That is inaccurate. The standard remained (and remains) the same as it had been long before then—ever since pg changed the name of this site from "Startup News" to "Hacker News", and the focus of the site to intellectual curiosity, coming up on 20 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html.
[editing - bear with me...]
Now that you mention it, I remember the "no politics" week, and it's possible that I'm conflating the end of that experiment and "allowing more politics" and getting the time messed up. But... are you sure you didn't loosen up on politics at the start of Trump's second term?
Yes in the sense that we didn't change HN's standard or moderate differently. But of course there was a surge of that sort of content - this is what I mean by "macro trends" above.
> you, dang, as I recall, saying that HN was loosening the rules to allow more politics
I don't think so! but if you can track down any post that sounded like that, it would be interesting to take a look.
US politics has become so polarized, so trench-warfare-without-ever-giving-a-single-INCH-of-ground, that few people will actually listen to a point by the other side, no matter how valid. They will instead argue to the ends of the earth that the other side does not actually have a point, they have never had a point, on any subject, ever.
This leads to lousy conversations - both sides shouting at each other, and nobody listening.
Around the start of Trump's second term, HN reduced the degree to which politics was considered off topic. I think that's made HN more political, more shouty, less having actual conversations. And I think it has hurt the character of the site, and the community around it.