This is the Tangle Sunday Edition, a brief roundup of our independent politics coverage plus some extra features for your Sunday morning reading.
What the right is doodling.
What the left is doodling.
What just happened.
Here are a few stories that have broken since our last newsletter on Thursday.
- On Friday, all employees of the United States Agency of International Development were placed on administrative leave and all workers stationed abroad were ordered to return to the U.S. (The order) Later on Friday, a U.S. judge paused the order until February 14. (The judgment)
- A Federal judge blocked employees of the Department of Government Efficiency from gaining access to confidential Treasury Department information, setting a hearing on February 14. The ruling follows a lawsuit from 19 attorneys general. (The ruling)
- Tech stocks dipped on Friday afternoon, led by slumps of roughly 3% by Amazon and Alphabet (Google's parent company). (The dip) Separately, Meta announced that it will hold company-wide layoffs next week. (The layoffs).
- On Thursday, a small Bering Air passenger plane carrying nine passengers from Unalakleet to Nome, Alaska, went missing. On Friday, the plane’s wreckage was found on sea ice southeast of Nome — all nine passengers and the pilot were found dead. (The crash)
Reader essay.
Today’s reader essay is half a peek into a rarely examined life and half a fable on being suddenly confronted with one’s own hypocrisy — all told with the style of a noir short story. Writing under the pen name Valerie Stunning, a reader with over 13 years of experience stripping tells the tale of a customer who taught her a lesson she didn’t ask to learn. You can read the full piece here.
Have a personal story or local issue you want to write about? Pitch us! Fill out this form or reply to this email, and we’ll get back to you if we’re hooked.
Reader review.
In this section, we like to feature two comments from the same edition that critique our coverage in two different ways. In part one of our special edition on under-the-radar stories, some of our readers commented that we were still missing several important things:
Sarah Sparks wished we’d addressed the Department of Education’s role in providing for children with disabilities.
“It seems that kids with disabilities are the ones always forgotten in discussions about restructuring or closing the Department of Education. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that this issue wasn’t mentioned here. IDEA isn’t dependent on the existence of a federal-level Department of Education, and historically there has been fairly strong bipartisan support for IDEA. However, I’d be concerned about the future of education and related services for kids with disabilities if the federal funds that states currently receive for IDEA implementation were managed under a different department — at least for now while there is no plan to ensure that those funds would still be used for kids with disabilities rather than other purposes. I ask this as both a school-based related service provider (audiologist) and as a deaf adult who has benefited from audiology services: How likely do you think it is that kids with disabilities would suffer from a closure of the Department of Education? The school district where I work has a very high poverty rate, and many of the deaf and hard of hearing kids would have no access to audiologists and other related services that are important for their educational access if those services weren’t provided by their schools.”
Bubsie said we should be giving more coverage to Elon Musk’s involvement in federal payrolls.
“Why is there zero mention of what havoc Musk and his staffers are causing in the Treasury and other federal organizations? This is the most important story of the past week (with the most dangerous implications) - much of the other stuff are distractions - and it is completely ignored by Tangle. Why?”
Monday, February 3.
Tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. Last Saturday, the White House announced that the United States would impose a 10% tariff on all imports from China and 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada, with energy imports from Canada taxed at 10%. The tariffs were scheduled to take effect at 12:01am ET on Tuesday; however, on Monday, President Donald Trump said he would pause the tariffs on Mexico and Canada for one month after speaking with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and receiving commitments on enhanced border security.
Our take: “Trump has always been interested in trade policy, and he’s always seen tariffs as a useful tool. These actions already seem to be producing positive outcomes with Mexico. Chinese tariffs will be a long game, and I have a hard time discerning the goal of Trump’s Canadian tariffs.”
Reader Survey:
Tuesday, February 4.
The future of USAID. On Monday, 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 intends to work with Congress to reorganize it. Rubio’s statement ran counter to comments made earlier in the day by Elon Musk, who said that he and President Donald Trump had decided to shut down USAID. These conflicting remarks and efforts by representatives of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to curtail the agency’s operations have created uncertainty about the agency’s future.
Our take: “The changes at USAID reflect Trump’s belief that foreign aid should be reciprocal. The administration is right to scrutinize whether USAID’s funding mechanisms are efficient or proper. However, the execution of this effort has been sloppy and raises valid legal concerns."
Reader Survey:
Wednesday, February 5.
Catching up on under-the-radar stories. The Trump administration has started with a whirlwind, and we’ve been working overtime to keep up with everything. Between the Senate nominations, executive orders, government leaks and sudden emergencies, we haven’t had enough time to get into it all. In this piece, we highlighted all the stories that we haven’t had a chance to cover, with analysis from various Tangle staff members, along with links to some additional opinions from the left and right.
We did not include a reader survey for this edition.
Thursday, February 6.
President Trump’s comments on Gaza. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said the United States will take over the Gaza Strip to facilitate its reconstruction after it was largely destroyed during the 15-month war between Israel and Hamas. Speaking at a press conference at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said that Palestinians living in Gaza should be permanently resettled in surrounding Arab countries and implied that the U.S. could take a “long-term ownership position” over the enclave. The president did not rule out the use of military force to carry out the plan.
Our take: “You don’t have to be an expert on Israel and Palestine to see all the flaws in Trump’s plan. It’s unjust towards Palestinians, doesn’t make Israelis safer, and would take an enormous commitment of U.S. resources. I don’t know what will make Trump back off this idea, and I worry that he won’t.”
Friday, February 7.
Making sense of the Washington, D.C., plane crash. On Wednesday, January 29, an Army Black Hawk helicopter carrying three soldiers collided with an American Airlines plane carrying 60 passengers and four crew members over the Potomac River. The plane had been approaching Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., and was preparing to land when the helicopter intersected its path, killing all 67 people. The crash was the deadliest air accident in the U.S. since November 12, 2001. In this edition, Editor Will Kaback spoke to four aviation experts and explored what could have caused the crash, what safety reforms might be needed, and whether federal DEI initiatives played a role in diminishing the capacity of the FAA.
Recommended reading.
Featuring presidents from Washington to Obama writing about courtship, marriage, war, diplomacy, love, lust, loss and eggs — yes, eggs — it answers the question ‘What does a president in love sound like?’ with a refreshing ‘Just as dopey as anybody else.’
A book review published in The New York Times by W. M. Akers titled “Racy Presidential Love Letters: ‘I Take a Long, Deep, Wild Draught on Your Lips’” offers a fun snapshot of Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler’s “Are You Prepared for the Storm of Love Making?” which collects correspondence from various past presidents, sharing their romantic (and cringey!) private expressions of love and desire. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day later this week, you can read the entertaining review here.
On the channels.
INSTAGRAM: Scientists believed they discovered a new asteroid — instead, it was a car. Read the story of the space-faring Roadster and what it means in an Instagram post here.
PODCAST: Ari and Will discuss unified theories of Donald Trump, what everyone means when they say “DEI,” and the latest on Israel and Gaza. Then, Emma Varvaloucas, Executive Director of The Progress Network, pushes back on a recent Tangle article about USAID. Finally, Ari and Will wrap up with some Tangle trivia and air some grievances. You can listen to the show here.
BONUS: Shorts Producer Aidan Gorman breaks down what USAID is, and how much it costs, in an Instagram reel here.
Post of the week.
Tangle Executive Editor Isaac Saul shares a peek at fatherhood:
When you wake up and it’s 2025 pic.twitter.com/CGP4tR5zjL
— Isaac Saul (@Ike_Saul) February 2, 2025
Tangle’s favorites.
Infotainment.
Today is Super Bowl Sunday, with the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles kicking off at 6:30 pm ET in New Orleans, Louisiana. Of course, for many viewers, the event is all about the advertisements, which many companies spend all year putting together. Let’s take a look at some numbers behind the advertising world’s biggest day of the year.
- 50. The number of brands that will advertise during Super Bowl LIX.
- $7–8 million. The range in price for a 30-second advertisement during the game.
- $309 million. Super Bowl advertising revenue in 2014.
- $650 million. Super Bowl advertising revenue in 2024.
Ask the readers.
Last week, John asked parents what their greatest challenging parenting in 2025 is.
For many of us, the previous generation/would-be grandparents are more inclined to make the most of their retirement and are not interested in stepping into a committed caretaker role. Our siblings are similarly busy with their own lives—figuring out their own situations. Asking for help is a big imposition, so having family close by does not guarantee support. This means we do it on our own or we pay for care.
Since we chose her answer, we gave Elizabeth the opportunity to ask our readers a question in today’s newsletter:
You can let us know your thoughts by replying to this email or through this form.
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