From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.

Tangle.

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. And welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of our take. I'm your host today, senior editor, Will Kayback. Today's main story is the oral arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday about state

laws banning anyone other than biological females from participating in women's and girls' sports.

Now, these arguments were actually two different cases about specific state laws in West Virginia

and Idaho, but the court heard arguments on both cases

at once. So we're going to break down what was said at oral arguments, the read that court watchers

and us are getting on the cases coming out of those oral arguments, and then some of the

broader contours of this debate, which we've written about in the past,

but these cases allow us a chance to revisit them, especially specific to the issue of sports.

Before we dive in, a quick plug for last week's Friday edition,

when we published our annual self-review, assessing our commentary on the biggest stories in politics in 2025. In my view, the exercise is one of the ways that we live out our values of being a transparent media organization

that's accountable to our audience. And I also think it's a useful tool for reflecting on how

these major stories evolve after they fall out of the news cycle.

So we'll put a link to part one and part two of that review in today's show notes.

And also, as a reminder, you can listen to it as a podcast, which we put out last Friday.

However, the full edition is only for premium members.

So to get the full thing, you'll need to upgrade either the newsletter, the podcast, or both. All right, without further ado, let's dive in.

All right, let's get into today's quick hits.

Number one, CBS News reported that the death toll in anti-government protests in Iran is estimated to be 12,000 and could be as high as 20,000 as Islamic Republic security forces

crack down on protesters. Other estimates have put the death toll at approximately 2000.

Separately, President Donald Trump encouraged Iranian demonstrators to continue resisting, posting on

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