Will Kbach (3:59)

Thanks, Will and welcome everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, Hamas said it would delay its next planned hostage exchange with Israel, accusing Israel of violating the terms of their ceasefire agreement. Hours later, President Donald Trump said Hamas must release all remaining Israeli hostages by Saturday or all hell is going to break loose. Number two, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove directed federal prosecutors to drop the corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, saying the case had been tainted by publicity and was hindering Adams ability to do his job. Adams had been charged with bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy and soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals in exchange for political favors. Number three, A federal judge in Rhode island said the Trump administration must immediately comply with his order to unfreeze federal grants following complaints by several attorneys general that the directive was not being followed. Number four, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reportedly asked Treasury Secretary Scott Besant to deputize some law enforcement workers in his department, including IRS criminal investigators, to assist in immigration enforcement. At number five, an investment group led by Elon Musk said it offered $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly rejected the offer. Donald Trump is at the White House right now about to sign an executive order prohibiting transgender women from participating in women's or girls sports. To the Trump administration, we will defend the proud tradition of female athletes and we will not allow men to beat up, injure and cheat our women and our girls. From now on, women's sports will be only for women On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order keeping men out of women's sports, prohibiting all participants who do not meet the government's definition of biological females from competing in girls and women's sports. The order directs the federal government to withhold funding from K12 schools and colleges that do not comply, drawing authority from Title IX of the education amendments of 1972. Furthermore, it requires representatives of the governing bodies of major sports to standardize eligibility requirements for sports, including the Olympics, within 60 days. The executive order is worded broadly but specifically applies to transgender women and girls, referencing President Trump's January 20th executive order defining sex at conception. Specifically, the order calls sports specific guidelines that base participation on testosterone levels, allowing athletes to compete in divisions matching their sincerely held gender equity identity or avoid explicitly outlining policies regarding trans identifying athletes as unfair and unsafe. President Trump has signed three previous executive orders outlining new gender policies. The orders recognize and define two biological sexes, ban federal funding for gender transitions for minors, and direct the Department of Defense to create a policy on transgender service members. From now on, women's sports will only be for women, trump said at a signing ceremony at the White House. With this executive order, the war on women's sports is over. The executive orders have already prompted a reaction from government and non governmental actors. A number of government websites have changed or removed information to comply with Trump's orders, including a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage outlining health risks to gay, bisexual and transgender people. Following the most recent executive order on Wednesday, 15 state attorneys general signed a joint statement committing to providing gender affirming care. On Thursday, the National Collegiate Athletic association, or the ncaa, revised its policy to state a student athlete assigned male at birth may not compete on a women's team. Trump's recent order has prompted a wave of both backlash and support. Let me be clear, this doesn't protect women, rep. Jasmine Crockett, the Democrat from Texas, wrote in a post on X. I'm grateful to President Trump for signing his executive order banning male athletes from women's sports because it will protect future generations of female athletes from having to experience what I did, said Paula Scanlon, a teammate of former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Leah Thomas. Today we'll get into what the right and the left are saying about the order and then Tangle editor Will K. Back will give his.

John Law (8:48)

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Isaac Saul (9:24)

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Will Kbach (10:01)

All right, first up, let's start with what the right is saying. The right supports the order, framing it as a common sense policy with broad support. Some note that the issue seems to have unified Americans despite our polarized politics. Others say the left's critiques of the action fall flat. National Reviews editors called the order a victory for women athletes. As long as we've had organized sports, no one thought it would be a good idea for men to compete against women. Until the last several years, as part of the trans craze, male athletes infiltrated women's competitions, teams and locker rooms. The consequences were woeful, and sometimes men claimed a spot on each rank of the podium. In women's divisions, the editors wrote, The Department of Justice is instructed to coordinate and provide the necessary resources to enforce these policies. But perhaps only minimal enforcement efforts will be needed, since it seems that even the most high profile organizations have already proposed plans to make changes. Not every athletic association or competition circuit that permits athletes to compete in divisions with respect to preferred gender identity have the same policies. Some guidelines require nothing more than an explicit statement of an athlete's gender identity, whereas others require males to receive hormonal treatment for a minimum time period and reduce testosterone levels below a certain level, the editor said. Progressives aren't going to give up on the issue, although polling shows that a super majority of Americans want women's athletics to be women only, organizing sports by sex rather than the nebulous concept of gender is only common sense, and the executive order is a big step toward finally restoring it across the land. In City Journal, Lior Sapir explored why Trump's action was hugely popular. Of all the policy areas affected by gender ideology, sports may strike some as the least consequential. Forcing women to share homeless shelters or prison cells with men poses more obvious dangers, especially considering that male inmates identifying as women are more likely to have convictions for sexual offenses, appear wrote. But sports are important too, not only because they are a vital human activity, but also because, for better or worse, the US Higher education system showers so much attention and so many resources on male and female athletics. For many girls, excellence in high school sports punches their ticket to prestigious universities and lucrative scholarships. Sports is the policy area where public opinion shifted earliest and most clearly against gender ideology. A 2022 Pew poll, for example, found that while only 46% of American adults agreed that it should be illegal for kids to receive gender affirming care, 58% said that athletes should compete in the category of their sex, Sapir said. By January 2025, a New York Times Ipsos poll reported, 79% of Americans agreed that athletes who were born male at birth but who currently identify as female should not be eligible for female sports. It's hard to think of another issue in contemporary American politics where the American public is split 80 20. In the New York Post, ISIS score wrote, Trump is not the radical. He's simply undoing radical things Dems did. After President Trump signed an executive order compelling America's schools to allow only women to compete in women's sports, the usual suspects gnashed their teeth. The talking point was as simple as it was ubiquitous. With the stroke of a pen, Trump had launched an unprovoked attack on an embattled community, score said. Balderdash. In truth, it was the Democrats who declared cultural war on their political opponents and waged it unreservedly from the confines of the Oval Office. Within hours of taking the office a little over four years ago, President Joe Biden had signed an executive order asserting that children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports. Another way of putting that is girls should not have the right to learn or compete without boys invading their most private, intimate spaces, score wrote. Now that Trump has undone that evil, we're meant to take him to be a power hungry monster. That dog doesn't hunt anymore. Americans have come to realize that for the most part it's not the right that is pushing an agenda. All right, that is it for what the right is saying. Which brings us to what the left is saying. The left opposes the order, calling it a cruel attack on a vulnerable group. Some criticize mainstream outlets on the left for contributing to public skepticism about transgender rights. Others say this is a complicated issue, but Trump's approach is calculated to do harm. The New York Times editorial board criticized Trump's shameful campaign against transgender American. Some of the most deplorable episodes in U.S. history involve the government wielding the power of the state against minority groups. Black people, indigenous people, and gay people, to name just a few. Though these campaigns might have received popular support at the time, history has consistently judged them as immoral, illegal, and un American. The border Rather than understanding this history, President Trump is borrowing from the worst of it. The chaos of the past few weeks shouldn't mask that. In this period, he has also waged as direct a campaign against a single vulnerable minority. As we've seen in generations, it should be recognized that society is still grappling with the cultural and policy implications of the rapidly shifting understanding of gender. There are some issues, such as participation in sports and appropriate medical care for minors, that remain fiercely debated, even by those who broadly support trans rights. There should be room for those conversations. But what shouldn't be debated is whether the government should target a group of Americans to be stripped of their freedom and dignity to move through the world as they choose. This is a campaign in which cruelty and humiliation seem to be the fundamental point. In her Erin in the Morning newsletter, Erin Reid said outlets like the New York Times have been influential in fueling attacks on the trans community. The New York Times editorial board published an opinion piece decrying the state of transgender rights under the Trump administration. What the piece conveniently omits, however, is the Times own complicity. No other major paper has done more to legitimize the very arguments fueling these attacks than the New York Times itself. Reid wrote. No hand wringing over Trump's most extreme policies can undo the reality that the paper helped lay the groundwork for them, lending credibility to the very narratives that now fuel sports bans and healthcare restrictions. These so called middle ground arguments that a little discrimination was a reasonable compromise were always a smokescreen for a broader campaign to eliminate trans existence from public life. Even in an article where the New York Times acknowledges that Trump's attacks on trans people have gone too far, the paper continues to frame issues like youth healthcare and sports as reasonable areas for restriction playing directly into the very strategy that anti trans activists designed. Reid said the bans were never about fairness in sports. They were always about manufacturing fear, normalizing discrimination and laying the foundation for broader rollbacks of transgender rights. And the Times played right into it. In the Washington Post, Sally Jenkins argued Trump's ban on trans athletes seeks to demonize, not protect. There is a reverse bigotry in the accusation that those who object to transgender athletes in girls high school sports or misused pronouns are handmaidens or fascists who don't toe the correct intellectual line. But there is a cavernous cruelty and the distinct smell of autocratic sauerbraten in the Trump administration's targeting no terrorizing of athletes who represent just 0.6% of the American population, jenkins wrote. How you do something matters as much as what you do. Donald Trump doesn't just want transgender athletes out of track meets and swimming pools. His latest executive order is calculated to inflict maximal fear and public humiliation on them. Plenty of citizens reasonably object to transgender athletes in women's sports, treatment for gender dysphoria in the young or pronoun policing, but they manage to do so with civility and respect for fellow souls, jenkins said. Trump's order and his language in presenting it seems calculated to provoke hostility and misunderstanding, and they're liable to poke collateral holes in the civil rights of all. This is quite possibly the point to dragoon good people into a dark place they never intended to go. All right, let's head over to Will for his take.

John Law (18:47)

Alright, that is it for what the right and left are saying. Which brings us to my take. Reminder. This is Tangle editor Will K. Back and I wrote today's take. One quick note before we dive in. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to refer to the debate about transgender women and girls participating in female sports as just trans women in women's sports. I won't say trans women and girls in women and girls sports every time, but that phrase should be understood to encompass both. And I'll distinguish between women's and girls sports when necessary. In the context of my writing, when Tangle has covered transgender topics in the past, Executive Editor Isaac Saul has grounded his take in an idea I think is worth repeating here. We should approach this topic with humility and resist the urge to draw black and white conclusions. Unfortunately, the debate about transports is a prime example of how people on either side of polarizing issues tend to assume the worst intent of differing opinions. For those who oppose measures like medical treatment for transgender minors or trans women's participation in women's sports, these beliefs are often framed as common sense, while the other side is seen as pushing a subversive worldview. Conversely, supporters of these measures view them as a moral defense of a vulnerable group in our society, while the other side is motivated by bigotry. Trump's order has brought this dynamic back to the fore. Before I weigh in on the order itself, I want to describe what it does and the authority that it's based on. Now, the White House frames the order as a ban on trans women in women's sports, but the action itself is actually narrower, making Title IX funding contingent on whether a school allows trans women to compete on its women's sports teams. The Trump administration justifies this order based on its interpretation of Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibits sex based discrimination in any educational program or activity that receives federal funding. Recent presidential administrations have interpreted the law in different ways, with the Obama administration advising that Title IX protects LGBT students from sex discrimination, the first Trump administration changing standards for sexual harassment and assault cases, and the Biden administration proposing rules to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, rules that were later struck down towards the end of Biden's term. Now, the second Trump administration's view holds that allowing trans women to participate in women's sports violates the law's requirement of equal athletic opportunity for members of both sexes. End quote. Now, legal challenges are certain to come, and we may see the Supreme Court weigh in on this issue in this term, but the popular interpretation of this order is already pretty clear. This action could be the most popular thing Trump has ever done. Recent polls from the New York Times, Gallup and NORC found that a sizable majority of Americans think athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that match their biological sexual including a majority of Democrats. Most people agree that inherent differences between the sexes create unavoidable issues with how trans women can compete fairly. Virtually all sports have some boundaries for participants. Age groups, weight classes, equipment guidelines that seek to promote competition on the basis of effort and skill, while natural advantages also come into play. One of my favorite examples is the NBA's Victor Wembanyama. We accept those individual differences within divisions. However, we have very little tolerance for intercategory differences those between competitors across those divisions. For instance, sports leagues don't allow 25 year olds to play on middle school teams or for any athletes to take steroids. The average person who goes through puberty as a male will similarly have categorical advantages in athletic performance over a female who goes through puberty and even though hormone treatments can negate many of those differences, some traits like bone structure, heart size, lung capacity, and even just having grown up competing against boys remain. The idea of post puberty males competing with post puberty females feels improper. That viewpoint isn't rooted in bigotry. It's rooted in a sense of fairness. In recent years, some trans women who went through male puberty have achieved notable successes in high level athletics. In 2019, CeCe Telfer became the first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA track and field title. In 2019, J.C. cooper won the women's national championship for bench press in the super heavyweight division. And perhaps the example that's most familiar to people in this debate is lia Thomas in 2022 winning an NCAA championship in the 500 yard freestyle swimming. In these cases and others, inter category physical traits, again, differences that exist between divisions, not within them, almost certainly gave these athletes an advantage in high stakes competitions. However, I don't think these individual cases justify the scope of Trump's order, which calls for a blanket ban on all trans women and girls competing in women's and girls sports. For one, the evidence that this is a pressing issue that requires a sweeping solution is scant. At the collegiate level, NCAA President Charlie Baker recently told Congress that there were, quote, less than 10 transgender athletes in the NCAA out of roughly 510,000. We don't know how many trans girls compete in high school sports, but it's fair to assume that it's a small fraction of the total participants as well. A 2022 study from UCLA's Williams Institute estimated that 300,000 US teens aged 13 to 17 identify as transgender, and put that in the context of the over 8 million students participating in high school sports in the 2023-2024 school year. Of course, a fraction of those 300,000 transgender teens identify as trans girls, and another fraction of those will participate in sports. And their participation in sports is spread out across many different sports. Banning all of these teenagers from competing in sports with no consideration of factors like puberty blockers or hormone treatments feels at odds with fair competition. That viewpoint isn't rooted in extreme gender ideology. It's rooted in a sense of fairness. So what about this situation necessitates federal action? The White House's fact sheet on the order makes one attempt to establish the data on this issue, referencing a figure that female athletes have lost, quote, nearly 900 medals to men competing against them in women's sporting categories, end quote. This stat appears to come from a 2024 United nations report, which itself credits this finding to the Women's Liberation Front, an activist group that opposes many transgender rights initiatives. Setting aside the bias of this source, this stat applies to all women's sports worldwide within a non specified time range. So even assuming this number is accurate, 900 medals across every sport, division and country in the world still wouldn't constitute a strong case for federal action on this issue. Additionally, the order assumes that every case involving trans women in women's sports is essentially the same and should be treated as such. A middle schooler who identifies as a transgender girl and wants to run on the girls cross country team is just different from a trans college basketball player who went through male puberty and wants to compete on the women's team. Similarly, a trans high schooler on the girls junior varsity soccer team is just not the same as a fifth year college senior who comes out as a trans woman and wants to compete in women's shot put. Just as we acknowledge the physical differences between males and females, we should factor in age, sexual maturity and sport specific demands when determining who gets to participate. This executive order is ill equipped to navigate nuances like these, and it would be a harsh punishment to pull federal funding in cases that involve trans students participating in sports regardless of the level. Now, when 70 to 80% of Americans say they support bans on trans women in women's sports, I'm confident that they're thinking of the high performing competitive athletes like Cece Telfer, J.C. cooper and Lia Thomas. But those examples can take on an outsized importance in our minds when in reality there are countless more instances of trans girls who can compete fairly in girls sports. As I said in the beginning, this is an issue that defies black and white assessments. Personally, I land around here we should have restrictions on trans women's participation in high level women's sports, high school, college and professional. And these are cases where scholarships, records and careers are on the line. Whether those restrictions can be achieved via hormone treatments like the NCAA required until its policy change last week, is still an open question and requires more research. In the meantime, though, individual sporting bodies are in the best position to make that determination. And that's with the understanding that no decision will be perfect. Now at the elementary and middle school levels, as well as high school and collegiate teams that aren't engaged in the same level of high stakes competition like junior varsity or teams, I don't see a need for a federal rule restricting participation. Now that's not to say there should be no regulations. Shared locker room spaces in particular should be handled with care. But once more, these are best handled at the community level. If a trans girl wants to play JV girls across, that's a decision Taylor made for the athletic conference her school is a part of. Ditto for other sports at a similar level. Again, some decisions will still result in discontent on one side or the other. I'm not dismissing that, and I of course don't mean to imply that high level athletics are the only competitions that should matter. But allowing local sports leagues and schools to make the call is a better solution than the federal government doing it via executive action. As with his executive actions on immigration, President Trump is acting on a campaign promise that resonated with a large swath of the electorate and not just Republicans. But it's disappointing to see a broad reaching order couched in language about how trans women's participation in sports is dangerous to other women and justified by a few extreme examples that also include some outright falsehoods. I still believe we can value fairness in competition while keeping avenues open to participate in sports and all the benefits they bring, in many cases drawing on the input of families, schools and communities to make decisions rather than top down decrees. We'll be right back after this quick break.

Isaac Saul (29:24)

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Will Kbach (29:56)

We're back in the bottom of the six. Lorenzo's on the mound.

John Law (29:59)

His slider's been Wait, is that a.

Will Kbach (30:01)

Cat on the field? That tabby really moving.

John Law (30:04)

He's past second base and Coach Bakerfield's.

Will Kbach (30:08)

Making a grab and oh, he missed.

Isaac Saul (30:10)

Incredible.

Will Kbach (30:12)

Someone give that cat a contract.

John Law (30:14)

But folks, even this incredible cat can't sign up for Lemonade Pet Insurance. But you can cover your pet now@lemonade.com incredible. All right, that is it for my take. We are going to skip our reader question today to give a little bit more space to our main topic. So with that, I'll send it back over to John for the rest of the podcast and I'll talk to everyone soon. Have a great day.

Will Kbach (30:46)

Thanks, Will. Here's your under the Radar story for today, folks. On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Justice Department to revise its enforcement guidelines for the Foreign Corrupt practices Act, or FCPA, a 1977 law that prohibits United States companies from bribing foreign officials to advance their business interests. The White House said the law hurt American companies ability to compete for business abroad due to overzealous enforcement. Violators of the law can face up to 15 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, and the Justice Department logged 24 enforcement actions related to alleged violations of the FCPA in 2024. A White House official said Trump's order will pause the law to determine how to streamline the FCPA to make sure it's in line with economic interests and national security. CNBC has this story and there's a link in today's episode Description alright, next up is our numbers section. The number of United States laws banning transgender students from participating in sports in line with their gender identity is 25, according to the Movement Advancement Project. The estimated percentage of transgender youth aged 13 to 17 who live in states with laws banning transgender students from participating in sports in line with their Gender identity is 37%. The approximate number of athletes competing at the collegiate level is 510,000, according to NCAA President Charlie Baker. The estimated number of athletes competing at the collegiate level who publicly identify as transgender is less than 10. The percentage of transgender and non binary Americans aged 13 to 18 who said they participated in sport between December 2019 and March 2020 is 17%, according to the Trevor Project. The percentage of Americans who said that transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender is 62%, according to a 2021 Gallup poll. And the percentage of Americans who said that transgender athletes should only be able to play on sports teams that match their birth gender is 69%, according to a 2023 Gallup poll. Alright, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. Studies examining the social aspects of disasters have shown that help from community members outside of official channels is a crucial and effective aspect of disaster recovery. The California wildfires produced countless stories of civilian heroism. From helping vulnerable community members evacuate to neighbors sharing trailers for horses to local businesses opening their facilities for support services. The rising local support has spotlighted the significance and necessity of these sometimes seemingly small actions. Nice News has this story and there's a link in today's episode description alright everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, you can go to readtangle.com where you can sign up for both a newsletter membership and a podcast membership. For the next 48 hours. We are offering a special discount on a bundled membership in celebration of being able to finally offered a genuine bundle membership. We've been working on this for a while and I'm just so excited that we finally have bundled memberships that are available directly on our website. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Will and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day all Peace.

John Law (34:09)

Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Duke Thom Thomas. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was made by Magdalena Bakova who is also our social media manager. The music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go check out our website@readtangle.com that's readtangle.com.

Isaac Saul (34:48)

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Will Kbach (35:19)

Using their credit cards, the most secure and hassle free way to pay. But D.C. politicians want to change that with the Durbin Marshall credit card bill. This bill lets corporate mega stores pick how your credit card is processed, allowing them to use untested payment networks that jeopardize your data, security and rewards. Corporate megastores will make more money and you pay the price. Tell Congress to guard your card because Americans lose when politicians choose. Learn more@guardyourcard.com.

John Law (35:50)

Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. This is Josh Hart from the Knicks, but NBA All Star Jalen Brunson and I created a new video podcast, the Roommate Show. A Playmaker original. You know, the vibes here are always immaculate. We're going to discuss our experiences on and off the court. You want to get into it? Just.

Will Kbach (36:12)

I'll just start with the topics.

John Law (36:13)

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Will Kbach (36:32)

Time All Star, two time All NBA.

John Law (36:34)

Got the 14th overall pick in the 2015 draft, 10 year pro in his first year on the Knicks. Welcome to the show. Subscribe now for weekly episodes. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.