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While national security adviser Michael Waltz’s Signal chat security breach debacle has dominated headlines this week, it’s not the only act of reckless disregard for the safety and security of Americans in the news. This week also saw projections that Trump-Musk cuts to the IRS could lead to a $500 billion tax revenue shortfall this year, with a slump already in effect at this point in tax season.
Between these two incidents, the administration has demonstrated a striking combination of strategic destruction of government functions designed to protect the public, and reckless disregard for rules and regulations designed to govern their conduct. Comic book villains typically provide more plausible justifications for their smash and grabs of power than has been on offer from Musk, Trump, or their henchmen.
IRS Cuts Will Harm Lower Income Taxpayers and Undercut Public Services
As one might expect from an administration run by rapacious billionaires, the Trump-Musk administration has had the IRS in its sights from the beginning. As soon as Trump’s first full day in office, the agency was bracing for cuts:
- January 21, 2025: Trump singled the IRS out among agencies as being under an “indefinite” hiring freeze (not just 90 days)
- February 20, 2025: 7000 probationary employees at the IRS received letters “telling them they were being fired for poor performance”
- March 13, 2025: The administration replaced the IRS’s top lawyer, Chief Counsel William Paul, as they attempted to use IRS taxpayer data to deport immigrants
- March 18, 2025: The Washington Post reported the Trump administration plans to cut “nearly 20,000 agency employees, specifically targeting new hires in taxpayer services and enforcement divisions” by May 15, 2025.
For an administration bent on destroying the federal government while enriching their wealthy friends, it’s a strategic move. Undercutting IRS enforcement capacity makes it harder for the government to enforce tax laws on rich people and corporations, which leads to less tax revenue, and thus less funding for the government to enforce the law against rich people and corporations, leading to less government and more concentrated wealth for billionaires. It’s a perfect—if incredibly obvious and blatantly corrupt—plan.
But that’s not all. In addition to targeting compliance and enforcement capacity at the IRS, which has already resulted in the agency dropping multiple “investigations of high-value corporations and taxpayers,” the newly announced cuts will disproportionately target the Taxpayer Advocate Service. The Taxpayer Advocate Service is a small unit within the IRS that functions as an “internal watchdog,” and provides support to taxpayers navigating technical and financial issues or struggling to pay their taxes.
Finally, the reduction in staff at the IRS is likely to delay processing of tax returns for anyone who files their taxes—disproportionately impacting people who might need the money, as corporations and the wealthy continue to have an easier time evading paying their fair share.
These projected plans, unfolding right in the thick of tax season, seem already to have impacted the tax revenue being collected. According to the Washington Post, the IRS has “noticed an uptick in online chatter from individuals declaring their intention to not pay taxes this year or to aggressively claim credits and deductions for which they are ineligible […] wagering that auditors will not examine their accounts” and fewer tax filings have been collected so far than at this point last year.
Cuts to the enforcement capacity of the IRS are emblematic of everything Trump and Musk stand for—greed, corruption, self-enrichment at others’ expense—and of what they’ve promised their billionaire allies—help flouting the law to hoard more and more wealth. In that sense, the cuts aren’t surprising. They are, however, deeply concerning in terms of the impact they will have on government revenue, reducing the (already too-small) amount of funding for public services that comes from fair taxation of the profits of corporations and the wealthy.
This revenue shortfall can only exacerbate the country’s massive wealth gap, as the wealthy have more opportunities to dodge tax law and avoid accountability, while low-income people have less recourse when running into bureaucratic and financial issues, with no relief despite following the law and paying their taxes. (Since the income of most ordinary workers is subject to withholding, and thus doesn’t present the options for chicanery available to the ultra-rich.)
New Levels of Impunity: Accidentally Sharing Delicate National Security Information in a Group Chat with the Editor-in-Chief of a Major Publication
In addition to the administration’s strategic, targeted attacks on the government’s capacity to collect taxes from rich people or hold tax-dodging corporations accountable, this week also saw major leaders in the administration flout national security policy by talking about planned air strikes on Yemen in a Signal group chat with disappearing messages on—a group chat the public knows about because national security adviser Michael Waltz added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to it.
The leak became the dominant conversation topic of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual worldwide threats hearing Tuesday, as Republicans denied that the use of Signal and the addition of a member of the media to the chat were mistakes. (Every element of this story, from the use of a mass market messaging app on unsecured devices to the inclusion of a member of the media, seems to violate its very own federal guideline governing security clearance.). Thus far, Trump has also defended Waltz, and claimed that criticisms of his conduct were “unfair.”
The creation of this Signal chat and the fallout are just the latest examples of the Trump administration breaking the law (and ignoring court orders challenging its law-breaking, as we’ve been tracking). It is merely the most blatant example of top administration officials—from the Secretary of State to the Vice President—being careless with their use of technology and their responsibility to people’s safety.
(Not to mention the carelessness for Yemeni lives, with the arguably unconstitutional strikes resulting in reports of civilian casualties, including children, right around the tenth anniversary of US attacks on Yemen.)
This episode provides a window into how unafraid the administration is of the potential of accountability, and how quickly and recklessly they are willing to move toward their goals.
Resistance to this kind of carelessness needs to be at least as aggressive. Top Democrats have not done nearly enough to castigate Republicans for their behavior or make them experience consequences for their actions. If the tables were turned, one can imagine Republicans leveraging Democrats’ carelessness to the fullest extent of their power (and beyond), calling hearings, bringing charges against individual officials, and taking hold of the narrative in the media, for starters.
As we have before, we wonder again if Democrats are aware that a motion for impeachment is privileged and demands a response in the form of a public vote from the House of Representatives? And if they are playing dumb about the powers they have, will grassroots organizations forcefully point out their options, or will we have a repeat of the Continuing Resolution fiasco, in which Senate Minority Leader Schumer lied about the legal repercussions of a shutdown?
Want more? Check out some of the pieces that we have published or contributed research or thoughts to in the last week:
Crypto’s Clout in Washington is Soaring
K Street crashes into ‘nearly un-lobbyable’ Elon Musk
Trump Sets His Sights on “Eliminating” Public Education
There Is No DeJoy In Mudville, Or In The Postal Service Either
Not Even Veterans Are Exempt From The Trump Firing Line
Paul, Weiss Appeased Trump. More Attacks on BigLaw Will Follow.
USPS’s Louis DeJoy Resigns as Banks “Salivate” Over Musk Goal of Privatization
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is Helping Crypto’s Clout in Washington Soar