we found most perspectives on the right fit into three groups: supporters of the CR who viewed it as a necessary move to support President Trump’s agenda, critics of Democrats who sought to block the bill, and critics of the CR who saw it as enabling out-of-control spending. Accordingly, we chose the three pieces that we thought were the strongest representatives of these views.
To your broader question, we always evaluate the veracity of the claims in each piece we select, and we do our best to avoid publishing anything that contains outright falsehoods (we also try to elevate arguments that avoid deceptive tactics of persuasion). We feel confident in this approach and don’t think it requires a reassessment during the Trump administration; our focus remains on sharing strong arguments that push your thinking and challenge you to see an issue from another point of view.
Q: Insufferable pedant speaking here: The proper term is "Daylight Saving Time", not "Daylight Savings Time" (i.e., "Saving" is singular, not plural), although the latter, plural form is indeed now more common in American English. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time.
I guess the usage you pick depends on whether you want to identify with snobs like me or with the common masses :).
— David from East Lansing, MI
Ari Weitzman, Managing Editor: I'm going to make things so much worse — we're aware that “Daylight Savings Time” is the technically incorrect usage, but are choosing it anyway.
A bit of prologue, if you’ll indulge it:
Using spectrums as frameworks can be helpful; in politics, we talk about the “right v. left” every day. In language, attitudes on correct usage can fall on an "authoritarian v. populist” spectrum. French is a very authoritarian language — it, the language itself, actually has an academy that determines correct pronunciation and definitions for all of its words. English, on the other hand, is like the Wild West. It’s a devilish tongue — forked and everything — wickedly pulling from every country the British Navy ever encountered as it rolled over the face of this blue marble.
English’s forked tongue gives it a populist core. Most common English words derive from Germanic, but it pulls liberally from Latin, giving the language an innate ability to borrow and take words from anywhere and force them into the lexicon. Still, we have to have some order. At Tangle, we have a policy of defaulting to AP style and guidelines, but — inspired by the language itself — reserve the right to adapt them to our own standards “whenever we think it makes sense.” We love having autonomy in our language. It’s scary, powerful, eclectic, messy, rational, irrational, and very American.
Sidebar over.
We’re fine with meanings and names shifting with time, and at Tangle we fall on the populist side of the spectrum (probably 60–40). On "Daylight Savings Time," we have a reason for ignoring the “correct” convention and instead using the common “incorrect” wording: "Daylight Saving Time" sounds worse. It either sounds like a description of an action (eg, “the daylight is saving the time”) or like a rescue mission (eg, “it is time to save the daylight from peril”). Conversely, "Daylight Savings Time" sounds like what it is: a time for accumulating savings in our daylight.
We also made the decision to remove the “D” and “S” (for “Daylight” and “Standard”) in our time abbreviations, and also to divert from AP’s recommendation to put periods in “a.m.” or “p.m.” That’s why you’ll see us write “12pm ET” instead of “12 p.m. EDT.” Doesn’t that just look better?
Q: How much change/damage can a Cabinet member effect, especially if they're unqualified or incompetent, or if they just have hyperpartisan positions? The question made me think of Betsy DeVos. Has her tenure resulted in major changes, like more public funding for private and charter schools?
—Amy from Seward, Alaska
Will Kaback, Senior Editor: Cabinet members can effect some change, but their long-term influence is often limited. Betsy DeVos’s tenure as education secretary is a great case study for this point.
First, to your question on competency, we’ll make an educated guess that you think most of President Trump’s cabinet picks have been unqualified, overly partisan, or both. That’s understandable — we were fairly critical of many nominations as well, and Trump has selected his second-term cabinet to prioritize loyalty. Still, competence is subjective, and in the case of presidential nominees, this assessment is likely to be influenced by partisanship. For instance, if you think Trump’s picks are unqualified, would you say the same about Pete Buttigieg’s nomination to be transportation secretary given his total lack of experience in that area?
As for DeVos, she was maligned by the left as a radical pick who didn’t understand the department she was tapped to lead. Conversely, the right argued that she would be an effective advocate for conservative issues like school choice. DeVos did lack formal experience with the education system and had some embarrassing moments during her confirmation hearing, but again, a deep resume is not necessarily a prerequisite for cabinet members chosen to advance the president’s agenda.
More importantly, what was DeVos’s impact? Her time with the department resulted in few lasting changes. DeVos rolled back or replaced Obama-era rules, narrowing the department’s enforcement of Title IX and rescinding guidance on protections for transgender students; she also changed how the department regulated for-profit schools and assisted student borrowers.
Most of these actions, however, did not survive the Biden administration. Biden’s education secretary, Miguel Cardona (whom many conservatives saw as unqualified themselves), reverted DeVos’s federal Title IX guidance and reconfigured the department’s policies on student loans, among other rollbacks. Furthermore, DeVos made minimal progress on school choice, her signature issue, after her push to appropriate $400 million to expand charter schools and private school vouchers was rejected by Congress. Even conservatives who supported her agenda have acknowledged that she wasn’t able to make meaningful changes.
DeVos’s tenure illustrates that cabinet secretaries are constrained by the limits of their office. Even as the current Congress moves to cede parts of its power to the executive branch, buy-in from the legislative branch is still necessary to make lasting changes like the kind DeVos aspired to. In hindsight, the left’s stark warnings about her nomination seem overblown, and it’s a useful lesson to keep in mind when thinking about cabinet members in general.
Q: Regarding your time at the border and the folks you've met who have been here illegally for a long time: since they have been here for a long time, why have they not applied for citizenship? Is there an immigration track for folks who are already established and contributing to society, or is everyone automatically slated for deportation if they attempt to remedy their illegal status? No one I know seems to have an understanding of this.
—Laura from Arlington, WA
Isaac Saul, Executive Editor: Great question. As I mentioned in our coverage of Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship, I’ve spent a lot of time near the U.S.–Mexico border and met several people living here illegally. The people I’ve talked to there have been living in the U.S. for decades. They have houses and jobs and American children and feel a stronger allegiance to the U.S. than Mexico.
Your question is geared toward this class of immigrants, and you’re not alone in wondering why, if their lives are so established here, they don’t simply apply for American citizenship. It’s definitely not for lack of a desire to naturalize. The short answer is: Whether an immigrant has been here without authorization for two months or two decades, there’s no clear “track” for them to apply for a green card, the first step toward U.S. citizenship.
To qualify for a green card from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, you must be eligible under a specific category. These categories often don’t apply to people living here illegally; for example, if you’re a person with no permanent U.S. relatives, immigrating for economic reasons and have a job that an American citizen could feasibly perform, you’re out of luck.
To your second question: Even those who qualify under one of the listed categories must comply with a statute known as the “three- and ten-year bars,” which requires that undocumented immigrants “must leave the United States to apply for their green card abroad, but as soon as they depart, they are immediately barred from re-entering the country for a period of time.” In other words, unauthorized migrants seeking green cards have to leave for three years if they were in the U.S. less than a year, or 10 years if they were here longer. It’s a Catch-22.
That’s why millions of immigrants here illegally are living in legal limbo. It’s not necessarily that they haven’t tried, but that there’s no simple way to “get in line” for citizenship once you’ve crossed the border illegally. Almost all the people I’ve spoken to in this position have a story that falls into one of the above complications.
Q; In a recent post you claimed that Trump (and his supporters) might want a recession. I don’t really understand the claim. Would you mind explaining?
— Isaiah from Mechanicsville, VA
Isaac Saul, Executive Editor: A few things: First, I do not think his supporters “want” a recession so much as I am preparing people for the fact they are going to justify one if we get it. My point was more about how people were not really ready for the talking points that were going to come out — which then did come out — where his supporters were defending the economy taking a hit.
That being said, the argument that Trump might want a recession is really about two things: 1) inflation and 2) interest rates. Again, looking at Trump’s public comments and hearing from some people in his orbit, the idea is essentially that our economy is propped up right now by a lot of government cash. Inflation has been stubborn. The Fed chair has been shooting for a “soft landing,” and has had some success, but Trump could view a simple way out of inflation as entering a period of negative growth — or a recession.
This theory holds water because we know that Trump desperately wants interest rates to go down and he also would love to see inflation recede. On top of that, he has long been a proponent of tariffs, almost obsessively so, and he’s proving right now that one short-term impact of tariffs is markets contracting. So if he can get the Fed to lower interest rates, reduce inflation, and get his preferred trade policies — is that all worth it for a recession? If he can blame the conditions that he inherited from Biden, which he is already doing, then I think the answer is yes.
Naturally, the obvious counterpoint is that a recession would almost certainly be politically disastrous for him, as it would be for any politician. I’m just not totally sure he cares, especially if he earnestly believes he can turn things back around in his term. It’s a radical theory, sure, but I’m just looking at his actions and words and trying to put things together.
Q: Thanks for all the good work at Tangle, you guys are on the side of the angels. And, especially, thanks for publishing Nick-from-Pittsburgh’s idea about saving Social Security by removing the income cap for high-earners paying into the system. I’m guessing Nick has run the numbers and that he’s right that, by doing this, we could preserve Social Security for a few more years.
Still, this approach strikes me as profoundly immoral. I’m sure Nick would never stick a gun in the face of a better-off neighbor and demand the neighbor pay for Nick’s retirement, and I can’t see why having the government do so in Nick’s stead is any more ethical… especially when there’s a much more life-enhancing and cheaper way to provide people with a prosperous retirement: set the money aside at the beginning of their lives, rather than at the end.
If, instead, the government set up a trust fund for every newborn in the country in a one-time amount of the same $20,529.36, invested the money at 6%, then turned the money over to the beneficiary at age 65, everybody would retire a millionaire… at a cost to the government of less than 6% of what it pays now.
— Bill from Portland, OR
Ari Weitzman, Managing Editor: I’ve heard this idea from a few people, and I actually think that when the rubber meets the road you can understand why Social Security works the way it does. Let’s say the government were to take $15,000 for every baby born each year in the U.S. and put it in a trust for them. That’s roughly 3.6 million babies, meaning $54 billion annually. That’s a lot of money, so the government has to get it from somewhere. You can’t get it from the babies (obviously), so you either have to take money from every other person for this year’s crop of newborns (which feels unfair), or you’ll have to tax them over their earning period throughout their lives. If you do that, then the interest-bearing math starts to crack a bit.
Then, you have to consider everyone else. What about the people who are seniors now? And the ones who are about to be? Or just all the 25-year-olds? It doesn’t seem fair to leave them out of this new system, so you start pulling from everyone and putting all their money in a combined trust, then distributing it to the people who need it now. What you get, then, is a system that operates the way Social Security works today.
I think a lot of the problems people have with Social Security is that they already see it as the government taking their money from them, putting it in an account just for them, and then paying them their own money later. That misconception creates the idea that the government is robbing from them — for their own benefit — in a way they never consented to.
When I see my payments as going to support today’s seniors, not being put into a piggy bank for myself, I feel a lot better. I like knowing that part of my income goes to support seniors who need it — I’d be happier if I knew that it only went to the seniors who need it, but I’m also happier with this disbursement than I am with a lot of the decisions the government makes with my tax dollars. If Tangle goes supernova and I start making, say, $400,000 a year (a man can dream), then I'd be happy for my extra income to go to support more seniors. Then, in 40 years, I'd be happy to take the security provided by hearty younger Americans, and I wouldn't conceive of my neighbor as unfairly taking my input, but instead as receiving the same support from the next generation.
Q: I just saw a Facebook post by someone named Carrick Ryan saying Trump signed an executive order requiring that any plaintiff who wants to challenge his orders in court must post a bond covering the government’s costs to fight the lawsuit unless the plaintiff wins. Is this legal? If Trump were to ignore a decision by the Supreme Court, who has the authority to enforce it?
— Karen from Denver, CO
Lindsey Knuth, Assistant Editor: Hi Karen! Let’s break down your questions. First, your description of the executive action is correct. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump released a memorandum demanding that parties seeking to block his policies in court must first post a security bond covering the government’s potential cost should the lawsuit fail. The memo invokes Rule 65(c) of the U.S. Civil Code, which mandates that courts collect security from the party seeking an injunction in an amount determined by the judge, to be paid if the party’s action is ultimately found to be wrongful.
According to an accompanying fact sheet, the executive memo is meant to curb “unelected district judges” from issuing “sweeping injunctions beyond their authority, inserting themselves into executive policymaking and stalling policies voters supported.”
President Trump’s directive could mean steep costs for plaintiffs of the now 119 active legal challenges to his administration’s 89 executive orders. Whether or not his strategy holds up in court, it still represents a significant financial barrier to access the judicial process, one of the only recourses the public has to check the federal government.
Now, is it legal? That’s more complicated. Historically, judges have treated Rule 65(c) as discretionary and varied on their application of bonds in injunction cases. Trump’s memo, however, frames the rule as mandatory, instructing federal attorneys to apply bonds in every case. Also, the memo broadens the scope of the rule, with President Trump directing attorneys to invoke bonds “equal to the Federal Government’s potential costs and damages” in every case against the government “unless extraordinary circumstances justify an exception.” This is unprecedented, too: I can’t find a single case in which a judge set a non-zero security bond under Rule 65(c) with a federal agency as the defendant.
Colin Kalmbacher, writing in Law & Crime, suggests that if lawyers decide to hammer the mandatory language of the rule, judges could agree that bonds are required in some cases. He also notes that, if two or more of the 13 federal courts of appeals differ in their ruling on this matter, a lawsuit involving bonds on federal injunctions could make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Judges are already finding ways to avoid invoking security bonds for parties suing the government; U.S. District Judge Adam B. Abelson recently set a plaintiff’s bond to zero, citing the party’s superseding right to seek judicial review and protect their constitutional rights. In another case over Trump’s attempt to freeze federal loans, U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan said it would “defy logic—and contravene the very basis of this opinion—-to hold Plaintiffs hostage for the resulting harm.” No judges have yet complied with the order.
On to your second question. You ask about what happens if Trump “ignores” a Supreme Court decision. He wouldn’t be the first president to do so. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson sidestepped a Supreme Court decision ruling that the Cherokee Nation was independent from Georgia laws, carrying out their forced displacement (which we now call the Trail of Tears). In theory, Congress can use the power of the purse or amend statutes to limit executive actions. Congress can also try to raise articles of impeachment against the president. In reality, Congress failed to codify Cherokee sovereignty and prevent President Jackson’s administration from defying the court’s decision. History demonstrates that when there are no meaningful checks from Congress — which appears to be the case with the current Republican trifecta — presidents have few limits on saying and doing what they please.
That said, the issue extends beyond any one administration. We are seeing in action what happens when something as important as judicial review depends on something as transient as political will and institutional norms. As always, time will tell how this all plays out.
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