Judge Tells Trump Officials to Release Funds for Democracy Group
Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in her 15-page ruling that the Trump administration had withheld funds from the nonprofit 'for impermissible policy reasons,' and that the endowment had suffered irreparable harm in the form of layoffs of critical staff members and suspension of several democracy-supporting initiatives.
'These harms to the endowment's global reputation and to the 'very existence of its programs' are irreparable,' Judge Friedrich wrote, ordering the release of $95 million in federal funds to the nonprofit — roughly 30 percent of its annual budget.
The endowment, which has been denounced by major authoritarian powers like China and Russia, was one of several U.S.-backed human rights groups that fell victim to aggressive cuts mandated by the Department of Government Efficiency, a group led by Elon Musk that sought to slash much of the government soon after President Trump returned to office.
The grants fund projects such as the development of software that allows citizens to view banned websites and efforts to support independent journalism, many of which ground to a halt after funding was suspended this year.
When the nonprofit sued to release the funds in March, the Trump administration had been withholding $239 million in congressionally appropriated funding from the endowment. After the group sued, the administration released some of the funds.
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New York Times
2 minutes ago
- New York Times
The Auctioneer and the Treasury Chief: How Billy Long Fell Short at the I.R.S.
The meeting between Billy Long and President Trump in the gilded Oval Office last month was supposed to mark a victory for both men. For Mr. Trump, the ceremonial swearing-in of Mr. Long to his role as the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service underscored that he at last had a political loyalist and friend, rather than the typical technocrat, at the head of the powerful tax agency. For Mr. Long, a former Republican congressman from Missouri, it signified the completion of a political comeback. After Mr. Long suffered a dismal showing in Missouri's 2022 Republican Senate primary, his unwavering and, at times, over-the-top support for Mr. Trump had finally panned out. As members of his family and close aides from his time in Congress looked on, he was put in charge of one of the federal government's most visible and fundamental agencies, responsible for collecting roughly $5 trillion in tax revenue each year. By all appearances, Mr. Long had the full support of the president, who had also invited him to a private lunch that day and structured the July 18 swearing-in around it. But within days, Mr. Long began to lose his grip on a job that he had held for barely a month. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had already ousted one White House-installed I.R.S. commissioner this year. He would soon orchestrate the removal of another, culminating in the agency having its seventh leader since January. At the center of Mr. Bessent's concerns was the fact that Mr. Long had been trying to put together an independent plan for the I.R.S. without informing the Treasury Department, according to five people familiar with the matter. But Mr. Long's vision for the I.R.S. had at least in part been shaped by Mr. Trump. Over their lunch, Mr. Trump suggested people at the I.R.S. whom Mr. Long should fire, while Mr. Long told the president he wanted to elevate a Treasury staff member brought in as part of the Department of Government Efficiency, Sam Corcos, to become his No. 2. Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump's powerful aide, at one point stopped by the meeting. Soon after the lunch, the working relationship between Mr. Bessent, a multimillionaire former hedge fund manager, and Mr. Long, a former auctioneer without a college degree, began to break down. Mr. Long remarked to colleagues, as well as the president, that he had to ask Mr. Bessent for permission for everything he wanted to do at the I.R.S. Mr. Long said he wondered why he had been asked to do the job in the first place, according to people who heard the remark. Treasury officials, after some public gaffes from Mr. Long, began to doubt that he possessed the basic discipline to do the demanding and heavily scrutinized job. Several people in the president's orbit also questioned whether Mr. Long was up to the task. Over several weeks, Trump administration officials discussed alternative roles for Mr. Long, and eventually, Sergio Gor, the White House personnel director, informed Mr. Long that he would be moving to a new job, two people briefed on the matter said. Last Friday, Mr. Long said he would leave the I.R.S. and be nominated to become the next ambassador to Iceland. Mr. Long ultimately lasted less than two months at the I.R.S., the latest in a chaotic stretch at the tax agency. Mr. Bessent has temporarily taken over the position. In a statement in response to the reporting for this article, a White House spokesman, Harrison Fields, said that Mr. Long was a 'steadfast ally' and that the president was 'surrounded by highly talented patriots united in advancing his historic and successful agenda.' A Treasury spokesperson said Mr. Long's 'enthusiasm and ability to connect with people' had helped morale at the I.R.S. 'We appreciate his efforts to help kick-start the long overdue modernization of the technical systems within I.R.S. and implement President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill,' the spokesperson said. Mr. Long and the I.R.S. did not respond to requests for comment. This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials at the I.R.S., at the Treasury, at the White House and on Capitol Hill who were granted anonymity to discuss the personnel changes. They described a territorial Treasury secretary in Mr. Bessent who has sought total control of the beleaguered I.R.S., a neophyte administrator in Mr. Long who stumbled during his brief tenure and a rudderless tax agency that is scrambling to execute on its mission amid the leadership turmoil and deep staff cuts this year. 'You say you're concerned about the debt and the deficit and at the same time you're creating chaos at the revenue collection agency,' said John Koskinen, who led the I.R.S. during the Obama and first Trump administrations. 'This is a complex system.' 'Upbeat, Friendly and Open' Mr. Long had almost no background in tax policy or running large organizations when he stepped into the I.R.S. job in mid-June after the Senate confirmed him along party lines. What he lacked in experience he seemed to try to make up for in charisma. He traveled to I.R.S. offices around the country and held early-morning office hours in Washington, inviting employees to sign up to meet with him individually for 10 minutes. He sent regular, playful missives to the full I.R.S. staff, telling workers about the books on leadership he was reading and repeatedly sending staff members home early on Friday, or 'FriYay,' as he called it. 'I used to teach a class on UFOs: 'Upbeat, Friendly and Open.' That's the way I plan to operate, and I hope you'll join me,' he wrote in his first email to the staff, which was viewed by The New York Times. For I.R.S. workers, Mr. Long's attitude was in some ways a welcome change. The period since Mr. Trump took office in January had been marked by upheaval and constant turmoil. In addition to the nearly constant reshuffling of the executive suite, the I.R.S. had also lost roughly 25,000 employees, a quarter of its staff, as the Trump administration razed the ranks of the federal work force. Mr. Long told employees that he did not want to even discuss the possibility of further large-scale staff cuts to the agency. There were still doubts among the rank and file, though. The only tax work Mr. Long had ever done was pitching small businesses, nonprofits and friends on a pair of tax credits — one riddled with fraud that the I.R.S. had been trying to close down and another that the agency has said does not exist. Under the handle @auctnr1, he posted on social media constantly, regularly amplifying posts from conservative accounts attacking Democrats and even I.R.S. employees. He had abruptly put on leave two senior I.R.S. officials targeted by conservative, anti-tax activists. His attempts to curry favor with the staff at times caused issues. I.R.S. managers were forced to scramble to schedule the early dismissals. Some employees continued to work overtime as they tried to clear a backlog of international tax returns and correspondence. 'He did not have a very good understanding of the organization or how it operates or the necessary steps to meet the mission,' said Doreen Greenwald, the president of the National Treasury Employees Union. 'So, that was concerning early on, but obviously I.R.S. employees care deeply about the success of the organization. They were willing to work with him.' He also made errors. At a conference of tax professionals in Utah in July, Mr. Long said next year's tax filing season would start later than normal, a sign of potential disarray at the agency that would come with real repercussions. Such a change would delay the ability of millions to receive their annual tax refunds, a vital source of cash for low-income Americans. He also said the agency's Direct File program, which allows Americans to file their taxes online with the I.R.S. for free, was dead. The agency had to walk back both remarks. A Power Struggle Mr. Long's statements in Utah added to frustrations at the Treasury Department, where there were concerns that the commissioner did not properly appreciate that the I.R.S. fell under the umbrella of the Treasury. The I.R.S. is the largest single component of the Treasury Department, making up more than 70 percent of its budget. But in the second Trump administration, officials from around the government have sought to tap into the tax agency's vast powers. The Department of Homeland Security has pushed the I.R.S. to share typically confidential taxpayer records it keeps on undocumented immigrants, a process that began last week after months of legal wrangling. Mr. Trump also called for the I.R.S. to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status, an attempt to use the agency's auditing powers to put pressure one of the president's political foils. In April, Mr. Bessent had to wrest control of the agency back from Elon Musk, who had Mr. Trump install a temporary commissioner at the I.R.S. without consulting the Treasury secretary. Mr. Bessent protested to Mr. Trump, who ultimately acquiesced, saying Mr. Bessent could fire Mr. Musk's pick, Gary Shapley, after he had led the I.R.S. for just a couple of days. The flap led to a physical confrontation between Mr. Bessent and Mr. Musk in the West Wing, according to multiple people briefed on what took place. Over his short tenure, Mr. Long made clear that he hoped to put his own mark on the job. He wanted to plan his own events, and in July he attended the National Auction Association's annual conference, held outside Chicago. Mr. Long, a member of the association's hall of fame, held a session at the conference, titled 'View From the I.R.S.' At one point, he auctioned off a tie that he had signed, with the proceeds going to charity. 'He's been doing that for as long as I can remember,' said Mike Jones, an auctioneer and friend of Mr. Long's who said he could not recall how much the tie had sold for. Mr. Long had at various points floated to Treasury employees the possibility of running the I.R.S. from his hometown in Springfield, Mo., according to people familiar with the remark. Just days before he would step down from the job last week, a phone call Mr. Long had set up with Representative Richard E. Neal, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, was abruptly rescheduled. An I.R.S. representative had told Mr. Neal's staff that Mr. Long could not be found in time for the original call. The I.R.S. is in the middle of trying to put in place the new tax law Republicans passed last month, a process that includes ironing out the final details of Mr. Trump's campaign promises to not tax overtime or tips, among others. That work is proceeding without Mr. Long, though plans to post a happy birthday message on the internal I.R.S. website for Mr. Long's 70th birthday on Monday were quietly abandoned. Mr. Long, for his part, has appeared unbothered by the quick end to his time running the I.R.S., writing on social media that he was 'thrilled' to be nominated to become the next ambassador to Iceland. Mr. Long has long celebrated just about everything about Mr. Trump, claiming to have coined the term 'Trump train' and distributing fake $45 bills with the president's face during his first term. 'I was never much of a fighter, but I'm loyal to a fault,' Mr. Long wrote to I.R.S. employees on July 25. 'Loyal to my family, my employees partners and my industry. I will stand up and fight for those I'm loyal to.' Alan Rappeport contributed reporting from Washington.
Fox News
3 minutes ago
- Fox News
DAVID MARCUS: Trump takes on Smithsonian's lefty bias and statue-toppling libs melt down
Democrats who cheered the toppling of statues of American heroes such as Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt in 2020, are suddenly deeply concerned that the Trump administration is seeking to curate the Smithsonian museums to better express American exceptionalism. Please, spare us. Take Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota and self-professed white guy taco connoisseur, who took to X this week. "If you're trying to erase history, you're on the wrong side of it," he wrote. But where was this pious outrage when protesters illegally tore down a 90-year-old Christopher Columbus statue at his state capitol in 2020? That erasure of history was done by an angry mob, with no process. I know, because I read all about it in a 2022 article with the fluffy bubblegum title, "Meet the Indigenous Activist Who Toppled Minnesota's Christopher Columbus Statue." Care to take a guess where that article was published? I swear, I'm not making this up: It was in the Smithsonian Magazine. Here's a gem from the apologia, sympathetically describing the vandalism, "'It's a beautiful thing because we have suffered from what [Columbus] did to us,' said Dorene Day, an Ojibwe woman who brought several of her children and her grandchildren to the protest." I'm sure you will be shocked to know that the Smithsonian article did not quote a single Columbus supporter, or even acknowledge that such a position was remotely possible. It basically lamented that the statue had not come down sooner. This is exactly the kind of one-sided, far-left version of history that President Trump and his administration seek to rectify with their review of the museums' offerings. Don't get me wrong, the Smithsonian is a wonderful institution. But the leftist lean has been clear for a long time, including the initial exclusion of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from the African American History museum. This speaks to an issue that goes back much farther than the radicalism of 2020. For decades, perhaps half a century, progressives have held hegemonic control over our cultural and historical institutions; Their rule went all but unchallenged. In their version of events, America is always at fault for the oppression of Americans and pretty much everything else that's wrong in the world. One display about Cuban immigration blames U.S. intervention in Latin America and entirely leaves out the name Fidel Castro. This all raises the question of who gets to decide how we tell the story of our nation? In 2020, under the approving gaze of Democrats, it was protesters who illegally made the decisions. And even when statues were removed "officially," it never involved a referendum, rather wokesters just formed little committees and had their way with our history. In their version of events, America is always at fault for the oppression of Americans and pretty much everything else that's wrong in the world. According to a recent poll, only 37% of Democrats do not think there is anything to celebrate as the United States turns 250 years old next year. This is because the elites in the academy and our cultural institutions have instilled this version of events in the "well educated." The story of history changes over time. It was not until the 1950s, for example, that the Crusades began to be looked at as some kind of racist, colonizing enterprise, and today, it is being revisited by some scholars, viewed more as a needed defensive counterattack against Muslim aggression. This is not to say that one version of events, be they about the Crusades or the Civil War, is right or wrong. But what is wrong is to ignore the arguments in favor of American greatness so as to only expose our dark underbelly. Essentially, somewhere along the line, the decision was made that patriotism does not belong in the museum. It is a bizarre stance that flies in the face of the very history of museums, and there is no reason for the Trump administration to let this fester any longer. Walz and the statue-toppling hypocrites really need to sit this one out. They have already proven that they will happily destroy history to suit their agenda, so they have no leg to stand on in denying conservatives a seat at the Smithsonian table. The process to make changes to the Smithsonian under Trump are open, public, and transparent. Finally, this can be a national debate and not just leftists forcing anti-American ideas down our throats. This process is a lot more than we ever got in 2020, when history was simply taken from us. Many Americans, from coast to coast, welcome it.
Washington Post
3 minutes ago
- Washington Post
DeSantis announces plans for second immigration detention facility in north Florida
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration is preparing to open a second immigration detention facility at a state prison in north Florida, as a federal judge decides the fate of the state's holding center for immigrants at an isolated airstrip in the Florida Everglades dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz.' DeSantis announced Thursday that the new facility is to be housed at the Baker Correctional Institution, a state prison about 43 miles (69 kilometers) west of downtown Jacksonville. It is expected to hold 1,300 immigration detention beds, though that capacity could be expanded to 2,000, state officials said. After opening the Everglades facility last month, DeSantis justified building the second detention center that he dubbed 'Deportation Depot,' by saying President Donald Trump's administration needs the additional capacity to hold and deport more immigrants. 'There is a demand for this,' DeSantis said. 'I'm confident that it will be filled.' The governor touted the relative ease and economy of setting up the north facility at a pre-existing prison, estimating the build-out cost to be $6 million. That's compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars the state has committed to construct the vast network of tents and trailers at the south facility in the rugged and remote Florida swamp. 'This part of the facility is not being used right now for the state prisoners. It just gives us an ability to go in, stand it up quickly, stand it up cheaply,' DeSantis said of the state prison, calling the site 'ready-made.' It could take two to three weeks to get the facility operational, according to Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, the agency in charge of building the immigration facilities. The state had announced plans to 'temporarily' close the prison in 2021, due to persistent staffing shortages . 'A building that's been dormant now for a couple of years is going to have some unforeseen challenges,' Guthrie said when estimating the construction timeline. DeSantis pledged that detainees at the new facility will have 'the same services' that are available at the state's first detention center. Attorneys for detainees at the Everglades facility have called the conditions there deplorable, writing in a court filing that some detainees are showing symptoms of COVID-19 without being separated from the general population. Rainwater floods their tents and officers go cell-to-cell pressuring detainees to sign voluntary removal orders before they're allowed to consult their attorneys. 'Recent conditions at Alligator Alcatraz have fueled a sense of desperation among detainees,' the attorneys said in the court filing. Conditions at the hastily built detention center were outlined in a filing made Wednesday ahead of a hearing Monday over the legal rights of the detainees. Civil rights attorneys want U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz to ensure that detainees at the facility have confidential access to their lawyers, which the lawyers say they haven't had. They also wanted the judge to identify an immigration court that has jurisdiction over the detention center so that petitions can be filed for the detainees' bond or release. The civil rights attorneys say they've been told regularly that federal immigration courts in Florida don't have jurisdiction over the detainees held in the Everglades. ___ Associated Press writer Mike Schneider in Orlando contributed to this report. Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
