Tangle - The Olympic boxing controversy.

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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A few months ago, we hosted our second-ever live event in New York City. We brought three prominent political analysts on stage — Michael Moynihan, Catherine Rampell, and Josh Hammer — all with different backgrounds and political beliefs. And then we debated some major issues about the 2024 election. 

Today, we released the live video from our event, which you can watch now:

Quick hits.

1. Russia declared a state of emergency at its border region of Kursk after Ukraine launched an unusual cross-border attack. (The declaration)
2. Former President Trump announced plans to hold a news conference in Florida on Thursday afternoon, his first public appearance since Vice President Kamala Harris named Tim Walz as her running mate. (The conference) Separately, Trump announced he’ll be interviewed by Elon Musk on Monday. (The announcement)
3. Global stocks rebounded from a sell-off earlier this week, and U.S. treasury yields rose. (The rebound) The 30-year-fixed mortgage rate dropped to 6.55%, its lowest level in 15 months, as the Federal Reserve considers an interest rate cut in September. (The rate)
4. The Minnesota National Guard contested Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s (D) claim that he held the rank of command sergeant major at the time of his retirement from the state’s National Guard, saying Walz did not complete the requisite coursework to retain the rank. (The dispute)
5. Special Counsel David Weiss's office accused Hunter Biden of accepting payments from a Romanian businessman who was attempting to influence U.S. government agencies. (The accusation)

Today's topic.

The Olympic boxing controversy. On Tuesday, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif won her semifinal match at the Paris Olympics, advancing to the gold-medal fight in the women’s 66-kilogram division on Friday. 

Last week, Khelif became the center of an Olympic controversy when Italian boxer Angela Carini retired from their match after just 46 seconds, suggesting the force of Khelif’s punches was overwhelming. The bout’s surprising end brought attention to Khelif’s disqualification from the 2023 world championships after the International Boxing Association (IBA) said she failed a chromosome test and was not eligible to compete against women. The IBA’s decision, and Carini’s comments, led many observers to argue that Khelif (as well as Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting, who also failed the IBA test) should not have been allowed to compete in the women’s division at the Olympics. 

Khelif was assigned female at birth and is categorized as female on her passport, which is the standard used by the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) boxing eligibility. She has never identified as transgender or intersex (having physical characteristics that don’t fit into a male/female sex binary), but her disqualification from last year’s world championships led to speculation that she is a biological male or has abnormal levels of testosterone for a female. Khelif initially appealed the IBA’s decision but withdrew her challenge during the appeals process; Yu-ting did not appeal.

However, the IBA has not published the test results, and the IOC severed ties with the organization last year due to alleged financial and ethical impropriety. The IBA is led by Russia’s Umar Kremlev (an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin), and during his tenure Kremlev has suspended Ukraine from the organization, moved some of the IBA’s operations to Russia, and accepted sponsorships from Russia’s state-run energy company Gazprom. Khelif competed under IBA rules without issue (including at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, where she lost in the quarter-finals) until she was abruptly declared ineligible after defeating Russian boxer Azalia Amineva in the 2023 world championships. 

The IOC described Khelif and Yu-ting’s disqualification as “a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA,” in which they “were suddenly disqualified without any due process.” In response, the IBA claimed that Khelif and Yu-ting failed eligibility tests in 2022 and 2023, though they did not explain why no action was taken against either boxer in 2022. 

Despite the controversy surrounding the IBA decision, many prominent figures — including former President Donald Trump, Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling — have argued Khelif and Yu-ting should not have been eligible to compete in the women’s division at the Olympics, citing concerns over safety and unfair competitive advantages. Broadly, the Olympics saga has renewed the debate over transgender women’s participation in women’s sports, with critics of the IOC suggesting Khelif’s participation jeopardizes the integrity of the competition. 

Khelif said the scrutiny she has faced “harms human dignity” and called on “the people of the world… to refrain from bullying all athletes, because this has effects, massive effects.” In the past week, Algerians have rallied around her, celebrating her Olympic run in newspapers, on television, and on social media. On Tuesday, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune called Khelif to congratulate her after her semifinal victory. “Thank you Imane Khelif for making all Algerians happy, with this strong and wonderful qualification for the final. All Algerian women and men are with you,” Tebboune wrote on social media. 

Today, we’ll share arguments from the right and left about the Olympic controversy. Then, my take.

What the right is saying.

• The right is critical of Khelif and Yu-Ting’s participation in the Olympics, suggesting the IOC should change its rules for eligibility. 
• Some express compassion for Khelif’s situation but say the safety of female athletes should be prioritized.
• Others say allowing boxers like Khelif to compete will lead to serious injury.

National Review’s editors wrote about “the dangerous Olympic boxing gender experiment.”

“Despite uncertainty about the precise qualifications and testing monitored by the IBA, it is clear that the Olympic Games have far less stringent requirements. The International Olympic Committee decided in 1999 to end sex-verification screening for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney because, according to a 2000 article published by Genetics in Medicine, the chromosomal testing was expensive, was discriminatory, and emotionally harmed female athletes,” the editors said. “The International Olympic Committee’s ‘Portrayal Guidelines’ argue that ‘a person’s sex category is not assigned based on genetics alone.’ But genetics do determine sex — regardless of what we ‘assign’ or what letter is printed on a passport.

“The issue isn’t whether the IOC violates its own rules. The issue is that those rules are unjust. Abolishing chromosomal testing and other forms of examinations allowed athletes with rare disorders that provide competitive advantages to participate in women’s divisions,” the editors wrote. “Although neither Khelif nor Lin (who coasted to victory on Friday by unanimous decision) has publicly identified as ‘transgender,’ the Olympic Games’ expansive transgender-inclusion policies have enabled battery against women under the guise of ‘sports’ rather than ‘violence.’”

In RedState, Margaret Clark argued “it doesn't matter if [an] Olympic boxer is intersex — women should still be protected, not the minority.”

“This is undoubtedly a troubling situation in which empathy is due. Imane was born with a complex condition through no fault of her own. There is reason why some would feel that she should not be excluded,” Clark said. “Even as we have compassion for people like Khelif, we must remember that women's sports were created to offer a protected space for the millions of females around the world who previously did not have their own arena. Inclusivity of a minority, even if well-intentioned, at the expense of the majority is injustice. Asking all women to sacrifice their safety and opportunities so that a few select women who were born either male or intersex is wrong.”

“Who are the people making these decisions for female athletes everywhere? Have the female athletes been consulted? Where are the feminists defending women's rights to a safe and fair playing field? As women, we have a responsibility to advocate for our rights and the protection of our spaces. We must also debunk the lie that doing so means we are unfairly excluding others. But truly, only a woman would be expected to include others at her cost anyway, right? Inclusivity of a minority at the expense of a majority is not equality -- it's preference, and it has no place in women's rights.”

In The New York Post, Erika Sanzi said the issue is “complex, but still one of fairness.”

“This situation is a complicated one: Unlike the majority of male athletes competing against females in interscholastic and collegiate competitions here in the United States, who generally self-identify as transgender, Khelif is believed to suffer a disorder of sexual development,” Sanzi wrote. “But our compassion cannot negate the unfairness and the very real danger of allowing athletes with these conditions to participate in the women’s division. After two blows to the head, Carini knew she couldn’t safely go on. If the IOC doesn’t right this ship, someone will likely be killed. That’s why other competitions test female boxers for testosterone levels, the same as they would check for other performance-enhancing drugs.”

“Here at home, on the same day the Olympics furor broke, the Biden-Harris administration’s rewrite of Title IX took effect in the 24 states that have not won preliminary injunctions to block the law’s implementation. This new and completely gutted version of Title IX expands the definition of ‘sex’ to include ‘gender identity’ — and now, the only requirement to participate as a male in girls’ sports is to self-identity as a girl,” Sanzi said. “Too often these stories are framed as what’s respectful for the transgender athlete. But showing them respect should not mean throwing out the rights of other athletes, or creating an unfair — or unsafe — competition.”

What the left is saying.

• The left argues that Khelif’s critics are jumping to conclusions without evidence.
• Some say the right is using the controversy to advance an anti-LGBTQ agenda.
• Others say a fact-based conversation about sex and gender is needed. 

In USA Today, Dan Wolken said “let's just slow down and look at the facts.”

“Let’s make one thing very clear off the top. There isn’t a sane human being on Planet Earth who believes that a man should be boxing women in the Olympics. Not a single one. That said, let’s also say something equally as important: Slow down,” Wolken wrote. “There aren't a whole lot of facts right now. There are, however, plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the explosive narrative that a man was boxing women at the Olympics when you consider the underlying issues with that claim.”

“The IBA issued a statement saying that Khelif and Lin did not undergo a testosterone examination but failed ‘a separate and recognized test’... We don’t know what kind of tests those were, what they were testing for or which organization oversaw the lab work. If you aren’t aware, those details are kind of a big deal in the Olympic world,” Wolken said. “When you put all this entire fact pattern together, there are far too many unanswered questions and obvious agendas here for the American political right-wing to send this train down the tracks in good faith.” 

In The Nation, Jules Boykoff and Dave Zirin wrote “we must defend Imane Khelif.”

“Khelif is a boxer with a 9-5 career professional record and a low knockdown rate. But that did not stop her tormentors, who know nothing about women’s boxing, from trying to make her sound like the young Mike Tyson. Carini is a police officer and favorite of Italian fascists, with a history of quitting early in fights,” Boykoff and Zirin said. “Setting aside the fact that it is medically possible for women to have XY chromosomes and setting aside the fact that numerous health conditions can spur a rise in the production of male hormones and setting aside all the problems with assuming that there is a tidy biological ‘gender binary’ that Khelif is somehow guilty of violating, there’s the matter of the messenger.

“The International Boxing Association is shady. In its 130 years of existence, the IOC has withdrawn recognition from only one international sports governing body: the IBA in 2023—remarkable given the long history of corrupt sporting governing bodies,” Boykoff and Zirin wrote. “There is zero available evidence of these supposedly failed tests that the IBA is howling about. Nothing has been released to the public… That hasn’t stopped the right-wing hate machine, alongside a relentless contingent of transphobes who have made ‘Save Women’s Sports’ their mantra, apparently unconcerned that they are throwing women like Khelif, Lin Yu-Ting, and anyone else who fails to pass their looks test.”

In Bloomberg, F.D. Flam suggested the controversy is being “misunderstood.”

“The case highlights what’s wrong with Musk, Rowling and others who think of themselves as bravely opposing excess political correctness. They’re too in love with their own assumptions and superficial judgments. Khelif’s jawline and strong torso may look stereotypically masculine, but biological sex is about more than looks — and is sometimes more complex than chromosomes,” Flam said. “There are a number of ways an XY individual might develop what looks like female genitalia, or an XX individual might have male-like testosterone-levels.

“Embryos all start out with a sort of starter kit for the reproductive parts for both sexes, and a series of activated genes and hormonal surges usually steers things in one direction or the other. Usually, but not always,” Flam wrote. “Among Olympians, it’s more likely we would see people with unusual physical traits. The Olympics and other elite sporting events select for extreme body types — people who are unusually strong, incredibly tall, or short but extremely powerful… This Olympic flap comes at a time of confusion and disagreement about the nature of sex and gender. But there’s no excuse for bullying or aiming cheating accusations at athletes who don’t conform to expectations.”

My take.

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• It’s important to start by saying Khelif is not transgender, we don’t know that she has male traits, and she’s playing by the IOC’s rules.
• There are still reasonable discussions to be had in every sport over where the lines for the divisions are drawn, including for Khelif and in boxing. 
• My biggest takeaway is that the IBA is highly suspect, and that they won’t release their test results has only made the whole situation worse.

When this story initially broke, I had a few thoughts:

First, I was disappointed in how ill-informed the commentary online was. It seemed like the vast majority of people leaving comments about Khelif presumed she is a male-to-female transgender fighter, and chalked her inclusion in the Paris games up to "woke" ideology from the Olympic committee. It’s not as if the IOC is incapable of making politically touchy decisions; it has prohibited prominent trans athletes like Lia Thomas from competing in its events, and every year it seems to be trying to adapt its rules to address the latest science and be as fair as possible to all competitors. This case, however, is not about a trans athlete — and yet, online commenters said a lot of really prejudicial things about transgender people that were obviously irrelevant to anyone who spent even two minutes reading past the headlines. I was able to get at least one prominent person to correct the record, but I shouldn’t have had to, given all the available information on Khelif and her home country of Algeria (where being trans is a crime).

Second, the claim that Khelif is "cheating" is also completely unfair. She was assigned female at birth and has identified as a woman her entire life. If these test results are real, they’re probably a bigger shock to her than anyone else. Many women with differences in sex development (DSD) never even know they have them. Also, Khelif was competing in the Olympics because the rules explicitly allow her to; that is not cheating. If you have a problem with her fighting, you don't have a problem with her or her decision — you have a problem with the Olympic rules. But most of the people mad at Khelif didn't seem to understand the rules, they just wanted to be mad at Khelif.

Third, there is a really sad irony here that people like Khelif are proof gender and sex are not always simple, yet Khelif’s story immediately had critics insisting they were. Chromosomal variations are not extremely rare — some estimates say they occur in about 1 in 100 people, a higher rate than the birth of identical twins. So we need a better set of rules to address them. If the IBA reports are accurate — and Khelif did have XY chromosomes and DSD and went through what is effectively a male puberty — I think there is a very good argument she shouldn't be allowed to compete in the women's boxing division. Experts seem to agree the conferred testosterone increase would be a massive advantage in boxing. And as I've said before, my overarching solution for sex-and-gender disputes in sports is that the governing bodies of the individual sports should solve them — not general groups like the NCAA, IOC, or national governments.

Yet somewhat paradoxically, after watching this story develop for a few days, by far the most dominant reaction I have to it is this: I don't trust the IBA.

To be clear, basically everything I've said above is still only hypothetical, because we don't actually know that Imane Khelif has DSD, XY chromosomes, or any typically male competitive advantages. And the reason we don't know is that the IBA has not actually released the test results that would move this discussion to the realm of facts, and it continues to refuse to do so. The closest to corroborating information they’ve given us is the IBA’s head Umar Kremlev’s saying we should  "read between the lines," which in this case is a very bad solution for a very complicated issue.

Regardless of how Kremlev intended his statement, here are some of the lines I’m reading between: Khelif has been a professional boxer for seven years, and her gender had not been challenged until she beat Azalia Amineva, a previously unbeaten Russian prospect. (Amineva’s loss was conveniently wiped from her record after Khelif’s disqualification). The IBA, which leveled the ban, has deep financial ties to Russia and is being led by a former boxer who is friendly with Vladimir Putin. Despite the levels of corruption we've witnessed in sports, only one international sports governing body has had its recognition withdrawn by the IOC: the IBA, in 2023.

This is not some "Red Scare" conspiracy. It’s just the reality.

If the IBA wanted to avoid further scrutiny and uncloud this debate, they could do so in minutes by releasing the tests to journalists; then this conversation could be one filled with nuanced rules questions, complicated scientific debates, and some empathy for the athletes in question. Of course, I’m curious why Yu-ting did not appeal the decision, and would love to hear more from Khelif about why she called the testing a “big conspiracy” and then withdrew her appeal, but without the IBA’s test results we are all just speculating.  

And now the whole thing has been gobbled up by the partisan machinery, with just about everyone jumping to their pre-set conclusions, projecting what they wanted this story to be about onto Khelif, and retreating to their corners. Liberals simply ignored the possibility that the IOC rules might not be the best way to address fairness of play, and then turned Khelif into a victim of racism or bigotry. Meanwhile, conservatives demonized Khelif, misrepresented her sex and gender story, and refused to engage with the very real and difficult reality that sex and gender are not always as binary as they claim. Much of the fault for that lies with the IBA, but a good deal falls on our polarized political culture.

The whole story is an example of how our worst tribal impulses can distract us from the most important question in settling any controversy: what are the actual facts?

Take the survey: Do you think the IOC is being fair? Let us know!

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Your questions, answered.

Q: Why is someone who is from Jamaican / Indian descent considered “black” or “African American”?

— R. from Tega Cay, South Carolina

Tangle: Following our two-part deep-dive on Kamala Harris a few weeks ago, we’ve gotten some version of this question from several readers. From the way I see it, there are two questions here — one is about race, and the other is about language.

Let me start with the race question. What makes Kamala Harris black? Some people, readers of ours and writers in other publications, have noted that she is biracial — like Obama — or South Asian, or Indian. So, what makes a person with one black parent black?

The easy answer here is that she’s both — she’s black, and she’s Indian — and that she’s always been. But there’s a more complicated answer, too (because race can be very complicated): Race is about genetics as much as it is about culture. Many people have mixed backgrounds, and based on their upbringing or culture lean into one racial identity more than another. We know that Kamala Harris went to Howard, a historically black university, and that being black has always been part of her racial identity. So has being South Asian. That can happen.

The second question is about language; why did we refer to Kamala Harris as “African American” even though her father is Jamaican, not African? The U.S. Census Bureau, which tracks population-wide demographic information, defines being both black and African American as “having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa.” On her father’s side, Harris’s family traces back to Africa, so “African American” is still accurate (roughly 90% of Jamaicans are of African origin). That’s similar to how some people can be “Asian American” even if their parents immigrated to the United States by way of Canada.

We choose not to capitalize the word ‘black’ — you can read more about our editorial choices here.

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Under the radar.

Former President Donald Trump has denied knowing who was in charge of Project 2025 or having any association with the project, but in April of 2022 he shared a 45-minute private flight to a Heritage Foundation conference with Heritage President Kevin Roberts. The flight, which had not been previously reported, has been documented by plane-tracking data, sources who were on the flight, and a photograph of the two on board the plane. When Trump and Roberts arrived at the conference, Trump told the audience Heritage was "going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do." The Washington Post has the story.

Numbers.

• 46. The number of seconds Imane Khelif’s match with Angela Carini lasted before Carini withdrew.
• 41-9. Khelif’s career record in boxing. 
• 6. The number of knockouts scored by Khelif in those matches. 
• 45-14. Lin Yu-ting’s career record in boxing. 
• 1. The number of knockouts scored by Yu-ting in those matches. 
• 1 in 1,000 to 4,500. The incidence of children born with a disorder of sexual development in live births, according to a 2023 study. 
• 1.7%. The percentage of people born intersex, according to InterACT.
• $100,000. The amount of prize money the IBA said it would award Carini, her coach, and the Italian Boxing Federation (IBF) after Carini’s loss to Khelif. The IBF said it will not accept the money.

The extras.

• One year ago today we wrote about the U.S. credit downgrade.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the Iranian agent who reportedly hired political hitmen.
• Nothing to do with politics: It’s time for modern pentathlon! The weirdest Olympic event.
• Yesterday’s survey: 1,772 readers responded to our survey asking about Kamala Harris picking Tim Walz with 63% saying supporting the pick. “He's a straight shooter. Cuts through the BS with simple, clear value statements. We can and should be ‘good neighbors who help one another’,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

The number of unhoused veterans has decreased by more than 50% since 2008, when Congress brought back a pilot program called HUD-VASH that links housing department vouchers with case management support from the veterans department. Granting resources for veterans receives bipartisan support in Congress, increasing the political will to act. Even as rates of homelessness rise nationally, rates of unhoused veterans have increased at a slower rate, and in some areas declined. The New York Times has the story.

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