Podcasts about treasury department

Congressman Andy Biggs from Arizona shares his insights on the current political climate, the unrest in America, and the support for President Trump's policies. He discusses the disconnect between the Democrats and Middle America, the implications of recent protests, and the importance of law and order. Congressman Marlin Stutzman discusses the implications of the one big beautiful bill, the importance of food security, and the vulnerabilities posed by foreign actors in the wake of COVID-19. Stutzman shares insights on how the proposed Spending Accountability Act aims to curb irresponsible spending and protect rural America. Finally, Anne Fundner, a California woman whose 15-year-old son died in 2022 after taking pills laced with fentanyl, discusses the recent sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department on Los Chapitos, a faction of the Sinaloa drug cartel. She also sheds light on the ongoing battle against drug trafficking and the critical role of various government agencies in combating this crisis.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As Republicans work at break-neck speed to push another round of massive tax cuts for the wealthy, we thought it would be a good idea to revisit our 2019 conversation with Bruce Bartlett, a Reagan policy adviser and key architect of the 1981 tax cuts. Bartlett explains how the trickle-down logic he once championed turned out to be economic snake oil, because tax breaks for the wealthy don't grow the economy—they just grow inequality. Bruce Bartlett is an American historian and former economic adviser who helped draft the 1981 Reagan tax cuts. He served in senior roles under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, including at the Treasury Department and the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. Once a champion of supply-side economics, Bartlett is now a leading critic of trickle-down tax policy. This episode originally aired January 29, 2019. Social Media: @bartlettb.bsky.social @BruceBartlett Further reading:  Trump tax bill will add $2.4 trillion to the deficit and leave 10.9 million more uninsured, CBO says The secret saga of Trump's tax cuts Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Threads: pitchforkeconomics Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer, @civicaction YouTube: @pitchforkeconomics LinkedIn: Pitchfork Economics Substack: The Pitch

This Day in Legal History: Colegrove v. GreenOn June 10, 1946, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Colegrove v. Green, upholding an Illinois congressional districting scheme that created dramatically uneven district populations. The plaintiffs argued the map diluted votes by packing more people into some districts than others, violating principles of equal representation. However, the Court, in a plurality opinion by Justice Felix Frankfurter, declined to intervene. Frankfurter emphasized that districting was a “political question” and not within the judiciary's purview to resolve.This ruling effectively insulated redistricting practices from federal judicial review and left voters in malapportioned districts without a constitutional remedy. Frankfurter's view was rooted in judicial restraint, warning against courts becoming embroiled in “political thickets.” But critics argued that this deference allowed entrenched political interests to ignore population shifts and disenfranchise urban voters.The decision stood until 1962, when the Court reversed course in Baker v. Carr. There, the justices held that federal courts could indeed hear redistricting cases under the Equal Protection Clause, ushering in the “one person, one vote” era. Colegrove thus marked the high-water mark of the political question doctrine's use in avoiding electoral oversight—a stance the Court ultimately abandoned.Mexico's antitrust regulator is poised to issue a ruling by June 17 on whether Google engaged in monopolistic practices in the country's digital advertising market. If found guilty, the tech giant could face a fine amounting to 8% of its annual Mexican revenue—potentially one of the largest ever imposed by the agency. The case began in 2020 and moved into a trial phase last year, with a key hearing held on May 20. Mexican regulators claim Google built an illegal monopoly, and has obtained financial data from the Mexican tax authority as part of its investigation.Google, which hasn't disclosed Mexico-specific revenue but reported $20.4 billion for the broader “other Americas” region in 2024, could seek an injunction to delay the ruling pending judicial review. This would parallel similar antitrust issues the company faces in the U.S., where courts have ruled against its dominance in search and advertising technologies.Adding to tensions, President Claudia Sheinbaum has sued Google for renaming the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America” for U.S. users—a move she claims Google had no authority to make. The long-standing antitrust case has drawn political attention, with lawmakers urging Mexican officials to act.Google in Mexico faces major potential fine as antitrust ruling nears | ReutersTexas has taken a meaningful first step toward curbing abuse in its affordable housing tax system with HB 21, but the new law leaves major gaps that developers could still exploit. Signed by Governor Greg Abbott, HB 21 aims to end long-term tax breaks for projects that offer little true affordability. However, the bill's reliance on “area median income” (AMI) to define affordability creates a loophole: in wealthy areas, rent set at 80% of AMI can be as high as typical market rates, making the term “affordable” misleading.The law requires that half of all units be reserved for “low-income” tenants, but without adjusting for local wage realities, this standard fails to address the needs of those most burdened by housing costs. Worse still, enforcement is delayed—audits may take years, and there is no mechanism to reclaim tax benefits already received by developers who fall out of compliance. This makes upfront compliance optional in practice, not mandatory.While HB 21 mandates parity in amenities between market-rate and affordable units, this provision seems symbolic without robust inspection. The lack of a tax credit clawback—something present in federal programs like the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit—further weakens accountability.The bill's structure could dissuade honest developers, who face unclear or burdensome requirements, while allowing bad actors to benefit before facing any scrutiny. Texas risks ending exploitative deals without fostering enough viable new ones, exacerbating its housing shortage.Texas Housing Law Addresses Problem but Creates Major LoopholesAs the push for government efficiency grows, the IRS is considering using artificial intelligence to identify noncompliant taxpayers based on past audit outcomes. While this might sound like a smart upgrade, history offers a sobering warning. The Netherlands tried something similar, using AI to spot fraud in childcare benefits, and it ended in a national scandal—the algorithm disproportionately targeted minority families, human reviewers failed to intervene, and the fallout brought down the government.A recent Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report suggests the IRS could “leverage examination results” to improve case selection algorithms. But this raises red flags. IRS audit history isn't neutral. A 2023 joint study by Stanford and the Treasury Department found that Black taxpayers were audited up to 4.7 times more than others, especially when claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit. That disparity likely came from algorithmic choices aimed at efficiency, not fairness.If the IRS trains AI on this unfiltered historical data, it risks cementing and expanding past biases into future audits. AI could be a powerful tool—but only if accompanied by key safeguards. First, training data must be rigorously reviewed to eliminate bias. Second, model decisions must be transparent so we understand how and why certain cases are flagged. And third, human reviewers must be actively trained and authorized to question and override algorithmic decisions.Week in Insights: TIGTA's AI Ambitions Risk Rerun of Dutch Fiasco This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

That's what tax bills are all about — who pays more and who pays less, who gets the benefits and who ends up holding the bag. President Donald Trump's “Big, Beautiful Bill” should come as a surprise to no one. It's a bonanza for the rich. The research is incontrovertible. The U.S. Treasury Department estimates that nearly 60 percent of the tax cuts, or about .5 trillion, would go to the top 10 percent of taxpayers over the next decade. A Yale Budget Lab analysis found that the top 1 percent of earners would receive an average tax cut of...Article Link

From March 14, 2023: For years, the international community has wrestled with how to reconcile sanctions policies targeting terrorist groups and other malevolent actors with the need to provide humanitarian assistance in areas under those groups' control. Late last year, both the Biden administration and the UN Security Council took major steps toward a new approach on this issue, installing broad carveouts for humanitarian assistance into existing sanctions regimes. To talk through these changes, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with two leading sanctions experts: Rachel Alpert, a Partner at the law firm Jenner & Block and former State Department attorney, and Alex Zerden, the Founder and Principal of Capitol Peak Strategies and a former Treasury Department official, including at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. They talked about the long-standing issues surrounding humanitarian assistance, what these changes may mean in jurisdictions like Afghanistan, and where more changes may yet be forthcoming. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A man had both his legs amputated after burning himself on a skillet during a camping trip. Max Armstrong, 40, was camping with his friends to Kiowa, Colorado, US, in December 2024, when he burned his thumb on a skillet while cooking pasta for their dinner.In the headlines on #TheUpdate this Friday, Amtrak is moving full speed ahead with tunnel closures in the city— despite pleas from Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams who fear the three-year project could cause transit chaos.A jury convicted a woman who sneaked onto a flight from New York to Paris without a boarding pass by slipping past security and airline gate agents at John F. Kennedy International Airport last year.And in Washington, The Trump administration says making cents doesn't make sense anymore. The U.S. Mint has made its final order of penny blanks and plans to stop producing the coin when those run out, a Treasury Department official confirms.

A rift between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk escalated on Thursday with the two trading barbs on their respective social media platforms. Reports from the Treasury Department show Trump's tariffs have raised nearly 70-billion dollars so far this year. And, migrant detainees staged a protest at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement run facility in Miami.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Roberta Rampton, Pallavi Gogoi, Eric Westervelt, Lisa Thomson and Arezou Rezvani. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent, our technical director is Carleigh Strange and our Executive Producer is Jay Shaylor. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

President Donald Trump's permanent pick to run the IRS is one step closer to taking office. The Senate Finance Committee advanced the nomination of former Missouri Congressman Billy Long. Democrats on the committee raised concerns that Long promoted tribal tax credits that don't exist, according to the Treasury Department and IRS. Long told lawmakers that if confirmed he'd help the IRS modernize its legacy IT systems. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:17532056201798502,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-9437-3289"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");pt> Click On Picture To See Larger Picture It's happening, the blue states are feeling the pain, the pushed their policies and destroyed their states and the companies are moving out. California biggest hit. As the [CB] shifting the economy they moved manufacturing jobs to government jobs, Trump is reversing this. Trump OBBB is not about keeping the current economy the way it is, it's about finally ending the endless. The [DS] is in the process of pushing war between Ukraine & Russia. Trump was anticipating this to happen. He knew the [DS] would go all out and push a [FF] to get the war started. Trump is working with other world leader to shutdown the global terrorist system. Trump and Scavino are continually sending messages about some type of scare event. Will this be needed to get the people on his side and expose the [DS] plans and counter their agenda? It's starting to look that way. Economy These Are The US Cities Gaining And Losing The Most Corporate HQs    Corporate Headquarters Are Moving to the Lone Star State Below, we show the top five markets nationally gaining the most headquarters since 2018:   Additionally, companies are expanding their presence in the state. Goldman Sachs, for instance, plans to grow its headcount in Dallas to 5,000—up from 970 in 2016. By contrast, California is experiencing a corporate exodus. With homes at least 50% more expensive than in Texas, along with the fifth-highest tax burden in the country, the state has lost at least 275 headquarters since 2018. Source: zerohedge.com https://twitter.com/Eric_Schmitt/status/1929749905683222712 (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:18510697282300316,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-8599-9832"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); https://twitter.com/profstonge/status/1929500745251909911 https://twitter.com/SecretaryBurgum/status/1929661256858062983  Dominance President Trump's tariff offensive is right out of the Founding Fathers' playbook When the Constitution took effect in 1789, the first order of business was to straighten out the nation's disastrous financial situation. That is why the new State Department started out with only five employees while the Treasury Department had 40. When Alexander Hamilton became the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury, he immediately began to prepare a schedule of tariffs, along with excise taxes on such commodities as alcohol and tobacco. The Constitution forbids taxing the exports of any state, and so American tariffs have always been laid only on imports. Collectors were named for each port, and these were considered plum jobs because the collector got to keep the money, earning interest on it, until it was forwarded to the federal government a few times a year. Hamilton's tariffs, along with the refunding of the national debt and the establishment of a central bank, transformed the American financial situation. By the end of the 1790s, the U.S. had the best credit rating in Europe, its bonds selling over par. By 1800, federal revenues, a mere $3.7 million in 1792, had nearly tripled to $10.8 million. About 90 percent of that revenue came from tariffs—a ratio that wouldn't change much, except during the Civil War, for more than a century. *** Hamilton's tariffs had been solely for the purpose of raising re...

Minting one penny costs the United States nearly four cents. After 233 years, the Treasury Department has decided to phase out the coin. This will mean that businesses will have to round cash transactions up or down, and some fear it could lead to inflation. We reminisce about the cultural significance of the one-cent coin with WSJ's Oyin Adedoyin and discuss the pro-penny stance with an advocate. WSJ's Jessica Mendoza hosts.   Further Listening: - The Fight Over Your Credit Card Swipe  - The Coronavirus Cash Crisis  Sign up for WSJ's free What's News newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 Santi: Hi, this is a special episode of Statecraft. I've got a wonderful guest host with me today. Kyla Scanlon: Hey, I'm Kyla Scanlon! I'm the author of a book called In This Economy and an economic commentator. Santi: Kyla has joined me today for a couple reasons. One, I'm a big fan of her newsletter: it's about economics, among many other things. She had a great piece recently on what we can learn from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, which is a favorite book of mine.Kyla's also on today because we're interviewing Wally Adeyemo, who was the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in the Biden administration. We figured we each had questions we wanted answered.Kyla: Yeah, I've had the opportunity to interview Wally a couple times during the Biden administration, and I wanted to see where he thinks things are at now. He played a key role in implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, financial sanctions on Russia, and a whole bunch of other things.Santi: For my part, I'm stuck on Wally's role in setting up the IRS's Direct File program, where you can file your taxes for free directly through the IRS instead of paying TurboTax a hundred bucks to do it. “Good governance types” tend to love Direct File, but the current admin is thinking of killing it. I wanted to understand how the program got rolled out, how Wally would respond to criticisms of the program, and what he learned from building something in government, which now may disappear.Kyla, you've talked to Wally before. How did that conversation go? Kyla: I actually was able to go to his office in D.C., and I talked to a couple of key people in the Biden administration: Jared Bernstein, the former chair of the CEA, and Daniel Hornung, who was at the National Economic Council.We're talking to Wally on the day that the House passed the one big beautiful bill. There's also so much happening financially, like the bond market is totally rebelling against the US government right now. I'm really curious how he thinks things are, as a key player in the last administration.Santi: Wally, you've spent most of your career in Democratic Party institutions. You worked on the Kerry presidential campaign in 2004. You served in the Obama admin. You were the first chief of staff to the CFPB, the president of the Obama Foundation, and, most recently, Deputy Treasury Secretary in the Biden admin.30,000ft question: How do you see the Democratic Party today?My view is that we continue to be the party that cares deeply about working-class people, but we haven't done a good job of communicating that to people, especially when it comes to the things that matter most to them. From my standpoint, it's costs: things in America cost too much for a working-class family.I want to make sure I define working class: I think about people who make under $100,000 a year, many of whom don't own homes on the coast or don't own a significant amount of stocks (which means they haven't seen the asset appreciation that's led to a great deal of wealth creation over the last several decades). When you define it that way, 81% of Americans sit in that category of people. Despite the fact that they've seen their median incomes rise 5-10% over the last five years, they've seen the cost of the things they care about rise even faster.We haven't had a clear-cut agenda focused on the standard of living, which I think is the thing that matters most to Americans today.Santi: There are folks who would say the problem for Democrats wasn't that they couldn't communicate clearly, or that they didn't have a governing agenda, but that they couldn't execute their agenda the way they hoped to in the time available to them. Would you say there's truth to that claim?Most people talk about a communications issue, but I don't think it's a communications issue. There are two issues. One is an implementation issue, and the second is an issue of the actual substance and policy at the Treasury Department. I was the deputy secretary, but I was also the Chief Operating Officer, which meant that I was in charge of execution. The two most significant domestic things I had to execute were the American Rescue Plan, where $1.9 trillion flowed through the Treasury Department, and the Inflation Reduction Act. The challenge with execution in the government is that we don't spend a lot on our systems, on making execution as easy as possible.For example, the Advanced Child Tax Credit was intended to give people money to help with each of their children during the pandemic. What Congress called on us to do was to pay people on a monthly basis. In the IRS system, you pay your taxes mostly on an annual basis, which meant that most of our systems weren't set up to pay a monthly check to Americans. It took us a great deal of work to figure out a way to recreate a system just to do that.We've underinvested in the systems that the IRS works on. The last time we made a significant investment in the IRS's digital infrastructure was the 1960s; before we had an ATM machine, before we sent a man to the moon, before we had a personal computer. So that meant that everything was coded in a language called COBOL.So execution was quite hard in the American Rescue Plan. People were left out and felt that the government wasn't working for them. If you called the IRS, only 13% of your calls were being answered. We got that back up to 85% before we left. Ultimately, I think part of this is an execution challenge. In government we want to spend money coming up with new policies, but we don't want to pay for execution, which then means that when you get the policy passed, implementation isn't great.When Jen Pahlka was on your show, she talked about the need to focus on identifying the enablers to implementation. Direct File was one of the best examples of us taking implementation very seriously.But also, on some policy issues that mattered most to Americans, we weren't advancing the types of strategies that would've helped lower the cost of housing and lowering the cost of medicine. We did some things there, but there's clearly more that we could have done, and more we need to do going forward to demonstrate that we're fighting to bring down those costs. It's everything from permitting reform — not just at the federal level, but what can we do to incentivize it at the state and local level — to thinking about what we can do on drug costs. Why does it cost so much more to get a medicine in America than in Canada? That is something that we can solve. We've just chosen not to at the federal level.At the end of the year, we were going to take action to go after some of the middlemen in the pharmacy industry who were taking out rents and large amounts of money. It dropped out of the bill because of the negotiations between the Republican Congress and then President-elect Trump. But there are a lot of things that we can do both on implementation, which will mean that Americans feel the programs that we're passing in a more effective way, and policy solutions that we need to advance as a party that will help us as well.Kyla: Some people think Americans tend to vote against their own self-interest. How can your party message to people that these sorts of policies are really important for them?Ultimately, what I found is that most people just understand their self-interest differently, and for them, a big part of this was, “Who's fighting for me on the issues that I care most about?”From my standpoint, part of the problem we had with Direct File, which I think was an innovative solution, was that we got to implementing it so late in the administration that we didn't have the ability for it to show the impact. I'm hoping future administrations will think through how to start their implementation journey on things like Direct File sooner in the administration, when you have a great deal of political capital, so people can actually feel the impact over time.To your question, it's not just about the messaging, it's about the messenger. People tend to trust people who look like them, who come from the places they come from. When it came to the Child Tax Credit and also to Direct File, the biggest innovation wasn't the technology: the technology for Direct File has been used by the Australians, the British, and other countries for decades.The biggest innovation was us joining that technology with trusted people in communities who were going out to talk to people about those programs and building those relationships. That was something that the IRS hadn't done a great deal of. We invested a great deal in those community navigators who were helping us get people to trust the things the government was doing again, like the Child Tax Credit, like Direct File, so that they could use it.We often think that Washington is going to be able to give messages to the country that people are going to hear. But we're both in a more complicated media environment, where people are far more skeptical of things that come from people in Washington. So the best people to advocate for and celebrate the things that we're doing are people who are closer to the communities we're trying to reach. In product advertising today, more companies are looking to influencers to advertise things, rather than putting an ad on television, because people trust the people that they follow. The same is true for the things that we do in government.Santi: I've talked to colleagues of yours in the last administration who say things like, “In the White House, we did not have a good enough sense of the shot clock.” They point to various reasons, including COVID, as a reason the admin didn't do a good enough job of prioritization.Do you think that's true, that across the administration, there was a missing sense of the shot clock or a missing sense of prioritization? No, because I'm a Lakers fan. These are professionals. We're professionals. This is not our first rodeo. We know how much time is on the shot clock; we played this game. The challenge wasn't just COVID. For me at Treasury — and I think this is the coolest part of being Deputy Secretary of the Treasury — I had responsibilities domestic and international. As I'm trying to modernize the IRS, to invest all my time in making the system work better for customers and to collect more taxes from the people who owe money, Russia invades Ukraine. I had to turn a bunch of my attention to thinking about what we were going to do there. Then you have Hamas attacking Israel.There was more we should have done on the domestic end, but we have to remember that part of the presidency is: you get to do the things you want to do, but you also have to do the things you have to do. We had a lot of things we had to do that we weren't planning for which required all-of-the-administration responses.I think the most important lesson I've learned about that is that it comes down to both being focused on the things that matter, and being willing to communicate to the American people why your priorities have to change in light of things that happen in the world.But the people I'm sure you've talked to, most of them work on domestic policy alone, and they probably never have been in a National Security Council meeting, where you're thinking about the risks to the country. The president has to do both of those things. So I get how difficult it is to do that, just given where I sat at the Treasury Department.Santi: Looking back from an implementation perspective, are there things you would've done differently during your time at Treasury?The most important thing that I would've done differently was to immediately set up a permanent implementation and delivery unit in the Treasury Department. We always like to pretend like the Treasury Department is just a policy department where we make policy, we collect taxes. But in any crisis the country ever has, a great deal of responsibility — for execution or implementation of whatever the response is — falls to the Treasury Department. Think about the financial crisis, which is clearly something that's in the Treasury's domain. The vast majority of money for COVID flowed through the Treasury Department. You think about the IRA, a climate bill: the vast majority of that money flows through the Treasury Department.And Treasury doesn't have a dedicated staff that's just focused on implementation: How do we do this well? How do we make sure the right people are served? How do we make sure that we communicate this well? We did this to a degree by a team that was focused on the American Rescue Plan. But it was only focused on the American Rescue Plan. If I could start again, I would have said, “I want a permanent implementation structure within the Treasury Department of people who are cross-cutting, who only think about how we execute the policies that we pass through Congress and that we put together through an executive order. How do we do that extremely well?”Kyla: What you're talking about is very people-centric: How do we get an implementation team, and how do we make sure that the right people are doing the right jobs? Now we have DOGE, which is less people-centric. How do you reconcile what Doge is doing relative to what you would've done differently in this role that you had?As you would suspect, I wasn't excited about the fact we had lost the election, but initially I thought DOGE could be helpful with technology. I think marrying technology with people — that's the key to success for the government. We've never really been great at doing technology in the government.Part of the reason for that is a procurement process that is very slow because of how the federal acquisition rules work. What we are trying to do is prevent corruption and also waste, fraud, and abuse. But what that does is, it leads to slowness in our ability to get the technology on board that we need, and in getting the right people.I was hoping DOGE would bring in people who knew a great deal about technology and put us in a position where we could use that to build better products for the American people. I thought they would love Direct File, and that they would find ways to improve Direct File and expand it to more Americans.My view is that any American in the working class or middle class should not have to pay a company to file their taxes. We have the ability in this country, and I think Direct File was proving that. My goal, if we'd had more time, was to expand this to almost any American being able to use it. I thought they'd be able to accelerate that by bringing in the right people, but also the right technology. We were on that path before they took those two things apart.My sense is that you have to reform the way that we hire people because it's too hard to hire the right people. In some cases, you don't need some of the people you have today because technology is going to require different skills to do different things. It's easier to break something, I found, than it is to build something. I think that's what they're finding today as well.Santi: When I talk to left-of-center folks about the DOGE push, they tend to be skeptical about the idea that AI or modern technology can replace existing federal workers. I think some of that is a natural backlash to the extreme partisan coding of DOGE, and the fact that they're firing a lot of people very quickly. But what's your view? After DOGE, what kinds of roles would you like to see automated?Let me say: I disagree with the view that DOGE and technology can't replace some of the things that federal workers do today. My view is that “productivity enhancing” tech — it's not that it is going to make employees who are currently doing the job more productive. It is going to mean you need fewer employees. We have to be honest about that.Go to the IRS, for example. When I got there, we had a huge paper backlog at the IRS because, despite what most people think, millions of people still file their taxes by paper, and they send them to the IRS. And during the pandemic, the commissioner, who was then working for President Trump, decided to shut down the IRS for public health reasons — to make sure employees did not have to risk getting COVID.There were piles of paper backing up, so much so that they had filled cafeterias at the IRS facilities with huge piles of paper. The problem, of course, is that, unlike modern systems, you could not just machine-read those papers and put them into our systems. Much of that required humans to code those papers into the system by hand. There is no need in the 21st century for that to happen, so one of the things that we started to do was introduce this simple thing called scanning, where you would scan the papers — I know it sounds like a novel idea. That would help you get people's tax returns faster into the system, but also get checks out quickly, and allow us to see if people are underpaying their taxes, because we can use that data with a modern system. But over time, what would that mean? We'd need fewer people to enter the data from those forms.When we get money for the IRS from Congress, it is actually seen as revenue-raising because they expect it to bring down the debt and deficit, which is completely true. But the model Congress uses to do that is reliant on the number of full-time employees we hire. One challenge we have with the IRS — and in government systems in general — is that you don't get credit for technology investments that should improve your return on investment.So whenever we did the ROI calculations for the IRS, the Congressional Budget Office would calculate how much revenue we'd bring in, and it was always based on the number of people you had doing enforcement work that would lead to certain dollars coming in. So we got no credit for the technology investments. Which was absolutely the opposite of what we knew would be true: the more you invested in technology, the more likely you were to bring in more revenue, and you would be able to cut the cost of employees.Santi: If the CBO changed the way it scored technology improvements, would more Congresspeople be interested in funding technology?It is just a CBO issue. It's one we've tried to talk to them about over the last several years, but one where they've been unwilling to move. My view is that unlocking this will unlock greater investment in technology in a place like the IRS, because every dollar you invest in technology — I think — would earn back $10 in additional tax revenue we'd be able to collect from people who are skipping out on their taxes today. It's far more valuable to invest in that technology than to grow the number of employees working in enforcement at the IRS. You need both, but you can't say that a person is worth 5x their salary in revenue and that technology is worth 0. That makes no sense.Kyla: When we spoke about Direct File many months ago, people in my comment section were super excited and saying things like, “I just want the government to tell me how much money I owe.” When you think about the implementation of Direct File, what went right, and how do you think it has evolved?The thing that went right was that we proved that we could build something quite easily, and we built it ourselves, unlike many technology projects in government. We didn't go out and hire a bunch of consultants and contractors to do it. We did it with people at the IRS, but also with people from 18F and from GSA who worked in the government. We did it in partnership with a number of stakeholders outside the government who gave us advice, but the build was done by us.The reason that was important — and the reason it's important to build more things internally rather than hiring consulting firms or other people to build it — is that you then have the intellectual capital from building that, and that can be used to build other things. This was one product, but my view is that I want the IRS home page to one day look a lot more like the screen on your iPhone, so that you can click on the app on the IRS homepage that can help you, depending on what you need — if it's a Direct File, or if it's a tax transcript.By building Direct File internally, we were getting closer to that, and the user scores on the effectiveness of the tool and the ability to use it were through the roof. Even for a private sector company, it would've been seen as a great success. In the first year, we launched late in the filing season, mostly just to test the product, but also to build stakeholder support for it. In the limited release, 140,000 people used it. The average user said that before Direct File, it took them about 13 hours to file their taxes, and with Direct File, it took them just over an hour to file their taxes.But you also have to think about how much money the average American spends filing their taxes: about $200. That's $200 that a family making under $100,000 could invest in their kids, in paying some bills, rather than in filing their taxes.Even this year, with no advertising by the Trump administration of Direct File, we had more than 300,000 people use it. The user scores for the product were above 85%. The challenge, of course, is that instead of DOGE investing in improving the product — which was a place where you could have seen real intellectual capital go to work and make something that works for all Americans — they've decided to discontinue Direct File. [NB: There has been widespread reporting that the administration plans to discontinue Direct File. The GOP tax bill passed by the House would end Direct File if it becomes law. At the time of publication, the Direct File has not been discontinued.]The sad part is that when you think about where we are as a country, this is a tool that could both save people money, save people time, improve our ability to collect taxes, and is something that exists in almost every other developed economy. It makes no sense to me why you would end something like this rather than continue to develop it.Santi: People remember the failure of healthcare.gov, which crashed when it was rolled out all at once to everyone in the country. It was an embarrassing episode for the Obama administration, and political actors in that administration learned they had to pilot things and roll them out in phases.Is there a tension between that instinct — to test things slowly, to roll them out to a select group of users, and then to add users in following cycles — Is there a tension between that and trying to implement quickly, so that people see the benefit of the work you're doing?One of my bosses in the Obama administration was Jeff Zients, the person who was brought in to fix healthcare.gov. He relentlessly focused on execution. He always made the point that it's easy to come up with a strategy to some degree: you can figure out what the policy solution is. But the difference between good and great is how you execute against it. I think there is some tension there, but not as much as you would think.Once we were able to show that the pilot was a success, I got invited to states all over the country, like Maryland, to announce that they were joining Direct File the next year. These members of Congress wanted to do Direct File events telling people in their state, “This product that's worked so well elsewhere is coming to us next.” It gave us the ability to celebrate the success.I learned the lesson not just from Zients, but also from then-professor Elizabeth Warren, whom I worked for as chief of staff at the CFPB. One challenge we had at the CFPB was to build a complaint hotline, at that point mostly phone-operated, for people who were suffering. They said it would take us at least a year to build out all the product functions we need. We decided to take a modular approach and say, “How long would it take for us to build the system for one product? Let's try that and see how that works. We'll do a test.”It was successful, and we were able to use that to tell the story about the CFPB and what it would do, not just for mortgages, but for all these other products. We built user interest in the complaint hotline, in a way that we couldn't have if we'd waited to build the whole thing at once. While I think you're right that there is some tension between getting everyone to feel it right away and piloting; if the pilot is successful, it also gives you the opportunity to go out and sell this thing to people and say, “Here's what people who did the pilot are saying about this product.”I remember someone in Texas who was willing to do a direct-to-camera and talk about the ways that Direct File was so easy for them to use. It gets back to my point on message and messenger. Deputy Secretary Adeyemo telling you about this great thing the government did is one thing. But an American who looks like you, who's a nurse, who's a mom of two kids, telling you that this product actually worked for her: That's something that more people identify with.Healthcare.gov taught us the lesson of piloting and doing things in a modular way. This is what companies have been doing for decades. If it's worked for them, I think it can work for the government too.Santi: I'm a fan of Direct File, personally. I don't want this administration to kill it. But I was looking through some of the criticism that Direct File got: for instance, there's criticism about it rivaling the IRS Free File program, which is another IRS program that partners with nonprofits to help some folks file their taxes for free.Then there's this broader philosophical criticism: “I don't want the feds telling me how much I owe them.” The idea is that the government is incentivized to squeeze every last dollar out of you.I'm curious what you make of that, in part because I spoke recently to an American who worked on building e-government systems for Estonia. One of the things that has allowed Estonia to build cutting-edge digital systems in the government is that Estonia is a small and very high-trust society. Everybody's one degree of separation from everybody else.We're a much bigger and more diverse country. How do you think that affects the federal government's ability to build tools like Direct File?I think it affects it a lot, and it gets back to my point: not just the message but the messenger. I saw this not just with Direct File, but with the Advanced Child Tax Credit, which was intended to help kids who were living in poverty, but also families overall. What we found initially in the data was that, among families that didn't have to file taxes because they made too little, many of them were unwilling to take advantage of Direct File and the Advanced Child Tax Credit because they couldn't believe the government was doing something to just help them. I spent a lot of time with priests, pastors, and other community leaders in many of the communities where people were under-filing to try and get them to talk about this program and why it was something that they should apply for.One of the challenges we suffer from right now in America, overall, is a lack of trust in institutions. You have to really go local and try to rebuild that trust.That also speaks to taking a pilot approach that goes slower in some cases. Some of the criticism we got was, “Why don't you just fill out this form for us and then just send it to us, so that Direct File is just me pressing a button so I can pay my taxes?”Part of the challenge for us in doing that is a technology challenge: we are not there technologically. But the other problem is a trust problem. If I were to just fill out your taxes for you and send them to you, I think people, at this stage, would distrust the government and distrust the technology.Direct File had to be on a journey with people, showing people, “If I put in this information, it accurately sends me back my check.” As people develop more trust, we can also add more features to it that I think people will trust. But the key has to be: how do you earn that trust over time?We can't expect that if we put out a product that looks like something the Estonian government or Australia would put out, that people would trust it at this point. We have to realize that we are on a journey to regain the trust of the American people.The government can and will work for them, and Direct File was a part of that. We started to demonstrate that with that product because the people who used it in these communities became the spokespeople for it in a better way than I ever could be, than the Secretary or the President could be.Everyone knows that they need to pay their taxes because it's part of their responsibility living in this country. The things that make people the most upset is the fact that there are people who don't pay their taxes. We committed that we were going to go after them.The second frustration was: “Why do you make it so hard for me to pay my taxes? Why can't I get through to you on the phone line? Why do I have to pay somebody else to do my taxes?” Our goal was to solve those two problems by investing money and going after the people who just decided they weren't going to pay, but also by making it as easy as possible for you to pay your taxes and for most people, to get that tax refund as quickly as possible.But doing that was about going on a journey with people, about regaining their trust in an institution that mattered to them a great deal because 90 something-percent of the money that funds our government comes in through the IRS.Kyla: You have a piece out in Foreign Affairs called “Make Moscow Pay,” and what I found most interesting about that essay is that you said Europe needs to step it up because the United States won't. Talk through the role of Treasury in financial sanctions, and your reasons for writing this piece.People often think about the Treasury Department as doing a few things. One is working with Wall Street; another one is collecting your taxes. Most people don't think about the fact that the Treasury Department is a major part of the National Security Committee, because we have these tools called financial sections.They use the power of the dollar to try and change the behavior of foreign actors who are taking steps that aren't consistent with our national security interests. A great example of this is what we did with regard to Russia — saying that we're going to cut off Russian banks from the US financial system, which means that you can't transact in US dollars.The problem for any bank that can transact in dollars is that the backbone of most of the financial world is built on the US dollar. It increases their cost, it makes it more difficult for them to transact, and makes it harder for them to be part of the global economy, nearly impossible.And that's what we've done in lots of cases when it comes to Russia. We have financial sanction programs that touch all over the world, from Venezuela to Afghanistan. The US government, since 9/11, has used sanctions as one of its primary tools of impacting foreign policy. Some of them have gone well, some of them I think haven't gone as well, and there's a need for us to think through how we use those policies.Santi: What makes sanctions an effective tool? Positions on sanctions don't line up neatly on partisan lines. Sanctions have a mixed track record, and you'll have Republicans who say sanctions have failed, and you'll have Democrats say sanctions have been an effective tool, and vice versa.The way I think about sanctions is that they are intended to bring change, and the only way that they work is that they're part of an overarching foreign policy strategy. That type of behavior change was what we saw when Iran came to the table and wanted to negotiate a way to reduce sanctions in exchange for limits on their nuclear program. That's the type of behavior change we're trying to accomplish with sanctions, but you can't do it with sanctions alone. You need a foreign policy strategy. We didn't do it by the United States confronting Iran; we got our allies and partners to work together with us. When I came into office in 2021, Secretary Yellen asked me to do a review of our sanctions policies — what's worked, what hasn't — because it had been 20 years since the 9/11 attacks.And the most important lesson I learned was that the sanctions programs that were the most effective were the ones we did on a multilateral basis — so we did it with our friends and allies. Part of the reason for this is that while the dollar is the most dominant currency around the world, oftentimes if you can't do something in dollars, you do it in a euro, or you do it in a Japanese yen, or pound sterling.The benefit of having allies all over the world is that the dominant, convertible currencies in the world are controlled by allies and partners. When we acted together with them, we were more effective in curtailing the economic activity of our adversary, and our pressure is more likely to lead to them changing their behavior.We had to be very cautious about collateral damage. You might be targeting an individual, but by targeting that individual, you might make it harder for a company they're affiliated with to continue doing business, or for a country that they're in to get access to banking services. Let's say that you're a huge bank in America, and you're worried about sanctions risk in a small country where you do little business. Why not pull out, rather than having to put in place a huge compliance program? One of the challenges that we have is that the people who make the decisions about whether to extend sanctions don't necessarily spend a lot of time thinking about some of these economic consequences of the sanctions approach.Whenever I was around the table and we were making a decision about using weapons, there was a process that was very elaborate that ended up with something going to the president. You'd often think about kinetic force very seriously, because you were going to have to get the president to make a decision. We didn't always take that kind of rigor when it came to thinking about using our sanctions policy, but the impact on the lives of people in these countries was just as significant for their access to not only money, but to food and to the resources they needed to live.Santi: What do you make of the effectiveness of the initial sanctions on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine? I've heard mixed reviews from folks inside and outside the Biden administration.Sanctions, again, to my point, are only a tool. They've had to be part of a larger strategy, and I think those sanctions were quite effective. I think the saving grace for the Russians has been the fact that China has largely been able and willing to give them access to the things they need to continue to perpetuate.There was a choice for Ukraine, but when you think about Russia's economy today vs. Russia's economy before the sanctions were put in place, it's vastly different. Inflation in Russia still runs far higher than inflation anywhere else in the world. If you were a Russian citizen, you would feel the impacts of sanctions.The challenge, of course, is that it hasn't changed Vladimir Putin's behavior or the behavior of the Kremlin, largely because they've had access to the goods and supplies they need from China, Iran, and North Korea. But over time, it means Russia's economy is becoming less competitive. They have less access to resources; they're going to struggle.I think everyone hoped that sanctions would immediately change the calculus of the Kremlin, but we've never seen that to be the case. When sanctions are effective, they take time, because the economic consequences continue to compound over time, and they have to be part of a larger strategy for the behavior of the individual. That's why I wrote the article, because while the Kremlin and Russia are under pressure, their view is that ultimately the West is going to get tired of supporting Ukraine, financially and politically, because the economic consequences for us — while not as significant as for Moscow or for Kiev — have been quite significant, when you think about the cost of living issues in Europe.I think it's important to write this now, when it appears that Russia is stalling on negotiations, because ultimately, US financial support is waning. We just know that the Trump administration is not willing to put more money into Ukraine, so Europe is going to have to do more, at a time when their economic situation is quite complicated as well.They've got a lot to do to build up their economy and their military-industrial base. Asking them to also increase their support for Ukraine at the same time is going to be quite difficult. So using this money that Russia owes to Ukraine — because they owe them compensation at this moment — can be quite influential in helping support the Ukrainians, but also changing Russia's calculus with regard to the ability of Ukraine to sustain itself.Kyla: On CNBC about a month ago, you said if we ever have a recession over the next couple of months or so, it would be a self-inflicted one. Do you still resonate with that idea? To build on the point I was making, the economy has done quite well over the course of the first few months of the year, largely because of the strength of the consumer, where our balance sheets are still quite strong. Companies in America have done well. The biggest headwind the US economy faces has been self-inflicted by the tariffs the president has put on. Part of what I still do is talk to CEOs of companies, big and small. Small businesses feel the impact of this even more than the big businesses. What they tell me is that it's not just the tariffs and the fact that they are making it more expensive for them to get the goods that they need, but it's the uncertainty created by the off-again, on-again, nature of those tariffs that makes it impossible for them to plan for what supplies they're going to get the next quarter. How are they going to fulfill their orders? What employees are they going to need? It's having a real impact on the performance of these companies, but also their ability to hire people and plan for the future.If you go to the grocery store, you're going to start seeing — and you're starting to see already — price increases. The thing that Americans care most about is, the cost of living is just too high. You're at the grocery store, as you're shopping for your kids for the summer, you're going to see costs go up because of a self-imposed tax we've put in place. So I still do think that if we do find ourselves in a recession, it's going to be because of the tariffs we've put in place.Even if we don't enter a technical recession, what we're seeing now is that those tariffs are going to raise the cost for people when they go out to buy things. It's going to raise the cost of building homes, which is going to make it harder for people to get houses, which is ultimately going to have an impact on the economy that isn't what I think the president or anyone wants at this point.Kyla: Is there anything else we haven't asked about? I think the place where we continue, as a country, to struggle is that, given the federal system we have, many of these problems aren't just in Washington — they're in state and local governments as well. When you think about the challenges to building more housing in this country, you can't just solve it by doing things at the federal level. You have to get state and local governments unified in taking a proactive approach. Part of this has to be not just financial or regulatory from the federal government, but we have to do more things that force state and local governments to get out of the way of people being able to build more housing. I think that the conversations that you've had on your show, and the conversations we're having in government, need to move past our regular policy conversations of: “Should we do more on LIHTC? Should we try to fix NEPA?” Those, to me, are table stakes, and we're in the middle of what I'd say is a generational crisis when it comes to housing. We have to be willing to treat it like a crisis, rather than what I think we've done so far, which is take incremental steps at different levels to try and solve this. That's one thing that I wanted to make sure that I said, because I think it's the most important thing that we can do at the moment.Kyla: Absolutely. During your time there, the Treasury was doing so much with zoning reform, with financial incentives. What I really liked about our last conversation was how much you talked about how important it is that workers can live close to work. Are you optimistic that we will be able to address the problem, or do you think we are sinking into quicksand?I'd say a little bit of both, and the thing that I'm doing now is getting hyperlocal. One of the projects I'm working on in my post-administration life is I'm working with 15 churches in D.C., where they have vacant land and want to use it to build affordable housing as quickly as possible.I'm learning that even when you have the land donated for free and you're willing to work as quickly as possible, it's still quite hard because you have regulations and financial issues that often get in the way of building things. Part of what we have to do now is just launch as many natural experiments as possible to see what works.What I've learned already from this lived experience is that even cities that are trying to get out of the way and make it easier to build housing struggle because of what you all know to be true, which is that the local politics of this is quite complicated. Oftentimes, the way that you get them over the line is by creating incentives or disincentives.In the past, I talked a lot about incentives in terms of “giving people money to do things.” I'm now in favor of “not giving money to people who don't do things” — if you don't take steps to fix your zoning, some of the federal money that you regularly get is not coming to your jurisdiction. I'm going to reallocate that money to places that are doing this activity. I think we have to take those types of radical steps.It's similar to what we did with the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, where if you didn't spend your money, we could take your money back and reallocate it to people who were giving away emergency rental assistance money.That motivates people a lot — when they feel like something's going to be taken away from them. I'm of the view that we have to find more radical things that we can do to get housing built. If we don't, costs will continue to rise faster than people's incomes.Santi: Wally, I have to ask after that point you just made: did you read the paper by my colleague Chris Elmendorf on using LIHTC funds? The idea is to re-allocate those federal funds away from big, expensive cities and into other places in a state, if the cities don't commit to basic zoning reforms.I completely agree with him, and I think I would go even further than just LIHTC money. I would reallocate non-housing money as well, because from my standpoint, if you think about the most important issue for a family, it's being able to find housing that is affordable near their place of work and where their kids go to school. I said that on purpose. I didn't say “affordable housing.” I said “housing that is affordable,” because affordable housing is, in lots of ways, targeted towards a population of people who need it the most. But for even people who are middle income in this country, it crowds out their ability to pay for other things when housing costs continue to creep higher.The only way we solve that problem is if you get rid of restrictive zoning covenants and fix permitting. The natural thing that every city and state is thinking about right now is throwing more money at the problem. There's going to need to be money here, just in light of some of the headwinds, but it's going to be more costly and less effective if we don't fix the underlying issues that are making it hard to build housing where we want it.Right now in California, we're having a huge debate over what we do with infill housing in urban areas. A simple solution — you don't have to do another environmental review if one was already done in this area— is taking months to work through the California legislature, which demonstrates that we're going too slow. California's seeing an exodus of people. I just talked to a CEO who said, “I'm moving my business because the people who work for me can't afford to live in California anymore.” This is the kind of problem that you can solve. State legislatures, Congress, and executives have to get together and take some radical steps to make it easier to build housing.I appreciate what you said about what we were doing at Treasury, but from my standpoint, I wish we had done more earlier to focus on this issue. We had a lot going on, but fundamentally, the most important thing on housing is taking a step to try and build housing today, which is going to have an impact on the economy 10, 20, 30 years from now. We just have to start doing that as soon as possible.Thanks to Emma Hilbert for her transcript and audio edits. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

Listen to Daily Global #News from Grecian Echoes and WNTN 1550 AM - Chaos broke out at a distribution site in southern Gaza - DOGE can access sensitive Treasury Department systems - Putin puts his demands for peace - Trump administration halts scheduling of new student visa appointments

President Trump fires back at Vladimir Putin following Russia's aerial attacks on Ukraine, the Treasury Department reveals a new approach to combating cartels, and Hollywood enjoys a record-breaking box office over Memorial Day weekend. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.Beam: Visit https://shopbeam.com/WIRE and use code WIRE to get our exclusive discount of up to 40% off.Kikoff: Start building credit with Kikoff today, and you can get your first month for as little as $1 when you go to https://getkikoff.com/wireShopify: Go to https://Shopify.com/morningwire to sign up for your $1 per month trial period and upgrade your selling today.

The “wet and dirty” line from Kevin Harlan is just another reason he's one of the best play-by-play voices in all of sports. The U.S. Treasury Department is finally getting rid of the penny. Standing seats on an airplane could be a thing in Europe by 2026. A Swiss woman got a Red Bull barcode tattoo on her forearm. A Norwegian man wakes to find a cargo ship in his yard. Also, I'm not a fan of the Norwegian accent. But Australian, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, and some others - I approve of. A Florida woman couldn't pay her tab at a steakhouse - fast-forward to her punching a police officer in the balls. I recap the Wiener 500. And the Colorado Rockies may have scared the New York Yankees into success.

WBZ NewsRadio's James Rojas reports.

The Treasury Department will stop manufacturing the penny. The federal agency placed its final order for penny blanks this month, with the United States Mint slated to end manufacturing of the penny when that runs out.

This Day in Legal History:  House of Representatives Passes 19th AmendmentOn this day in legal history, May 21, 1919, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote. The amendment stated simply: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." After decades of organizing, lobbying, and protest by suffragists—including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul—this marked a major legislative victory in the long fight for women's suffrage.The amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1878 but languished for over 40 years before gaining sufficient political traction. The context of World War I played a pivotal role; as women took on new roles in the workforce and public life during the war, their contributions made it politically difficult to deny them voting rights. President Woodrow Wilson, initially lukewarm on the issue, eventually lent his support, which helped sway key votes.Following the House vote on May 21, 1919, the amendment proceeded to the Senate, where it was passed on June 4, 1919. Ratification by the states took just over a year, with Tennessee becoming the decisive 36th state to ratify on August 18, 1920. The 19th Amendment was officially certified on August 26, 1920.This moment was a turning point in constitutional law regarding civil rights and voting equality, setting the stage for later expansions through the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and ongoing debates over voter access and gender equality.Twelve U.S. states, led by Democratic attorneys general from New York, Illinois, and Oregon, are challenging President Donald Trump's recently imposed "Liberation Day" tariffs in federal court. The states argue that Trump misused the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to justify tariffs on imports from countries with which the U.S. runs trade deficits. They claim the law doesn't authorize tariffs and that a trade deficit does not qualify as a national emergency.The case will be heard by a three-judge panel at the Court of International Trade in Manhattan, which also recently heard a similar lawsuit from small businesses. Oregon's Attorney General Dan Rayfield said the tariffs were harming consumers and small businesses, estimating an extra $3,800 per year in costs for the average family. The Justice Department contends that the states' claims are speculative and that only Congress can challenge a president's national emergency declaration under IEEPA.Trump's tariff program began in February with country-specific measures and escalated to a 10% blanket tariff in April, before being partially rolled back. His administration defends the tariffs as necessary for countering unfair trade practices and reviving U.S. manufacturing. Multiple lawsuits—including ones from California, advocacy groups, businesses, and Native American tribes—are challenging the tariff regime.US states mount court challenge to Trump's tariffs | ReutersThe U.S. Justice Department is investigating former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, now a leading Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, over Republican allegations that he misled Congress about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic while in office. The inquiry reportedly stems from a referral by a GOP-led House subcommittee, which cited Cuomo's closed-door testimony before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.Cuomo's campaign says it was not notified of the probe and denounced the investigation as politically motivated "lawfare" driven by Trump allies. Critics argue the Justice Department is being used to target political opponents, while Trump and his supporters maintain that prior cases against him were politically biased. Cuomo, who resigned in 2021 following a state attorney general report accusing him of sexual misconduct—which he denies—is the presumed frontrunner in the June 24 Democratic mayoral primary.He is set to face incumbent Eric Adams, now running as an independent after facing and being cleared of federal charges. The Justice Department has not publicly confirmed or commented on the Cuomo probe, and his spokesperson insists the former governor testified truthfully and transparently.US Justice Department investigating former New York governor Cuomo, sources say | ReutersA federal judge in Kentucky dismissed a lawsuit by the U.S. Treasury Department that aimed to cancel a labor contract with IRS workers in Covington. Judge Danny Reeves ruled that the Treasury lacked legal standing to bring the suit and granted summary judgment in favor of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) Chapter 73. This marks a legal defeat for the Trump administration's broader attempt to weaken federal employee union rights through an executive order.The administration had filed similar lawsuits in Kentucky and Texas following Trump's directive that claimed two-thirds of federal employees could be excluded from labor protections under national security grounds. In response, the NTEU filed its own legal challenge in Washington, D.C., where Judge Paul Friedman temporarily blocked the order's implementation. However, a federal appeals court later paused that injunction while the Trump administration appeals.This decision in Kentucky slows momentum for the administration's effort to restrict collective bargaining for federal workers, though related cases continue to play out in other jurisdictions. The NTEU was represented by both in-house and private attorneys, while the Justice Department defended the administration's position.Judge Tosses Treasury's Suit to Cancel Federal Worker Contract This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

This Day in Legal History: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Ratified On May 19, 1848, Mexico formally ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, officially bringing an end to the Mexican-American War. Signed earlier that year on February 2, the treaty had already been ratified by the United States, but it required approval from both nations to take effect. With Mexico's ratification, the war that had begun in 1846 concluded, marking a major shift in North American territorial boundaries. Under the treaty, Mexico ceded approximately 525,000 square miles—about half its national territory—to the United States. This land included present-day California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and parts of several other states.In exchange, the U.S. paid Mexico $15 million and assumed certain debts owed to American citizens. The treaty also included provisions promising to protect the property and civil rights of Mexican nationals living in the newly acquired territories, though these promises were inconsistently honored. The ratification reshaped the map of North America and solidified U.S. continental expansion under the banner of Manifest Destiny.Legally, the treaty became a foundational document for interpreting property rights, citizenship claims, and cross-border disputes in the American Southwest. It also remains a focal point for understanding the U.S.-Mexico relationship and the historical roots of immigration and land disputes in the region. The ratification marked not just the end of a war but the beginning of complex legal and cultural transformations that still reverberate today.The U.S. Supreme Court extended a block on the Trump administration's attempt to deport roughly 176 Venezuelan detainees under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA), citing due process concerns. The justices, in a largely unsigned decision, criticized the government for providing less than 24 hours' notice of removal without informing the men how to challenge it. The Court noted the administration's failure to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been wrongly deported to El Salvador despite a previous Supreme Court directive.Justices Alito and Thomas dissented, saying the Court acted prematurely, bypassing lower courts. However, the majority justified the intervention by pointing to a district judge's delayed response to an emergency request, which they said risked irreparable harm to the detainees.Though Trump claimed the AEA is needed to address a national security “invasion” by alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang, the Court did not rule on whether his invocation of the AEA was lawful. The decision leaves that question to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, while preserving the temporary injunction during ongoing litigation.Justice Kavanaugh wrote separately to support judicial review before any deportation under the AEA, and the Court emphasized that immigration enforcement must align with constitutional protections. The ACLU called the ruling a rebuke of efforts to deport people without adequate process, particularly to harsh conditions like those in El Salvador's prisons.Supreme Court Extends Halt of Trump Venezuelan Deportations - BloombergThe U.S. Supreme Court is poised to issue rulings in three significant cases that could further expand religious rights and diminish the separation between church and state. Each case centers on the First Amendment's religion clauses—specifically the tension between the “establishment clause,” which prevents government endorsement of religion, and the “free exercise clause,” which protects individual religious practice.One case involves an attempt to launch the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in Oklahoma. The state's Supreme Court blocked the school, but conservative justices appeared open to the argument that rejecting it solely due to its religious nature violates the free exercise clause.A second case concerns Christian and Muslim parents in Maryland seeking the right to opt their children out of public school lessons featuring LGBT-themed storybooks. Lower courts denied the request, but the Supreme Court seemed sympathetic to the parents' religious freedom claims.The third case addresses whether Catholic Charities in Wisconsin should be exempt from unemployment insurance taxes. The state denied the exemption, arguing the organization was mainly charitable rather than religious. Conservative justices again signaled support for the religious exemption.Legal scholars suggest the Court may continue its trend of elevating the free exercise clause at the expense of the establishment clause. Recent rulings have shifted from restricting government support for religious institutions to affirming their right to receive public funds. This trend suggests the Court may increasingly allow religious organizations access to public programs traditionally limited to secular institutions.US Supreme Court may broaden religious rights in looming rulings | ReutersA federal appeals court has lifted an injunction that had blocked President Trump's executive order limiting collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of federal workers. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in a 2–1 decision, allowed the order to move forward, affecting employees in more than a dozen federal agencies, including Justice, Defense, and Health and Human Services.The executive order expands a national security exemption that exempts workers involved in intelligence or national security from union rights. Trump's administration argued this exemption was necessary to protect national security autonomy. The court's majority, composed of Republican-appointed judges, agreed, saying the union failed to demonstrate immediate harm that would justify blocking the policy.The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), representing about 160,000 federal employees, claimed the order violates federal labor laws and the Constitution. Judge J. Michelle Childs dissented, arguing the administration's national security justification was too vague to override union protections.Trump's directive could impact roughly 75% of union-represented federal workers and specifically targets around 100,000 NTEU members. In addition to the executive order, the Trump administration is also pursuing lawsuits to dismantle existing union contracts for thousands of federal employees.Court gives go-ahead to Trump's plan to halt union bargaining for many federal workers | ReutersBilly Long, President Trump's pick to lead the IRS, is set to face intense questioning from Senate Democrats over his ties to dubious tax credits and campaign donations from their promoters. At the center of the controversy are “sovereign tribal tax credits,” which the Treasury Department says do not exist. Long previously promoted these credits through companies that also contributed large sums to help him retire campaign debt from a failed Senate run.Though Long lacks traditional tax or management experience, his most prominent qualification—beyond his political loyalty to Trump—is his distinction as the “Best Auctioneer in the Ozarks” for seven consecutive years. Critics point to his absence of tax policy credentials, lack of formal education or experience in tax, and question his independence, particularly given Trump's recent push to strip institutions like Harvard of tax-exempt status.Long, a former House member from Missouri, is known for supporting efforts to defund the IRS while in Congress and did not serve on tax-focused committees. Democrats are also scrutinizing his role in promoting the fraud-plagued Employee Retention Credit during the pandemic. As he seeks to take over an agency facing a wave of retirements and leadership departures, Long will likely be pressed on how he would steer enforcement priorities and IRS modernization efforts. Questions are expected to focus on whether he would maintain the agency's recent push to target high-income tax avoidance or pivot in a different direction.Senate Panel to Grill IRS Pick on Dubious Tax Credits, Donors This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

The National Labor Relations Board's inspector general is conducting an investigation into the Department of Government Efficiency's work at the agency. In April, an IT staffer named Daniel Berulis filed an official whistleblower disclosure with Congress highlighting concerns over DOGE's practices at the NLRB and data that may have been removed from the agency. In response to the disclosure, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, requested an investigation in a letter to Luiz A. Santos, acting inspector general of the Labor Department, and Ruth Blevins, inspector general at the NLRB. Timothy Bearese, an attorney at the NLRB currently serving as its acting director of congressional and public affairs, told FedScoop that the agency has no comment but “can confirm that the OIG is conducting an investigation, as requested by Ranking Member Connolly.” Back In April, Bearese told NPR that the NLRB had not granted DOGE access to agency systems. At that time, he also said that there had been a past investigation based on Berulis' concerns that “determined that no breach of agency systems occurred.” A spokesperson for House Oversight Committee Democrats told FedScoop on Thursday that “there are multiple investigations into Elon Musk's violations of sensitive investigatory information at the NLRB.” House Oversight Democrats are asking a Treasury Department watchdog to open an investigation into DOGE's data and IT modernization dealings at the IRS following reports of an internal “hackathon” at the tax agency that may have involved Palantir. In a letter sent Thursday to Heather Hill, acting head of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, House Oversight ranking member Gerry Connolly, D-Va., cited “deep concern” over reporting in Wired last month that revealed plans for a 30-day sprint where DOGE engineers and a third-party vendor — potentially the data analytics giant Palantir — would create a new application programming interface connected to taxpayer data. That API, Wired reported, would essentially serve as a storage center for all IRS data and enable agency systems to interact with unknown cloud services. Building a “mega API” is likely connected to plans for a “master database” that also pulls in data from the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration, according to Wired, part of a Trump administration effort to track and surveil immigrants. “The reported data centralization and integration effort could undermine intentional compartmentalization of IRS systems,” which raises “serious privacy questions,” Connolly wrote. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is set to withdraw a Biden-era rule aimed at cracking down on data brokers and their selling of Americans' personal and financial information. In a notice in the Federal Register, the CFPB said legislative rulemaking on the data broker industry “is not necessary or appropriate at this time,” and the agency does not plan to “take any further action” on the proposal. The notice was issued by Russell Vought, acting director of the agency, head of the Office of Management and Budget and a Project 2025 architect. The withdrawal of the rule, which was first reported by Wired, comes after President Donald Trump's initial nominee to lead the CFPB signaled to Congress in February an openness to continuing Biden administration data-broker rules. Jonathan McKernan, a former Treasury Department and Federal Housing Finance Agency staffer, told the Senate Banking Committee that Rohit Chopra — President Joe Biden's CFPB director — “was onto something” with his policies targeting data brokers and data aggregators. The CFPB's withdrawal notice took particular issue with the rule's focus on the Fair Credit Reporting Act, saying that the proposal was “not aligned with the Bureau's current interpretation of the FCRA, which it is in the process of revising.” The Senate on Wednesday voted 54-43 to confirm businessman Emil Michael as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering and the Pentagon's chief technology officer. In that position, Michael will serve as the primary advisor to the secretary of defense and other Defense Department leaders on tech development and transition, prototyping, experimentation, and management of testing ranges and activities. He'll also be in charge of synchronizing science and technology efforts across the DOD. Michael comes to the job from the private sector, where he's been a business executive, advisor and investor. He told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that he's been involved with more than 50 different tech companies during his career. Perhaps most notable, from 2013 to 2017, he was chief business officer at Uber. In government, he previously served as special assistant to the secretary of defense when Robert Gates was Pentagon chief. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

In this episode of The President's Daily Brief: We'll start with some cloak and dagger diplomacy that flew under the radar last month—a secret visit by a Chinese delegation to the U.S. Treasury Department reveals just how far the Chinese Communist Party will go to control the narrative. President Trump kicks off his Middle East swing with two major announcements: a $600 billion Saudi investment pledge and a $142 billion arms deal. Plus, the latest from Israel, where Prime Minister Netanyahu says the fight against Hamas is entering its final phase. And in today's Back of the Brief—a new era of U.S.-Syrian relations may be on the horizon, as President Trump moves to lift decades-old sanctions on Syria. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President's Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Birch Gold: Text PDB to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold TriTails Premium Beef: Visit https://TryBeef.com/PDB for 2 free Flat Iron steaks with your first box over $250 DeleteMe: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you text PDB to 64000. Message and data rates apply   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's something to cold hard cash. You can hold it; you can smell it; it feels a certain way in your pocket. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump directed the Treasury Department to stop minting pennies. What happens as the world of currency goes increasingly digital? Will traditional currencies soon become a thing of the past? And who stands to benefit, and who might this rapid shift be hurting? Neha Narula, Director of the Digital Currency Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, joins The Excerpt to take a closer look at this transition period for money and how it might evolve.Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@usatoday.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports released a new poll showing that 71% of Democrats support Elon Musk being IMPRISONED for his DOGE work. This insane position is held by 80% of self-reported "liberals" from the polling. The poll results were released the same day as this episode.This is sadly not very shocking, as we take a look at what leftist-dominated Reddit says about Elon in our Unhinged segment. We also discuss DOGE's work so far, including issues at the U.S. Treasury Department, and whether or not the pork uncovered by DOGE is actually being cut. It seems many representatives want the spending to keep on rolling along. The Heartland Institute's Linnea Lueken, Jim Lakely, Chris Talgo, and S.T. Karnick will discuss all of this and more on Episode 494 of the In the Tank Podcast. In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!

The fight over the Inflation Reduction Act has arrived. After months of discussion, the Republican majority in the House is now beginning to write, review, and argue about its plans to transform the climate law's energy tax provisions. We wanted to record a show about how to follow that battle. But then — halfway through recording that episode — the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee dropped the first draft of their proposal to gut the IRA, and we had to review it on-air. We were joined by Luke Bassett, a former senior advisor for domestic climate policy at the U.S. Treasury Department, and a former senior staff member at the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. We chatted about the major steps in the reconciliation process, what to watch next, and what to look for in the new GOP draft. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap's executive editor.Mentioned:The House GOP Tax Proposal Would Effectively Kill The IRAPermitting Reform Is Back — and Buried in Trump's Tax BillThe House Ways and Means Committee's first attempt at rewriting the IRA and its energy tax provisions(Note: At one point, Luke refers to a permitting reform proposal as coming from the Energy and Commerce Committee. It's a product of the House Natural Resources Committee.) --​Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A fiery breakdown of the latest political power struggle in Washington, highlighting Ed Martin's ousting, alleged massive fraud in federal payments, and Trump's strategic counter with rotating prosecutors to combat the deep state and swamp corruption.

Live from Studio G and fighting for you from the Foxhole of Freedom—here we go into another brand-new hour—   WARNING: The Steve Gruber Show often results in Extended periods of American pride, American optimism and uncontrollable enthusiasm about America's future!    Kicking off the live broadcast day on Real America's Voice, MTN and reaching a growing global audience—this is the Steve Gruber Show— And this is a no panic zone!   Here are the three big things to know this hour—   Number One— Has the O'Keefe Media Group got a smoking gun confession on one of the biggest names in the Jeffrey Epstein underage child sex ring scandal? Well it sure looks that way this morning!   Number Two— A remarkable revelation—more than 200 people were arrested yesterday in an FBI investigation—of a child sex operation on the East coast—more than 115 kids were actually rescued!   Number Three— You see sometimes you have to wait for results—you have to be patient—as hard as that can be— so please people as we dive into a new day—relax—and let me start with some good news—     Attorney General Pam Bondi says despite wild internet rumors to the contrary— the FBI is currently sifting through a mountain of evidence on Jeffrey Epstein's crimes against humanity –    Bite #5   I don't know about you, but I'm willing to be patient with the DOJ and the FBI while they do this right – this is something that can't be rushed.   Just yesterday – Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel announced the astounding progress they've made in fighting child sex predators as a result of Operation Restore Trust –    The operation involves 55 FBI field officers across the nation – and has resulted so far in the rescue of 115 children – and the arrests of 205 child sexual abuse offenders.   Bite #6   These people are the worst of the worst – and I'm glad the DOJ and FBI are sending the message loud and clear that just because you can hide behind a screen, doesn't mean you can hide from the authorities.   115 children rescued… 205 sex offenders arrested – and they did that over the course of 5 days!    I've noticed how impatient Americans on both sides of the aisle have gotten with the Trump Administration –    Democrats point to every issue that has yet to be resolved – thinking it's a big “I told you so” – on the ineffectiveness of the administration –    And some Republicans are ready to rain down hellfire on Bondi and others because they're not seeing the results they want yet—    And to that I say: Come on, Relax!    Some of these cabinet picks have been in office less than 3 months – we've got to let them work!   I'm seeing the same thing with the ‘big, beautiful bill' that Donald Trump has promised – intended to extend tax cuts that he made the first time around –    Conservatives have put their foot down on a deadline date by Memorial Day – with a big ‘OR ELSE' – but again, I say: let them work!   Joe Biden's Administration did a number on our government – and even looking past him – the system has been broken for decades –    If we want this done right, we need to make sure our elected officials can iron out the details.   You wonder why I'm willing to be patient? Just take a look at what this administration has already accomplished –    Egg and gasoline prices are already down – here's Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on reversing the Biden-era blunders –    Bite #7   Like she said, there's so much work to do – but we can rest easy in how much has already been accomplished –    Another case in point – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been taking an ax to what he's called – quote – unnecessary bureaucratic layers – in our military – and that includes woke programs and leaders that weaken our national security –    I've never felt more confident in the future of the U.S. military that I do after hearing Hegseth put it this way – listen –    Bite #8   A man after my own heart…   That dream is becoming reality – now that the Supreme Court has backed Trump's ban on transgender individuals in the military – as I mentioned yesterday –    Hegseth says there are more unqualified on payroll than just those who don't know their gender – and he's taking care of that problem, too – listen –    Bite #9   Elon Musk isn't the only in charge of downsizing – we've got a whole cabinet team looking to make our government the most efficient it's ever been – using our tax dollars for legitimate purposes – to serve the taxpayers well –    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is leading the charge on that mission over at the U.S. Treasury – he's also rooting out corruption – and making sure that we know where our money is going –    He says the previous administrations were complacent about transparency – across the whole government – and that attitude affected the Treasury Department, too – on a billion-dollar scale – listen –    Bite #10   The United States Treasury was sending billions of dollars to God knows where – while Nancy Pelosi was House Speaker – and passed a provision in 2021 that required every gig worker making more than $600 on apps like Venmo to report that money to the IRS – when the previous threshold was 20-thousand dollars.   Rules for thee, but not for me, huh?   Bessent is after more than just transparency – he wants to recreate the booming successes of Trump's first term in office – something we all want – and voted for –    Bite #11   I'm confident that we can return to those glory days…but like I've said – we gotta let them work! We can't panic.   China is now agreeing to come to the table on tariff negotiations with the U.S. – and they'll probably start by playing hardball – but you don't think Trump already knows that?   He's the master negotiator – and he's made it clear that he's putting America first.   We've already seen big gains for Americans in our economy – and that's with the Fed dragging their feet on lowering interest rates.   It's clear as day to me: We have to trust Donald J. Trump and his cabinet to be what we voted for. Trump's unapologetic strength, proven economic wins, and America-first agenda is cutting through the noise of a corrupt establishment.  While Americans on both sides of the aisle continue to wring their hands, claiming that the results are taking too long – Trump is fighting for us—lowering egg and gas prices, securing our borders, and empowering leaders. like Bondi, Patel, Bessent, you name it. Pam Bondi and Kash Patel are out there cleaning up our streets, Pete Hegseth is gutting woke military nonsense, Scott Bessent is cleaning up the Treasury, and Trump's negotiating with China like a boss. Give them time—this is Making America Great Again!

As generative AI increasingly takes hold across the federal government, a class of that greater tech discipline called agentic AI is also gaining momentum. Think of it like an AI sidekick. Agentic AI moves beyond rules-based AI assistants of the past to act autonomously to accomplish something without the need for constant human intervention. According to Jonathan Alboum, federal CTO of ServiceNow and a former federal CIO at USDA, agentic AI holds massive potential for the future of the federal government, particularly amid the Trump administration's slashing of the federal workforce and placing a premium on efficiency. Alboum joins the podcast to discuss that, some exciting news from ServiceNow's Knowledge conference this week in Las Vegas and his thoughts on how federal CIOs are managing ongoing consolidation of federal IT programs. President Donald Trump's fiscal 2026 budget proposal would slash $491 million from the budget of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, according to a summary released Friday. That would amount to a nearly 17% reduction to the agency's approximately $3 billion budget. The administration did not release a detailed itemization of the cuts, only an outline. “The Budget refocuses CISA on its core mission — Federal network defense and enhancing the security and resilience of critical infrastructure — while eliminating weaponization and waste,” a summary reads. In broad strokes, if approved by Congress, the budget would target for reduction what it identified as “so-called” disinformation and misinformation programs and offices; “duplicative” programs of other programs at the state and federal level; “external engagement offices such as international affairs”; and consolidate “redundant security advisors and programs.” A startup founder and Department of Government Efficiency associate named Sam Corcos is the new chief information officer of the Treasury Department, according to a person within the agency. Corcos was introduced with that title at a recent meeting for Treasury bureau chief information officers, the person added. Corcos, who most recently helped create a health company called Levels, had been representing DOGE in the Treasury Department, with the official title of special advisor. Corcos, who has appeared on Fox News with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, has said his top priority is looking at the operations and maintenance budget, as well as modernization, at the IRS. He's also sought access to government data and, according to Wired, was involved in an effort to organize an IRS hackathon. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

More than any one institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed's philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this second series, he covers the people who chaired the Fed through the post-1990 period of financialisation, globalisation, and – perhaps today – deglobalisation. This eighth and final episode covers the life and times of the current chair, Jerome ("Jay") Powell - the technocratic lawyer-turned-banker who managed the global economy through two unprecedented disasters: the Covid pandemic and Donald Trump's protectionist trade policies. As the episodes about Martin, Burns, and Volcker all attest, Powell isn't the first chairman to face political blowback. But he is the first to be publicly denounced as “Mr Too Late” and a “major loser” by a president intent on removing him from office before his term ends in mid-2026. To discuss Powell, Tim is joined by Nick Timiraos, author of Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic and Prevented Economic Disaster (Little, Brown, 2022). “If people think you're not going to act in the country's best interest, that's bad for the Fed,” he says. “The next time the Fed decides it needs to do something that actually is ‘exigent and unusual', people will say: ‘Well, wait a minute, the last time you did this, we thought you were a toady for the Democrats or a toady for the Republicans. We don't think you're a straight shooter. We're not going to let you raise interest rates by 25 basis points. We're not going to give you money to backstop your purchases of corporate credit'. Those are the kind of medium and long term risks from a fight with the White House. I think, for Powell, the worst outcome is that people don't think you have an independent central bank anymore. Your monetary policy won't be credible. Why not just roll that thing into the Treasury Department if that's what you're going to do?” Since 2017, Nick Timiraos has been the chief economics correspondent at The Wall Street Journal and has developed an unrivalled reputation as the "Fed whisperer". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

More than any one institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed's philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this second series, he covers the people who chaired the Fed through the post-1990 period of financialisation, globalisation, and – perhaps today – deglobalisation. This eighth and final episode covers the life and times of the current chair, Jerome ("Jay") Powell - the technocratic lawyer-turned-banker who managed the global economy through two unprecedented disasters: the Covid pandemic and Donald Trump's protectionist trade policies. As the episodes about Martin, Burns, and Volcker all attest, Powell isn't the first chairman to face political blowback. But he is the first to be publicly denounced as “Mr Too Late” and a “major loser” by a president intent on removing him from office before his term ends in mid-2026. To discuss Powell, Tim is joined by Nick Timiraos, author of Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic and Prevented Economic Disaster (Little, Brown, 2022). “If people think you're not going to act in the country's best interest, that's bad for the Fed,” he says. “The next time the Fed decides it needs to do something that actually is ‘exigent and unusual', people will say: ‘Well, wait a minute, the last time you did this, we thought you were a toady for the Democrats or a toady for the Republicans. We don't think you're a straight shooter. We're not going to let you raise interest rates by 25 basis points. We're not going to give you money to backstop your purchases of corporate credit'. Those are the kind of medium and long term risks from a fight with the White House. I think, for Powell, the worst outcome is that people don't think you have an independent central bank anymore. Your monetary policy won't be credible. Why not just roll that thing into the Treasury Department if that's what you're going to do?” Since 2017, Nick Timiraos has been the chief economics correspondent at The Wall Street Journal and has developed an unrivalled reputation as the "Fed whisperer". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

More than any one institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed's philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this second series, he covers the people who chaired the Fed through the post-1990 period of financialisation, globalisation, and – perhaps today – deglobalisation. This eighth and final episode covers the life and times of the current chair, Jerome ("Jay") Powell - the technocratic lawyer-turned-banker who managed the global economy through two unprecedented disasters: the Covid pandemic and Donald Trump's protectionist trade policies. As the episodes about Martin, Burns, and Volcker all attest, Powell isn't the first chairman to face political blowback. But he is the first to be publicly denounced as “Mr Too Late” and a “major loser” by a president intent on removing him from office before his term ends in mid-2026. To discuss Powell, Tim is joined by Nick Timiraos, author of Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic and Prevented Economic Disaster (Little, Brown, 2022). “If people think you're not going to act in the country's best interest, that's bad for the Fed,” he says. “The next time the Fed decides it needs to do something that actually is ‘exigent and unusual', people will say: ‘Well, wait a minute, the last time you did this, we thought you were a toady for the Democrats or a toady for the Republicans. We don't think you're a straight shooter. We're not going to let you raise interest rates by 25 basis points. We're not going to give you money to backstop your purchases of corporate credit'. Those are the kind of medium and long term risks from a fight with the White House. I think, for Powell, the worst outcome is that people don't think you have an independent central bank anymore. Your monetary policy won't be credible. Why not just roll that thing into the Treasury Department if that's what you're going to do?” Since 2017, Nick Timiraos has been the chief economics correspondent at The Wall Street Journal and has developed an unrivalled reputation as the "Fed whisperer". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

More than any one institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed's philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this second series, he covers the people who chaired the Fed through the post-1990 period of financialisation, globalisation, and – perhaps today – deglobalisation. This eighth and final episode covers the life and times of the current chair, Jerome ("Jay") Powell - the technocratic lawyer-turned-banker who managed the global economy through two unprecedented disasters: the Covid pandemic and Donald Trump's protectionist trade policies. As the episodes about Martin, Burns, and Volcker all attest, Powell isn't the first chairman to face political blowback. But he is the first to be publicly denounced as “Mr Too Late” and a “major loser” by a president intent on removing him from office before his term ends in mid-2026. To discuss Powell, Tim is joined by Nick Timiraos, author of Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic and Prevented Economic Disaster (Little, Brown, 2022). “If people think you're not going to act in the country's best interest, that's bad for the Fed,” he says. “The next time the Fed decides it needs to do something that actually is ‘exigent and unusual', people will say: ‘Well, wait a minute, the last time you did this, we thought you were a toady for the Democrats or a toady for the Republicans. We don't think you're a straight shooter. We're not going to let you raise interest rates by 25 basis points. We're not going to give you money to backstop your purchases of corporate credit'. Those are the kind of medium and long term risks from a fight with the White House. I think, for Powell, the worst outcome is that people don't think you have an independent central bank anymore. Your monetary policy won't be credible. Why not just roll that thing into the Treasury Department if that's what you're going to do?” Since 2017, Nick Timiraos has been the chief economics correspondent at The Wall Street Journal and has developed an unrivalled reputation as the "Fed whisperer". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

The Rich Zeoli Show- Hour 3: 5:05pm- While appearing on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States has become “far too dependent on China” and previous administrations have allowed “unfair trade practices” which have resulted in American deindustrialization. 5:10pm- Trump Tariff Updates: On Thursday, German automaker Mercedes-Benz announced it will increase production at its facility in Alabama—resulting in a greater number of American made vehicles. And, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, China is now calling for “sincerity” in negotiating an end to the tariff fight with the Trump Administration. The news comes after Apple announced it would be manufacturing more devices in India and Vietnam. 5:15pm- On Thursday night, Fox News host Jesse Waters sat down with Elon Musk and several DOGE workers to discuss instances of government waste and fraud. At one point, the group revealed that the Treasury Department was spending $5 trillion annually without a “budget code.” 5:20pm- On Thursday night, President Donald Trump delivered the commencement address to the 2025 graduating class of University of Alabama. He also took a shot at Harvard University—where Rich insists Matt was the school mascot. 5:40pm- NPR wants proper pronouns for animals + DOGE reveals the identity of “Big Balls!”

The U.S. Department of Education will begin taking action against federal student loan borrowers who are in default starting on Monday. The Treasury Department could soon start withholding money from government payments like tax refunds and Social Security payments or even garnish wages. Plus, we'll digest this morning's jobs report. And later: Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" is a masterpiece in filmmaking — and in dealmaking. We'll unpack Coogler's deal with studios.

The U.S. Department of Education will begin taking action against federal student loan borrowers who are in default starting on Monday. The Treasury Department could soon start withholding money from government payments like tax refunds and Social Security payments or even garnish wages. Plus, we'll digest this morning's jobs report. And later: Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" is a masterpiece in filmmaking — and in dealmaking. We'll unpack Coogler's deal with studios.

Welcome back to the fourth and final arc of Doomed To Repeat. Last time, the agents of PERENNIAL began unearthing the weathered, dusty psychiatric records of Daniel M. Freis—a descent that leads directly to the birth of Delta Green. Now, it's 1927. The U.S. Treasury Department has launched a secret operation to expose the rot festering in the coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts. Whispers of inhuman rituals and impossible shapes in the fog have reached Washington. If a team can secure photographic proof of what's happening beneath the waves of Ipswich Bay, they'll get the green light from President Coolidge to authorize a federal raid. But first, they must gather that evidence. A covert task force of locals has been assembled—and as they're briefed on the mission, the true horror begins to surface. In this episode, we begin our playthrough of the scenario “Escape From Innsmouth” by Kevin A. Ross and others, and published by Chaosium. TRIGGER AND CONTENT WARNINGS: Language, governmental conspiracy, drowning, death, PTSD, manipulation. Published by arrangement with the Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual property known as Delta Green is a trademark and copyright owned by the Delta Green Partnership, who has licensed its use here. The contents of this podcast are © Mayday Roleplay, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property. CAST OF CHARACTERS • Lev (they/them) - Cora Loquillo (she/they) • Amanda (she/her) - Arthur Clark (he/him) • Caleb (he/him) - Kennedy Newell (he/him) • Eli (any/all) - Dr. Theodore Rooke (he/him) • Zakiya (she/they) - Freddie Thurman (she/they) • Sergio (he/him) - The Handler MUSIC & SOUND EFFECTS • Post Sound Supervision: Sergio Crego, Eli Hauschel • Mixed: Eli Hauschel • Original Music: Aaron A. Pabst • Soundstripe (soundstripe.com) • Epidemic Sound (epidemicsound.com/) • Soundly (getsoundly.com/) DELTA GREEN LINKS • Delta Green (http://deltagreen.com/) MAYDAY ROLEPLAY LINKS • Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/maydayrp) • Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/maydayrp) • Mayday website (https://www.maydayroleplay.com/) • Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/@Maydayrp)

The Treasury Department is losing two of its top technology officials, according to agency sources. Brian Peretti, Treasury's chief technology officer, is leaving the position and taking the federal government's early retirement option, two people within the agency said. Peretti helped organize the department's planning process for information technology and also served in the role of chief artificial intelligence officer. Rick Therrien, Treasury's chief information security officer, is also retiring, the two agency sources said. Therrien had served in the position since July 2024, and, before then, held a series of roles at the Internal Revenue Service. The moves come amid tensions in the Treasury Department over the influence of the Department of Government Efficiency and the departures of IT officials across the federal government. The Defense Department's chief information officer said this week she's kicking off a new program that aims to overhaul cumbersome bureaucratic mechanisms and streamline its ability to rapidly approve new software capabilities for warfighters. Under the Software Fast Track (SWIFT) program, the Pentagon will use artificial intelligence to replace legacy authority to operate (ATO) and Risk Management Framework (RMF) processes when buying new software. Acting DOD CIO Katie Arrington signed a memo authorizing the new effort said and it would officially launch May 1. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Government Accountability Office auditors are examining the “digital footprint” left by DOGE in Treasury Department, Social Security Administration and Office of Personnel Management IT systems, the watchdog's leader told Congress on Tuesday. Testifying before the Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch Subcommittee, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro said GAO auditors are looking into what data was accessed by the Elon Musk underlings during their forays into agency IT systems, and determining if any changes were made. “We're looking at the digital footprint within each of these major systems across government,” Dodaro said, naming OPM, SSA and Treasury specifically. “So we'll have a better idea about what impact DOGE's access has had on the data systems, and whether there's been any information input into the system or taken out of the system.” The General Services Administration unveiled a new initiative Tuesday that it says is aimed at helping agencies gain easier access to IT tools and shifting how the federal government approaches procurement. The OneGov Strategy is meant to modernize how the government buys goods and services and calls for more direct engagement with Original Equipment Manufacturers. The GSA said in a press release that OEMs “will benefit from a more direct and predictable engagement model.” Taxpayers, meanwhile, will benefit from a “smarter, more secure federal IT enterprise” under the strategy, the GSA said. While agencies have, in the past, bought software through resellers, the GSA believes this approach prioritizes direct relationships for enhanced outcomes. Stephen Ehikian, the agency's acting administrator, called the OneGov Strategy “a bold step forward” in GSA's “mission to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. It's about acting as one — aligning to our scale, standards and security to meet the needs of today's government while prepping for the future.” The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Jon Hartley and Phillip Swagel discuss Phill's career as an academic economist, his time in economic policy, why the CBO is important in the budget policy process, current law versus current policy baselines, dynamic scoring versus static scoring, the accuracy of CBO scores, CBO modeling, as well as CBO model transparency. Recorded on March 18, 2025. ABOUT THE SPEAKERS: Phillip Swagel became the 10th Director of the Congressional Budget Office on June 3, 2019. Previously, he was a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the Milken Institute. He has also taught at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, and Georgetown University. His research has involved financial market reform, international trade policy, and China's role in the global economy. From 2006 to 2009, Dr. Swagel was Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Treasury Department, where he was responsible for analysis of a wide range of economic issues, including policies relating to the financial crisis and the Troubled Asset Relief Program. He has also served as chief of staff and senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers in the White House and as an economist at the Federal Reserve Board and the International Monetary Fund. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and his A.B. in economics from Princeton University. Jon Hartley is currently a Policy Fellow at the Hoover Institution, an economics PhD Candidate at Stanford University, a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and an Affiliated Scholar at the Mercatus Center. Jon also is the host of the Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century Podcast, an official podcast of the Hoover Institution, a member of the Canadian Group of Economists, and the chair of the Economic Club of Miami. Jon has previously worked at Goldman Sachs Asset Management as a Fixed Income Portfolio Construction and Risk Management Associate and as a Quantitative Investment Strategies Client Portfolio Management Senior Analyst and in various policy/governmental roles at the World Bank, IMF, Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and the Bank of Canada.  Jon has also been a regular economics contributor for National Review Online, Forbes and The Huffington Post and has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Globe and Mail, National Post, and Toronto Star among other outlets. Jon has also appeared on CNBC, Fox Business, Fox News, Bloomberg, and NBC and was named to the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 Law & Policy list, the 2017 Wharton 40 Under 40 list and was previously a World Economic Forum Global Shaper. ABOUT THE SERIES: Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics. For more information, visit: capitalismandfreedom.substack.com/

Mabel Walker Willebrandt and the Dries have their backs against the wall. The Treasury Department has made their poisoning program public, but will any of it matter when the tainted booze reaches the masses? Meanwhile, a mind-melting twist in the case of Two Gun Hart comes to light.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“I want real kids fighting each other!” - Chris, on the flashbacks On this week's episode, we're chatting about the nowhere-near-as-good-as-its-sequel assassin film, The Accountant. Couldn't we have done this whole thing without all the flashbacks to them as kids? Did we need the Treasury Department cold on the Accountant's trail the whole movie? Didn't everyone want to yell, ‘No Touching,' whenever we see Jeffrey Tambor's character in prison? And how creepy is it that Ben draws faces on all those melons he's going to shoot? PLUS: Luke Skywalker's lightsaber? Really? The Accountant stars Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons, Jeffrey Tambor, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, John Lithgow, Jean Smart, and Jon Bernthal as Brax; directed by Gavin O'Connor. Tickets are on sale now for our three-night residency during the Oxford Comedy Festival! We'll be doing six shows over three nights from July 18 through 20, doing shows like WHM, W❤️M, The Nexus, The Gleep Glossary, and Animation Damnation! Tickets are going fast, so friends over there, snag your tix!  Throughout 2025, we'll be donating 100% of our earnings from our merch shop to the Center for Reproductive Rights. So head over and check out all these masterful designs and see what tickles your fancy! Shirts? Phone cases? Canvas prints? We got all that and more! Check it out and kick in for a good cause! Original cover art by Felipe Sobreiro.

Anna and Jake talk all things debt limit with the Treasury Department set to give Congress its estimate next week for a debt limit X date. Plus, can the U.S. survive Trump vs. Powell? Want more in-depth daily coverage from Congress? Subscribe to our free Punchbowl News AM newsletter at punchbowl.news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Cybersecurity Defenders Podcast, we discuss some cutting-edge intel coming out of LimaCharlie's community.The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has confirmed that emails belonging to its executives and staff were compromised in a cyber incident first detected in February.A critical zero-day vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-30406, has been actively exploited since March in CentreStack, a file-sharing platform developed by Gladinet and widely used by managed services providers (MSPs).UNC5174, a state-backed Chinese threat actor, has been observed using stealthy tactics and open source tooling in recent campaigns targeting Western and Asia-Pacific organizations.Oracle is facing sustained criticism over its handling of a recent cybersecurity incident in which a hacker claimed to have breached its systems and obtained records linked to over 140,000 tenants.

(To celebrate 4/20, please enjoy this reissue of a DHP Episode from 2019.) At the 2019 Midwest Peace & Liberty Fest in Delton, Mich., CJ took the occasion of Michigan's recent legalization of marijuana to do a DHP Villains feature on the man who is arguably the most important of the Founding Fathers of the US government's war on drugs. Join CJ as he discusses the career of Harry J. Anslinger, from his early life to working for the State Department, then the Treasury Department, culminating in his tenure as first Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930-62, during which time (among other things) he presided over the beginning of the federal government's criminalization of marijuana and the continuous amping-up of the drug war and its penalties; along the way we'll also cover Anslinger's racism & xenophobia, as well as his connections to the OSS and CIA, including lending those agencies some of his top agents for shady purposes, including some of the MK-Ultra experiments. Links Hire CJ to speak to your group or at your event Support the Dangerous History Podcast via Patreon Other ways to support the show Get CJ's Dangerous American History Bibliography FREE Like this episode? You can throw CJ a $ tip via Paypal here: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=D6VUYSYQ4EU6L Throw CJ a $ tip via Venmo here: https://www.venmo.com/u/dangerousmedia Or throw CJ a BTC tip here: bc1qfrz9erz7dqazh9rhz3j7nv696nl52ux8unw79z

A local businessowner is suing the U.S. Treasury Department over new rules that force border businesses to collect Social Security numbers for purchases over $200. Plus, a new downtown homeless shelter is focusing on women and children. And, the first cannabis lounge in San Diego County opens in National City. NBC 7's Marianne Kushi has these stories and more for this Friday, April 18, 2025.

On April 7, the Treasury Department and Department of Homeland Security reached an agreement to allow ICE to use confidential tax information to locate undocumented immigrants. Though this group generally pays taxes at a higher rate than comparable U.S. citizens, advocates warn that the IRS-ICE team-up could have a chilling effect. They say it's likely to endanger the $66 billion in federal tax revenue undocumented immigrants are estimated to contribute, and add to a climate of fear in communities nationwide. Guest: Francine Lipman, law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next and all your  other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 7, the Treasury Department and Department of Homeland Security reached an agreement to allow ICE to use confidential tax information to locate undocumented immigrants. Though this group generally pays taxes at a higher rate than comparable U.S. citizens, advocates warn that the IRS-ICE team-up could have a chilling effect. They say it's likely to endanger the $66 billion in federal tax revenue undocumented immigrants are estimated to contribute, and add to a climate of fear in communities nationwide. Guest: Francine Lipman, law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next and all your  other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 7, the Treasury Department and Department of Homeland Security reached an agreement to allow ICE to use confidential tax information to locate undocumented immigrants. Though this group generally pays taxes at a higher rate than comparable U.S. citizens, advocates warn that the IRS-ICE team-up could have a chilling effect. They say it's likely to endanger the $66 billion in federal tax revenue undocumented immigrants are estimated to contribute, and add to a climate of fear in communities nationwide. Guest: Francine Lipman, law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next and all your  other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Trump announced a new tariff strategy called "Liberation Day" aimed at imposing reciprocal tariffs to level the playing field with other countries. Newt’s guest is David Beckworth, a former international economist for the U.S. Treasury Department and senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center. They discuss the implications of this new tariff policy. Beckworth explains the historical context and mechanics of tariffs, and the potential economic impacts, including the risk of stagflation and the effects on U.S. manufacturing. He also highlights concerns about the politicization of the Federal Reserve and the potential for increased lobbying. Their conversation also touches on the broader implications for international trade relations and the challenges businesses may face in adapting to the new tariff landscape.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Treasury Department has agreed to share tax data from immigrants living in the United States without legal status with the Department of Homeland Security. Former Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Danny Werfel explains the implications. And, layoffs at the Food and Drug Administration are expected to reduce the workforce by 20%. Susan Mayne, former director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the Food and Drug Administration, talks about what those cuts could mean for food safety. Then, Shawnee Baker got a call that her adult daughter, Baylie, had been involved in an accident and was in critical condition. But because Baylie had not designated Baker as her health care proxy, Baker had no say in her daughter's care. Now, Baker is advocating for other parents to take an active role in their adult children's health.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

With just a few weeks to go until Tax Day, Treasury Department and IRS officials are predicting a decrease of more than 10 percent in tax receipts by the April 15 deadline compared with 2024. That would amount to more than $500 billion in lost federal revenue. The prediction, officials told congressional economic correspondent Jacob Bogage, is directly tied to changing taxpayer behavior and President Donald Trump's rapid demolition of parts of the IRS. On “Post Reports,” Jacob joins host Colby Itkowitz to discuss the signals the Trump administration has sent taxpayers with its shrinking of the IRS. And he explains how the administration is hoping to use the tax agency's confidential taxpayer databases to aid in its mass deportation campaign.Today's show was produced by Rennie Svirnovskiy, with help from Bishop Sand. It was edited by Peter Bresnan and mixed by Sean Carter. Subscribe to The Washington Post here.