The IRS Bleeds
Plus: Ceasefire talks, J.D. Vance as the future of the GOP, the government's war on treehouses, and more...
What will a gutted IRS look like? The Internal Revenue Service—my own personal most-hated government agency—appears to be in hot water this tax season, mostly due to cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
You might recall that in 2021, the IRS was authorized to hire 87,000 new tax collectors and tax-related bureaucrats over the next decade, with an increase in funding sent their way by then-President Joe Biden. And in 2022, this became a political scandal (especially around these parts), because Biden and many of his Democratic bedfellows claimed that audit rates on households making $400,000 or less would not go up, just as some of them were cutting provisions in the actual legislation that tried to codify such assurances.
It's not clear they ever really did hire all those new agents and paper-filers; the IRS remains a little under 100,000 strong, hiring 19,482 total employees in fiscal year 2024. But the agency suffers from retention issues: About 10,000 employees left that same year.
Now there's a new sheriff in town, and some 7,000 IRS employees have been laid off from the agency under DOGE, hitting the "large business and international" division especially hard, per reporting from The New York Times. This means more complex audits might struggle to be completed—or might never start!—while the easiest-to-conduct audits on the poorest taxpayers might be prioritized.
Though all I want in this world is to never be audited by the men with guns, there's a clear issue presented for budget balancers: What will happen to federal revenue if the IRS ceases to do its job? And what will happen when customer service is made even worse? Will we toil to pay the right amount without any help from the government agents who are demanding we do so?
Another odd nugget: Normally, IRS commissioners stay in place even as administrations change. But President Donald Trump decided to dismiss the old commissioner, Daniel Werfel, whose term was not set to expire for another two years, replacing him with the former Missouri congressman Billy Long, an inexperienced figure who has yet to be confirmed by the Senate.
To be clear, I'm a big fan of the Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) proposal, eloquently framed as "blow up the tax code and start over," in which we replace the incomprehensibly complex system with a flat tax. Or the idea of making the tax code so simple that you can file your taxes on a postcard—a common Republican talking point circa 2017. (These types of changes would, to be clear, have to happen at the congressional level.) But what Trump is pursuing appears to be something different altogether: Slash the auditors who might crack down on larger businesses who might not be filing properly, deputize IRS agents to be more involved in immigration enforcement, and make sure the whole agency is helmed by someone with basically no experience. It's possible that DOGE will help the agency modernize its archaic tech, but overall it's not clear what the game plan is.
Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks: Negotiators will meet in Qatar this week in an attempt to end the war that started with the terrorist group Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. A deal cannot be made until the question of what to do about Hamas is resolved. Israel, for its part, says that Hamas must be eradicated within Gaza and can be in no future position of power. "Hamas has said it may be willing to give up civilian governance, but has firmly rejected dissolving its military wing," reports The New York Times. There are reportedly 59 hostages still in Gaza, with 24 believed by the Israeli government to be alive.
"In mid-January, after 15 months of devastating war, Israel and Hamas agreed to a complex, phased truce intended to free hostages taken from Israel and held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israel, and to build momentum toward a comprehensive cease-fire," continues the Times. But that agreement expired on March 1 and there's not a next step in place; Israel has offered to extend the ceasefire and more hostage-prisoner swaps, but it has also just cut off electricity to the Strip, which may complicate negotiations. (I wonder whether building out infrastructure capabilities, such that they don't have to rely on Israel, would be a better use of the Gazan leadership's time than building rockets and tunnels.)
Scenes from New York: I do not like these silly city policies and I intend to keep running my mouth about it.
Love when my husband and son get yelled at @ the Met for the heinous crime of husband carrying toddler son on shoulders. Which is apparently BANNED by not just the Met, but also Guggenheim, and Museum of Natural History. A city full of nonsense policies! @FreeRangeKids pic.twitter.com/i8z6Yeb5Oe
— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) March 9, 2025
I also appreciate that the Guggenheim's museum policy involves permitting babies to be "chestfed." It's all paying lip service to being child-friendly, but not being truly child-friendly.
QUICK HITS
- Is J.D. Vance the GOP's future? Zach Weissmueller and I talked with James Pogue, a writer for Vanity Fair and prolific chronicler of the New Right, who has interviewed the vice president a bunch of times. Full Just Asking Questions episode here.
- Meanwhile, in Canada: "Mark Carney, a political rookie but experienced banker with a history of helming state financial institutions during crises, won the race to replace Justin Trudeau on Sunday," reports Politico.
- "My suspicion is that we are going through a shift now where the same technological forces that yielded hyper-individualism will increasingly create evolutionary pressures in *favor* of different kinds of communitarian/familial/religious tendencies, call them 'post-liberal' or not, because those tendencies will be required for cultures and families to survive under conditions where otherwise the combination of distraction and obsolescence will lead to literal extinction," writes Ross Douthat on X. "But that's on more of a 50-year timeline, and Trump is probably not a primary player in that story—except as a signifier of the turn from the age of liberal dominance to the next phase of the story."
- "Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal has kicked the Social Democratic Party from his coalition due to a dispute over economic policy, as his government's approval ratings hit rock bottom," reports Bloomberg.
- A South Carolina man—who murdered his ex-girlfriend's parents in 2001—became the first American in years to be legally executed by firing squad. A gruesome story all around.
- "An epic treehouse that has stood in Sherman Oaks for 24 years now teeters on the brink of destruction after the city of L.A. declared the whimsical creation a crime," reports the Los Angeles Times. "'The Simpsons' producer Rick Polizzi built the treehouse, dubbed Boney Island, in his front yard as a playhouse for his daughters. He says it's become a quirky local landmark loved by the neighborhood children and visited by celebrities such as Halle Berry, Christina Aguilera and Will Ferrell. But the city says it runs afoul of building permit requirements and has pursued criminal charges against him."
- Plenty of sports policy implications stem from this:
My observation is that very many women genuinely do not have an intuitive sense of how much stronger men are than women, because men have not used their strength against them &, when playing, hold back their strength.
1/ pic.twitter.com/I4hzkUQmTb— Helen Pluckrose (@HPluckrose) March 8, 2025
