Elon Musk’s Doge pushes to access taxpayer data from IRS
Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) is making an unprecedented push for access to an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that houses detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the US, raising alarms over privacy, security, and government overreach, The Washington Post reports.
According to the publication, Doge is requesting access to a classified IRS system that contains the sensitive personal financial records of millions of Americans.
The request, which is reportedly under review, would give Dodge officials “broad access to tax-agency systems, property and datasets. Among them is the Integrated Data Retrieval System, or IDRS, which enables tax agency employees to access IRS accounts — including personal identification numbers — and bank information,” the Washington Post reports.
A Trump administration official defended the move, stating that Doge staff are working to mission is to “eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, and improve government performance to better serve the people”.
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‘It comes from racism’: immigrant workers on Trump’s deportation push
Michael Sainato
Donald Trump has ramped up anti-immigration fervor into his second presidency, promising mass deportations, pushing to increase arrests and bolstering public relations efforts to amplify arrests. The moves have sent a wave of terror through the undocumented worker community that underpins large parts of the US economy.
“Every day I wake up and walk out the door, I go with the hope of going to work, but with the fear of not being able to come back,” said a construction worker and single parent in Texas who obtained immigration protection under the Biden administration. She requested to remain anonymous due to fears about her immigration status.
“Every day I worry if something happens, who will take my kids,” she said. “I have only one child born in the US. They are the only one who might be able to return, but me and the other kids would not be able to come back.”
She claimed that since Trump took office for his second term, there had been fewer opportunities to work construction jobs given the increased fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids at workplaces.
Read the full report here:
UK prime minister Keir Starmer is expected to meet with Donald Trump next week, Reuters reports, citing the prime minister’s spokesman.
Here is a little more on US and Russian officials meeting in Riyadh.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Monday on a previously planned trip.
US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who are set to arrive later on Monday, will be joining him at the talks with Russian officials, Reuters reports.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, a foreign policy advisor to president Vladimir Putin, would fly to the Saudi capital Riyadh on Monday.
“They are expected to hold a meeting with their American counterparts on Tuesday, which will focus primarily on restoring the entire complex of Russian-American relations,” Peskov said.
“It will also be devoted to the preparation of possible negotiations on the Ukrainian settlement and the organisation of a meeting between the two presidents.”
The talks will be among the first high-level, in-person discussions in years between Russian and US officials and are meant to precede a meeting between the US and Russian presidents.
Peskov declined to comment when asked if Putin and US President Donald Trump would meet face-to-face in Saudi Arabia later this month.
‘This is a coup’: Trump and Musk’s purge is cutting more than costs, say experts
Peter Stone
Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s radical drive to slash billions of dollars in annual federal spending with huge job and regulatory cuts is spurring charges that they have made illegal moves while undercutting congressional and judicial powers, say legal experts, Democrats and state attorneys general.
Trump’s fusillade of executive orders expanding his powers in some extreme ways in his cost-cutting fervor, coupled with unprecedented drives by the Musk-led so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to slash many agency workforces and regulations, have created chaos across the US government and raised fears of a threat to US democracy.
Trump and Musk have also attacked judges who have made rulings opposing several of their moves after they ended up in court, threatening at least one with impeachment and accusing him of improper interference.
“In the US, we appeal rulings we disagree with – we don’t ignore court orders or threaten judges with impeachment just because we don’t like the decision. This is a coup, plain and simple,” Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, said.
Trump and Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump’s largest single donor, now face multiple rebukes from judges and legal experts to the regulatory and staff cuts they have engineered at the treasury department, the US Agency for International Development and several other agencies.
You can read the full report here:
The Kremlin said a US citizen briefly detained at a Moscow airport for allegedly travelling into Russia with cannabis-laced gummy sweets had been released ahead of Tuesday’s talks in Saudi Arabia aimed at improving ties, Agence France-Presse reports.
Asked about reports that a US citizen – identified as Kalob Wayne Byers – was released after being arrested on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “As on Tuesday the restoration of relations will be discussed, these events can be seen in that context.”
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Donald Trump wants the Supreme Court to allow him to fire the etchics chief who is head of the federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers, AP reports.
The emergency appeal is the start of what probably will be a steady stream seeking to undo lower court rulings that have slowed his second term agenda.
The Justice Department’s filing obtained by AP asks the conservative-majority court to lift a judge’s order temporarily reinstating Hampton Dellinger as the leader of the Office of Special Counsel.
Dellinger was nominated by President Joe Biden and sued the Trump administration after he was fired by email this month.
Meanwhile in other developments:
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The Trump administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programmes, the Associated Press (AP) reports. Three US officials who spoke to AP said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday. But by late Friday night, the agency’s acting director, Teresa Robbins, issued a memo rescinding the firings for all but 28. The hundreds let go at NNSA were part of a the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) purge across the Department of Energy that targeted about 2,000 employees.
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Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday he believes he could meet “very soon” with Russian president Vladimir Putin to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.Trump said he was working hard to achieve peace, and said he believes both Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy want to stop fighting.
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Trump has been criticised for likening himself to Napoleon amid attacks on judges. The president posted on social media “he who saves his country does not violate any laws’ quote attributed to the French emperor. The post came at the end of another tumultuous week during which Trump acolytes questioned the legitimacy of judges making a succession of rulings to stall his administration’s aggressive seizure or dismantling of federal institutions and budgets.
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French president Emmanuel Macron has called leaders from key European Union nations and the United Kingdom to the Elysee Palace for an emergency meeting Monday to discuss how to deal with the Trump administration and step up plans to increase defence spending.
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US Secretary of State Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff will meet with Russian delegation in Riyadh on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.
Elon Musk’s Doge pushes to access taxpayer data from IRS
Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) is making an unprecedented push for access to an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that houses detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the US, raising alarms over privacy, security, and government overreach, The Washington Post reports.
According to the publication, Doge is requesting access to a classified IRS system that contains the sensitive personal financial records of millions of Americans.
The request, which is reportedly under review, would give Dodge officials “broad access to tax-agency systems, property and datasets. Among them is the Integrated Data Retrieval System, or IDRS, which enables tax agency employees to access IRS accounts — including personal identification numbers — and bank information,” the Washington Post reports.
A Trump administration official defended the move, stating that Doge staff are working to mission is to “eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, and improve government performance to better serve the people”.