Politics
Ukrainians contemplate the once unthinkable: Losing the war with Russia
Could Ukraine lose this war?
For more than two years, as this country of 44 million people has fought off an all-out invasion by neighboring Russia, a spirit of stubborn optimism prevailed even amid the most frightening moments. Any notion of defeat was unthinkable, an almost taboo topic.
But now the question hovers, flitting in and out of view: What if?
The stalling of crucial American aid, a distinct dimming of the world spotlight, and simple war weariness are all exacting a heavy cost. On the front lines, exhausted Ukrainian troops are rationing ammunition as they fend off the latest Russian advances, and anxiety is mounting along with the military and civilian toll.
“Every day, we’re dying,” said Marta Tomakhiv, 33, standing in a sharp-edged shadow in Kyiv’s main Independence Square, mourning a friend from her western Ukrainian hometown who was killed in battle days earlier in the east.
A Ukrainian serviceman with howitzer weaponry in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine on April 11, 2024.
(Alex Babenko / Associated Press)
By and large, Ukrainians still believe they can hold out against a resurgent and powerful foe — if for no other reason, as nearly everyone here points out, than that they are in a fight for their lives.
“There’s absolutely no choice — we know very well what they would do to us if they could,” Artem Morhun, a 30-year-old lawyer on his way to work in downtown Kyiv, said of the invading Russian forces.
Few Ukrainians have forgotten the brutal atrocities carried out by occupying Russian troops in Kyiv’s once-placid suburbs early in the war, or the wholesale destruction and mass death in still-captive cities such as Mariupol, in the country’s southeast.
After months of military setbacks, however, many here wonder whether the long front lines that arc across Ukraine’s south and east can hold, or even whether Russian troops could seize a major city.
Without a rapid infusion of aid, “it will be much harder for us to fight,” said Andriy Borovyk, 38, who was having a coffee outdoors with a friend in the city center. “I think we could lose some territories, definitely.”
Like many others here, he likened the attitude of some of Ukraine’s allies to that of European leaders before World War II, as Adolf Hitler was coming to power.
“I think that Westerners are in a warm bath, as we say in Ukraine — like in 1939, they think it will never affect them,” said Borovyk, who works for an anti-corruption nongovernmental organization. “But it will. History has a cycle.”
A metropolis the size of Chicago, Kyiv bears the earmarks of any sophisticated European capital: stately architecture, craft breweries, ubiquitous electric scooters, colorful springtime blooms in spacious, well-tended parks. But beneath the bustle runs an undercurrent of dread.
Although Kyiv lies hundreds of miles from the battle zone, war’s hallmarks are in plain view: a sea of fluttering blue-and-yellow flags commemorating fallen soldiers, QR codes plastered on posters for crowdfunding efforts to buy drones or other supplies for field units, men and women in camouflage uniforms kissing loved ones goodbye at train stations.
Even an open-air display of wrecked, rusting Russian military vehicles — installed early in the war as a morale booster in a square outside a landmark Kyiv monastery — is more likely these days to inspire a frisson of foreboding than a spurt of national pride.
People view captured Russian equipment, including tanks, in front of St. Michael’s monastery in Kyiv, Ukraine.
(Pete Kiehart / For The Times)
A sea of flags, each representing a fallen Ukrainian soldier, is displayed on Independence Square in Kyiv.
(Pete Kiehart / For The Times)
In the war’s heady early months, after Russian forces menaced Kyiv but then were forced to pull back, people flocked to the square to take selfies, and children played tag between the hulking wrecks. The display has been a frequent backdrop for visiting foreign dignitaries, including President Biden, who strolled the square last year.
For Marina Kozulina, a 50-something Kyiv woman walking her little black dog near a half-ruined tank, the military detritus in the square has become more a reminder of peril than triumph.
“Seeing this makes me nervous, to think about how close the Russians were to Kyiv, and if they could be again,” she said. “I want us to win, but it’s very difficult.”
Even President Volodymyr Zelensky, the former comedian who has tirelessly rallied compatriots since the invasion of Feb. 24, 2022, is taking an increasingly grim tone as cities across the country are pummeled nightly by relentless Russian drone and missile attacks.
“It is quite obvious that our existing air defense capabilities in Ukraine are not sufficient,” he said in a recent nightly address. “And it is obvious to our partners.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky inspects the fortification lines in the Kharkiv region on April 9, 2024.
(Ukrainian Presidential Press Office )
More gloomy news from the battle zone came Saturday, as the head of Ukraine’s military warned that conditions in the country’s east had “significantly worsened” in recent days.
Writing on the messaging app Telegram, the military chief, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said warmer spring temperatures were drying up previously muddy terrain, allowing Russian forces to step up their assaults with tanks and other armored vehicles.
Until recently, explicit talk of potential military defeat was considered largely out of bounds for Ukrainian officials, because they did not want to appear to be seeking expensive Western backing to wage what could ultimately prove a fruitless struggle.
But Zelensky did not mince words in a video meeting last weekend with a Ukrainian aid group: “It is necessary to specifically tell Congress that if Congress does not help Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war,” he said.
Many Ukrainians have an extremely detailed grasp of U.S. election-year politics, and any visiting American is asked again and again: When is more help coming?
“We’re grateful — more than grateful,” said Anastasia Shevchuk, 16, who was out shopping downtown with friends. “But everyone understands that if Russia wins here, it’s a big, big threat to all of Europe, and the rest of the world as well.”
Attention here is heavily focused on the $60-billion U.S. aid package that has been blocked for months by congressional Republicans. It may yet be put to a vote this month, but is still in danger of being derailed by internecine fighting in the GOP.
“Voting on this aid, it’s a matter of life and death — we depend on our partners, especially the U.S.,” said Bohdan Krylyvenko, 38, sitting in the sunshine outside a fast-food restaurant. “You might think, ‘Oh, McDonald’s is open, everything looks OK. But it’s totally not OK.”
Across the country, near-nightly Russian attacks exact a growing toll. The United Nations’ human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said this week that at least 604 Ukrainian civilians were killed or injured in such strikes — hitting apartment blocks and shops, churches and cultural sites — in March.
“The situation in Ukraine is dire; there is not a moment to lose,” the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, wrote Thursday on the social media platform X. She noted the latest predawn air alert at 4:15 a.m., as missile barrages struck several parts of the country.
In a conflict marked by dramatic ups and downs over the last two years — initial fears that Ukraine would be swiftly subdued, an inspirational underdog narrative as the country successfully defended itself, stunning Ukrainian counteroffensives in the country’s south and east in 2022 — recent months, by contrast, have brought a drumbeat of bad news.
Last year’s much-vaunted summer counteroffensive foundered amid muted but pointed mutual recrimination between Ukrainian officials and American backers over battle tactics. The eastern town of Avdiivka fell to Russian forces in February, the first such Ukrainian loss in nine months, a defeat perhaps even more stinging symbolically than tactically.
An apartment in a nine-story building damaged by Russian shelling on April 9, 2024, in Selydove, in eastern Ukraine.
(Oleksandr Buriak / Getty Images)
Manpower shortages in the ranks of a professional army bolstered at the war’s outbreak by citizen soldiers — teachers, accountants and mechanics who rushed to volunteer — have forced an unpopular measure to lower the military mobilization age from 27 to 25. And in the battle zone, artillery stocks have dwindled alarmingly, the senior U.S. commander in Europe warned Congress on Wednesday.
Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli said that within weeks, Ukrainian forces will be vastly outgunned if more armaments are not rushed in.
“They are now being outshot by the Russian side 5-1,” Cavoli said of Ukrainian troops. “The Russians fire five times as many artillery shells at the Ukrainians than the Ukrainians are able to fire back. That will immediately go to 10-1 in a matter of weeks.”
The general added: “We’re not talking about months. We’re not talking hypothetically.”
The Ukrainian side can claim successes as well, some of which its leaders believe have gone unfairly unheralded. Those include stepped-up domestic production of much-needed drones, and securing a shipping lane for grain exports as Ukraine — a country without a formal navy — has sunk or disabled one-third of all Russian warships in the Black Sea with missile and drone attacks.
Ukraine has also harried Moscow with strikes aimed mainly at Russian energy installations — mirroring, though at a far smaller scale, the destructive Russian attacks aimed at Ukraine’s power grid. But some Ukrainian officials have grumbled that they are not allowed to use Western-supplied weaponry beyond the country’s borders.
Military analysts say the drop-off in aid not only contributes to battlefield hardship now, but also makes it difficult for Ukraine to make plans to try to recapture military momentum.
“It’s a dual challenge — to stabilize the current front line, and put in place significant defenses so the Russian advances this year are blunted,” said Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a British defense and security think tank.
Because of the immediate and short-term difficulties, a major Ukrainian counteroffensive this year is a near-impossibility, he said.
In the meantime, European allies are seeking to break the U.S. congressional logjam. On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron met with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, describing the blocked assistance as not only pivotal for Ukraine, but also “profoundly in your interest” — that of the United States.
In a telling bit of realpolitik, however, the British foreign secretary also made the trek to Florida for a meeting with former President Trump, who, as he seeks a second term, has played a key role in dissuading his congressional allies from endorsing the aid. After the meeting, Cameron made no claim of progress.
In every corner of Ukraine, the fallen return home daily.
In Kyiv this week, two wooden caskets bearing soldiers’ bodies were brought to Independence Square — the heart of Ukraine’s 2014 pro-democracy protests — in a solemn parade, with mourners kneeling at their passing.
People pay their respects to two Ukrainian servicemen killed in a battle with Russian troops during the funeral ceremony in Independence Square in Kyiv on April 9, 2024.
(Efrem Lukatsky / Associated Press)
Looking on was a 36-year-old lieutenant colonel named Bohdan, a friend of one of the dead soldiers. He described his feelings when his own 2-year-old son, no stranger to air alerts, asked him when the missiles would come again.
“When he grows up, I don’t want him to have to fight this kind of war, but without the world’s help, maybe he will have to,” said the officer, who, in keeping with military policy, did not want his full name used.
He watched bleakly as the coffins were carried to the foot of a towering monument to Ukraine’s 1991 independence.
“Many people, the best people of our nation, will die,” he continued. “But we will fight. We have no choice.”
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for election in November, but fewer than a tenth of those races are likely to be competitive. And that number has been dwindling.
One culprit? The nationwide redistricting battles, in which Republicans and Democrats across the country have resorted to creative cartography to draw as many safe seats as possible as they fight for control of Congress.
Based on 2024 presidential vote margin
Competitive districts lost with recent redistricting
Competitive districts — where a candidate leads a challenger by fewer than 10 percentage points — are increasingly rare. That is partly because many voters choose to live in communities with like-minded people, making many areas more politically homogenous and less competitive. And it is partly because parties are able to draw gerrymandered House maps, whittling down the number of swing districts even further.
“It’s a mutually reinforcing process,” said Eric Schickler, a political science professor at U.C. Berkeley.
Presidential candidates won about 28 percent of congressional districts with fewer than 10 percentage points in 2008. In 2024, that decreased to 20 percent.
Four swing districts vanished after Florida’s latest round of redistricting in April. Republicans redrew the state’s congressional maps. The new map retained only one district that would have been considered competitive in the 2024 presidential election.
Nearly 20 years ago, Florida had 14 competitive districts.
Florida
2024 presidential vote margin
2024 districts: 5 competitive
New districts: 1 competitive
+20 or more Harris
+10–20
Less than +10 Harris
Less than +10 Trump
+10–20
+20 or more Trump
Texas’ new maps shifted seats in favor of Republicans and in the process wiped out the only two districts that would have been considered competitive in 2024.
2024 presidential vote margin
+20 or more Harris
+10–20
Less than +10 Harris
Less than +10 Trump
+10–20 +20 or more Trump
Texas
2024 districts: 2 competitive
New districts: 0 competitive
Democrats have taken a similar route. Three swing districts disappeared in California when lawmakers redrew its map so Democrats could pick up seats.
2024 presidential vote margin
+20 or more Harris
+10–20
Less than +10 Harris Less than +10 Trump
+10–20
+20 or more Trump
California
2024 districts: 14 competitive
New districts: 11 competitive
Using presidential election results to analyze House races is far from a perfect forecast for the 2026 midterms. For one, voters don’t always cast ballots along party lines. And while voters overwhelmingly turned out for Republican candidates in 2024, the political environment in this year’s midterms is expected to favor Democrats.
But presidential results are a useful lens because of their high turnout and ability to offer a clearer view of partisan trends than congressional elections, which can be highly influenced by incumbency.
The lack of competition is bad for democracy, experts say. Voters have less of a reason to participate if races are not close, and they have fewer ways to force out leaders with whom they are unhappy.
“If you do away with competitive seats, you’re just going to get much less of a response when voters are dissatisfied,” Mr. Shickler said.
House members who occupy safe seats have fewer incentives to compromise or work across the aisle. Many can win by appealing to their party’s base, who are often more likely to vote in primaries.
That increases polarization and can lead to gridlock in Congress, according to experts. “We see that pretty well in our politics already,” said Asher Hildebrand, a professor of public policy at Duke University. “And we’re only going to see more of that as swing districts disappear.”
Mr. Hildebrand points to his home state of North Carolina, which went through two rounds of mid-decade redistricting within two years. Its legislature passed new maps in 2023 that left just two competitive districts. The latest map passed in October shifts one of those districts, currently represented by Don Davis, a Democrat, from one which Mr. Trump won by three percentage points in 2024 to one that he would have won by 12.
2024 presidential vote margin
+20 or more Harris
+10–20
Less than +10 Harris
Less than +10 Trump +10–20
+20 or more Trump
North Carolina
2024 districts: 2 competitive
New districts: 1 competitive
About half of voters in North Carolina voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. But only about a quarter of the state’s delegates are Democrats.
After the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act, and with encouragement from the Trump administration, Republicans in several Southern states — Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina — have moved quickly to redraw maps in their favor. Democrats have threatened to do the same in blue states.
Use the dropdown below to explore how districts’ 2024 presidential election results have shifted in each state that has passed new maps.
+20 or more Harris +10–20
Less than +10 Harris
Less than +10 Trump
+10–20
+20 or more Trump
Note: A court has not yet approved Alabama’s use of a new map.
2024 districts: 1 competitive
New districts: 0 competitive
Politics
Dem who welcomed socialist mayor’s ‘change’ now sounding alarm over billionaire exodus: ‘Gravely concerned’
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A Democratic city council member who once welcomed the “change” from socialist Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is now admitting he is “gravely concerned” about the business exodus affecting the major American city.
This comes as blue states like Washington and New York face a business exodus in favor of more market-friendly red states. Starbucks, a major player in Seattle’s business scene, recently announced a major expansion into Nashville while simultaneously cutting Seattle-based corporate jobs, a move that has intensified concerns about Seattle’s business climate and economic competitiveness.
Wilson, a self-proclaimed socialist, recently went viral for laughing off the exodus of billionaires and business leaders from her city, saying, “I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are super overblown,” and adding, “the ones that leave? Like, bye.”
Now, less than five months into Wilson’s term, Seattle Democratic Councilmember Rob Saka admitted to the New York Times, “I am gravely concerned,” telling the outlet, “This is real.”
BISHOP BARRON SLAMS ‘BORDERLINE COMMUNISTS’ SANDERS, MAMDANI AHEAD OF TRUMP PRAYER EVENT: ‘ECONOMY THAT KILLS’
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson declared last year at a barista picket line, “I am not buying Starbucks, and you should not either.’” (David Ryder/Reuters)
Saka previously welcomed Wilson after she defeated incumbent Bruce Harrell, saying in a statement, “The voters have spoken, calling for change and a renewed focus on affordability, community, and fighting back against a resurgent Trump agenda.”
He praised the “energy she brings to leadership,” and said he was “look[ing] forward to partnering with her to build a thriving, inclusive Seattle that uplifts working families, expands universal preschool for all, ends food deserts, and creates safer, more connected neighborhoods across our city.”
Starbucks recently announced it will shift 2,000 corporate jobs, primarily in IT and supply chain management, to a new regional headquarters in Nashville. Last week, KOMO News reported Starbucks laid off an additional 61 employees as part of a reorganization of its technology department at its corporate headquarters.
State leaders in Washington have also faced criticism for recently passing the “millionaires tax,” which Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson signed on March 30. The measure has been described as the state’s first-ever income tax, backed by progressives and socialists and opposed by conservatives.
The new tax will impose a 9.9% income tax on households earning more than $1 million each year.
WHY STARBUCKS PICKED NASHVILLE OVER SEATTLE FOR EXPANSION, ACCORDING TO LOCAL BUSINESS REPORTER
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson said the Seattle Police Department will be required to investigate, verify, and document any reports of immigration enforcement activity. (Katie Wilson for Seattle)
Starbucks is not the only business impacted by the state’s economic policies. The Columbia Tower Club, an iconic business club atop Seattle’s tallest skyscraper, closed last month after more than four decades. Long considered a hub for executives, developers and civic leaders, the club cited declining office traffic and downtown business activity tied to remote work and high vacancy rates. Critics quickly pointed to the closure as another sign of weakening business confidence in Seattle.
On Monday, the Washington State Republican Party ripped into both Wilson and the city council, posting on X, “Marxist @MayorofSeattle Katie Wilson is more concerned about toilet ribbon-cutting photo opps than massive capital flight in downtown #Seattle all the while @SeattleCouncil stands idle as a once iconic city crumbles.”
The jab refers to a recent Wilson event promoting new downtown public restrooms, which critics mocked amid concerns about Seattle’s economy and business climate.
Though Wilson’s now-infamous “like, bye” line drew laughs and applause from her audience, it immediately sparked backlash on social media from conservatives criticizing her economic policy.
“Seattle’s Socialist Mayor responds to exodus of wealth from Washington State by saying ‘BYE’… then laughing. We’re doomed,” wrote Brandi Kruse.
SOCIALIST MAYOR’S BLUNT 1-WORD MESSAGE TO FLEEING MILLIONAIRES SPARKS OUTRAGE: ‘WE’RE DOOMED’
The Space Needle stands over the Seattle skyline with Mt. Rainier visible in the background in Seattle, Wash., on March 13, 2022. The observation tower was built in 1962 for the World’s Fair and remains a popular tourist attraction despite recent challenges with homelessness and crime in the city. (John Moore/Getty Images)
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“This clip will live in infamy,” the Washington State Republican Party posted on X. “@MayorofSeattle Katie Wilson is not only unfit to be mayor, she lacks grace and gratitude. Perhaps, she’s the one who should leave #Seattle.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Saka and Wilson for additional comment.
Fox News Digital’s Rachel del Guidice, Joshua Q. Nelson and Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.
Politics
Trump DOJ creates $1.7-billion fund for victims of legal ‘weaponization,’ prompting outrage
WASHINGTON — Shortly after attorneys for President Trump moved Monday to dismiss his $10-billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over claims it had leaked his personal tax returns, the Justice Department announced that a settlement in the case would be used to create a $1.776-billion fund for other victims of “weaponization and lawfare.”
“The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said in a statement.
Trump has long claimed that the federal government under President Biden went after him and his political allies without justification and in violation of the law.
He has pardoned all of his supporters charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, along with other political allies, while pressuring the Justice Department to bring cases against his political opponents.
His lawsuit against the IRS had been challenged by Democratic lawmakers, former IRS and Justice Department officials and outside progressive organizations as a blatantly unlawful move by a deeply conflicted president.
It raised questions from the federal judge overseeing it — who had demanded answers this week on whether Trump and his own government were essentially colluding to reach a mutually beneficial agreement in a case in which Trump stood on both sides.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, called the potential deal “a stunning act of corruption. … If he follows through, it will be the most brazen theft and abuse of taxpayer dollars by any president in American history.”
Blanche defended the settlement Monday as similar to one reached during the Obama administration to address claims that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had systematically discriminated against Native American ranchers and farmers for decades.
However, experts said the creation of a fund for Trump’s political allies, as part of a deal to settle a lawsuit he had personally brought against his own government, was completely unprecedented — and concerning.
“Essentially the president is on both sides of the ‘vs.’ [in the lawsuit], and has control over the very agency that is responsible for offering the funds, in settlement of a lawsuit that he has brought in his own personal capacity, along with members of this family,” said Bhattacharyya, legal director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law. “That has never, ever, ever happened before. No former president of the United States would have been so brazen.”
The lawsuit is one of numerous legal attacks by Trump and his administration against a wide range of the president’s perceived enemies, including universities, media outlets and law firms. A number of those cases were settled with promised payments to a future Trump presidential library, funds sent to the federal government, cash for workforce development programs and free legal work.
The Justice Department said the new “weaponization” fund will be paid for out of the federal Judgment Fund, which is a permanent appropriation by Congress and administered by the U.S. Treasury. It was created to ensure that settlements by and judgments against the government could be paid out without individual appropriations being made each time.
The Justice Department said the fund will cease processing claims no later than Dec. 1, 2028 — shortly before Trump is set to leave office — and that the fund will consist of five members appointed by the attorney general, with the president having removal power.
In a separate court filing Monday in the case, 93 Democrat House members also blasted the potential IRS deal.
“Should this lawsuit achieve Plaintiffs’ desired ends, it would result in the improper and unconstitutional transfer of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of the President, his family, and his allies,” the filing reads.
The initial complaint, brought by Trump, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization, focused on leaks by a former IRS contractor, Charles Littlejohn, to the New York Times and ProPublica of tax information for Trump and other wealthy individuals.
Littlejohn pleaded guilty to the unauthorized disclosure of tax information and was sentenced to five years in prison in 2024.
Progressive legal organizations and former IRS and Justice Department officials have also spoken out against the president’s lawsuit and the looming settlement.
The progressive legal organization Democracy Forward had previously filed a brief in court challenging Trump’s lawsuit as raising serious legal concerns. The February brief was filed on behalf of two other groups — Common Cause and the Project on Government Oversight — as well as four former federal officials, including former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
The brief argued that the lawsuit was significantly flawed and barred by a statute of limitation, but also raised “serious concerns about collusive litigation tactics,” and that the court “should exercise its inherent authority to proactively manage” it.
“This case is extraordinary because the President controls both sides of the litigation, which raises the prospect of collusive litigation tactics. Collusive litigation threatens the integrity of the judicial process by risking the Court’s entanglement in an illegitimate proceeding,” the filing said.
The complaint “was filed too late, against the wrong party, and for an unsupported and excessive sum of damages,” the filing said.
Last week, Brandon DeBot, a senior attorney advisor and policy director at the Tax Law Center at New York University Law, and Dave Hubbert, a senior fellow at the center, wrote that the lawsuit was “absurd,” and that a settlement — particularly one in which the IRS would agree to drop any audits of Trump, his family and their businesses — would be “deeply concerning.”
They wrote that the Justice Department has no authority to negotiate any such terms, and that “negotiations involving the President and White House officials to end audits of the President, his family, and his businesses risk violating laws protecting against political interference in tax administration.”
They noted that Congress had “strengthened the tax code’s protections against political interference on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis following public revelation of President Nixon’s failed attempts to use the IRS to target political enemies,” and that any moves by anyone in the White House to “directly or indirectly” request an audit of the president be suspended would violate the law.
Bhattacharyya, who previously oversaw complex settlement cases at the Justice Department, said the “mechanism” by which any such settlement could be used to facilitate payments directly to Trump’s allies would seem to “deviate” from guidelines for the disbursement of settlements to third parties not part of the initial litigation.
Bhattacharyya said such third-party disbursements were banned under Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions during Trump’s first term, allowed under very narrow circumstances in environmental and pollution cases under Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland during the Biden administration, and then barred again by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in Trump’s second term, before her recent ouster.
A settlement in Trump’s IRS case being distributed to his supporters “would seem to deviate from all of those guidelines,” she said. “It would violate all of them.”
Trump’s legal maneuverings against the IRS come amid wider concerns about mismanagement at the agency and a wider battle over its providing the sensitive data of other taxpayers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, at the Trump administration’s direction.
Trump removed IRS Commissioner Billy Long in August 2025, allowed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to serve as acting commissioner for a time and then created the new position of IRS “CEO,” which congressional Democrats have railed against as a “fake” position designed to avoid congressional oversight while the agency falls into “chaos.”
Congressional Democrats have also demanded answers about the release of taxpayer data to ICE, ostensibly for the purposes of deporting taxpayers who lack proper documentation to be in the country as part of Trump’s massive deportation campaign.
“The IRS now admits that this system led to exactly the kinds of grave mistakes our taxpayer privacy laws were designed to prevent,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and several other senators wrote in February.
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