This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump fired one of his own appointees who was reportedly trying to stop his team from illegally interfering with the IRS.
What happened? Ken Kies headed tax policy at the Treasury Department and was simultaneously serving as the IRS’s top lawyer on an acting basis.
But, according to the Wall Street Journal, he’s now been forced out. And his ouster comes after he’d clashed with White House officials over certain requests they were making about IRS audits — requests that, Kies believed, were illegal.
Federal law prohibits the president and White House staffers from requesting, “directly or indirectly,” that the IRS “conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer.”
What was the White House trying to do? We don’t know yet. Possibilities include that they were requesting that certain people or groups, perhaps political enemies, be audited — or that they were trying to make ongoing audits of Trump’s allies go away.
Do we know Kies was fired because of this? Not for sure. The Journal reports that administration officials and conservative activists had other complaints about Kies, including that he wasn’t working fast enough to roll back Biden-era regulations, and that he was cracking down on wealthy investors’ attempts to get huge tax breaks by not developing certain lands.
What’s the takeaway? In 1971, President Richard Nixon privately told his aides that, atop the IRS, he wanted “a ruthless son of a bitch” that will “go after our enemies and not go after our friends.”
When these and many other Nixon-era abuses came to light, new laws were passed, and new norms were established to prevent this.
But these norms have been fraying. Indeed, Vice President JD Vance recently argued that Nixon’s scandals weren’t actually so bad and shouldn’t have taken down his presidency at all.
And with that, it’s time to log off…
The World Cup final between Spain and Argentina is this Sunday…or is it? That will depend on whether the wildfire smoke-ridden air in northern New Jersey (and much of the East Coast and Midwest) improves enough by then.
Fingers crossed that it will, but while we wait, read Caitlin Dewey on how US cities had some of the unhealthiest air in the world this week.
