The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3703 - Abdul Beats AIPAC; Trump's IRS is Imploding w/ Stephanie Mencimer

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Welcome back to The Majority Report On today's program: Five states had held primary elections last night and overall, it was pretty good night for progressives. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed defeated Haley Stevens in the Senate primary, and the two DSA-candidates running for Congress, Will Lawrence and Donovan McKinney, won their primaries. Mallory McMorrow wastes no time in endorsing El-Sayed for Seante and even introduced him at his victory speech in Detroit. El-Sayed laid into his Republican opponent Mike Rogers for being a bootlicking, corporate puppet and the Democrat promised to send Rogers back to Florida. Stephanie Mencimer, journalist at Mother Jones' D.C. bureau, joins the program to discuss her piece: "The IRS is Imploding". In The Fun Half: Bill Maher monologues on the DSA "colonizing" the Democratic party. On CNN, Harry Enten presents some positive polling for James Talarico. Rep. Max Miller is making the media rounds to defend himself against domestic abuse allegations and to blackmail his former father-in-law, Sen. Bernie Moreno. Jon Stewart tries to get John Fetterman to explain why Israel is a red line for him, but the Senator can't not understand the question. all that and more. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AM Quickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: ZOCDOC: Find and book the right doctor https://Zocdoc.com/MAJORITY SUNSET LAKE CBD: Visit SunsetLakeCBD.com and use coupon code DOGDAYS26 to save 30% on all CBD pet products. This sale ends August 5th at midnight Eastern time. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's YouTube channel: https://ww.youtube.com/Th3Discourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here: https:/www.youtube.com/avaraiza

It is Wednesday. August 5th, 2006. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America. Downtown Brooklyn, USA on the program today. Stephanie Menemster. Staff reporter Mother Jones, Washington Bureau on to discuss her piece.

The IRS is imploding. But meanwhile, not a romp, but a big night for progressives in Michigan as Abdul al-Said wins in dramatic fashion. The 13th District Donovan McKinney. wins and will be the seventh DSAer sent to Congress in Michigan 7th. Will Lawrence will win or has won and will be facing a Republican incumbent. Meanwhile, bad news in Missouri, Corey Bush handily defeated by Wesley Abel and his A-PAC money. Hartzell Gray in the

fourth didn't cross the finish line but came very close teeing up a 2028 run in my opinion Kansas

voters reject the idea of an elected Supreme Court Missouri voters reject making referendums harder for people to call for. And out of the White House

supposedly a new deal on the opening of the Strait of Hormuz because it's Wednesday and the stock market is still open until Friday. Meanwhile, as the deadline is looming for Max Miller to drop out of

Ohio's 7th District re-election, he remains defiant. He's a fighter. He'll smack you around. Ice arrest reach record highs in July. New report more than 50 detainees are either parents or spouses of active U.S. military. And good news. If you're a corporation, Trump administration refunds $100 billion to corporations in Liberation Day tariff refunds. However, if you're one of the consumers who, paid for that, you're screwed. I'm sure they'll pass those savings alone. Oh, of course.

Federal Appeals Court bars the Trump EPA from canceling $20 billion in climate change grants. Private companies hiring comes in way below expectations. And a piece of SpaceX rocket crashes into the moon. It sneaks up on you. What are you going to do? All this and more on today. Today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for joining us. Emma is out today. We were here rather late this last evening.

Brian was in here like what, 715 and... I slept here. Cleaning up the place. Exactly. When we left, the race had not been called by anybody except for me. First. You heard it here first. folks.

Exactly. The race was a lot tighter than most of the polling would have had us believe. I think it's down to one point now or somewhere around there, but it has been called by the AP. Haley Stevens has conceded. NBC had called it late last night, maybe at three or four in the morning, but nobody else had. But it appears it is really clear. I know that Emma was upset when I called it based upon just gut instinct. I wanted to troll her? Yes.

Hopefully it was a moment of growth. I think everybody understands that, I mean, according to Emma, I would have caused the win. Right. If I could have caused the loss, then I certainly could have caused the win. I should tell you all, though, it's not magic. People had already voted, and so it had nothing to do with my premature calling of the race. But this is a big victory. A couple of things just to keep in mind, we don't know yet.

We probably will, but we don't know yet how many Republicans voted in this. It's an open primary. Anybody could have voted in there. I don't think there's substantial numbers. of Republicans who voted, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was some. It's a tight race, rural areas went with Stevens, concentrated areas where there are black voters, particularly older black voters, went with Stevens as well. there's going to be a challenge for El Saeed, obviously, in running against Rogers, I think

he has a better shot than Haley Stevens would have had because she didn't seem to motivate anybody without huge gobs of money. I mean, really, you're talking almost 10 to 1. He spent $1 on every vote. She spent $10 on every vote is a way to look at it. it's actually the numbers are more inflated than that, obviously. And she had all the establishment endorsements too. Right.

I mean, we're going to see. And also, I would also imagine that part of a Hilly Stevens vote was a function of we don't think El Saeed can win. And those people now move from pundits back into the, I'm just voting for the person I want to win in this race. uh... but it's gonna be an all hands on deck moment in michigan in that general because uh... the implications of abdul os i'd uh... winning are huge for the progressive movement there's really no other way to put uh...

to argue that and you know uh... you can it's not hard to imagine the the senate caucus we could have whether the democrats take the senate or not But folks like Troy Jackson, folks like Abdul al-Said, Tala Rico, you know, who's not going to be as progressive as we want on a whole host of issues, undoubtedly. Dan Osborne, the same. But they're going to be able to, they're going to create a voting block. But we will, we'll see.

Here is Steve Kornacki, and we should, you know, we were leaning heavily on Kornacki last night. we did miss the part where he poured water all over his computer, which I saw in retrospect, which is sort of funny. But here he is calling the race. I don't know what time this was last night. Do we know exactly? It was late, late. This is an NBC News special report. I'm Steve Kranaki. American voters in five states hit the polls on Tuesday. And I've got some major results to share with you, starting in the state of Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed has won the Democratic primary for the United States Senate. He defeats Congresswoman Haley Stevens. This was a very close race here. You can see there are still a scattering of votes to be counted.

But Al-Saiad currently leading Stevens by two-point out. There you go. That was the call. And then Mallory McMorrow came out with an endorsement. This is number two. I mean, she came out with this before he actually gave his speech. She might have had to drafted for both, depending on which. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind, but she was very, very welcome aboard.

Yep. And congratulations to Abdul El-Sayed on winning the Michigan Democratic primary to be our nominee. Abdul has my full endorsement in support. This is a brutal primary. Believe me, I know. And Trump, that was her preempt, parenthetical. And Trump and Micah Rogers are counting. on us staying divided. Let's prove them wrong by beating Mike Rogers and taking our country back.

It's good to see. I don't know what I haven't heard from Heli Stevens, although she did call to concede. Here is Abdul al-Said this morning giving a victory speech. And we should say that McMurrow introduced him. And she's standing behind him here. And no sign as to where Hassan Piker is. But I'm going to wait to condemn her for being on stage with the Piker. I'm going to wait for that. I joke.

Look, now is the time for unity. Here is, let's all get along. Mike's a guy who spent 14 years in Congress with one goal to figure out how to cash out the day he left. And guess what he did? As soon as he left Congress, after having taken corporate check, after corporate check, after corporate check, to empower the corporations to pick your pockets, he went and he cashed out.

Not in Michigan. No, winters are too cold for him. He's got thin skin after all. He went to Florida. So, Mike, if you want to be a Florida man, go be a Florida man. If you want to golf in Florida, go golf in Florida. But I promise you in November, we are going to send you back to Florida. Mike Rogers is the guy who wants to put a data center in your backyard so he can make himself feel a little bit more manly by making an AI video.

Mike Rogers is the guy who has never shied away from a DTE check so he could turn his face in the direction of Florida. Mike Rogers is a guy who will do anything Blue Cross Blue Shield wants him to do, including raise your rates. Mike Rogers is a guy who introduced legislation to increase the flow of opioids. He did that while I was in high school. Mike Rogers is a guy whose politics and vision and perspective are old. Mike Rogers is a guy who has never shied away from a corporation he could do a favor for. Mike Rogers is a guy who, believe it or not, went back to Florida so he could lick every single boot Donald Trump owns to beg for his endorsement. I'm so sorry if you want a senator who's going to lick some boots, fine, go vote for Mike Rogers.

But if you want a senator who's going to stand up to Donald Trump, then you've got your option right here. I don't you get the sense that that speech was written. It ends with him shoving my garages into a locker. What's a DTE check, by the way? Is that something I'm supposed to know? I don't know what that is. Here is, let's play this clip. This is number four. Energy company, DTE.

Is this a different victory speech? This one at the same one in Detroit. and this is a separate part of it. I want to speak specifically to an issue that has been focused on in this race. To my Jewish American sisters and brothers, one of the most indelible memories of this campaign will have been the opportunity to break bread with you at Seder, to worship with you at shul,

to be embraced by you. And listening to sisters and brothers who said, you know, I want to join this movement because A-PAC doesn't speak for me. Because I understand that self-determination for one people does not require the quenching of self-determination for another people. That unless all of us are free, none of us are free, I want to tell you the great gift that you've given me. And to all of my sisters and brothers of the Jewish faith or any faith at all or not, no faith at all, I want you to know that my commitment to your safety, my commitment to Jewish safety is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters. Because if there is one question of a political philosophy that ought to animate us all is, what would we build,

what would we do if we treated all of our kids like they were all of our kids? Good stuff there. And, you know, I would, I would. love to see the data of really how many people were talking about who had those concerns that needed to be ameliorated. I mean, there has been an ongoing campaign to paint him as anti-Semitic by those people who want continued support of Israel with our tax dollars and our basically being accomplices in the genocide that continues to be ongoing in Gaza. I don't know. We don't have hard numbers of how many people voted against El-Said because they had heard, you know, secondhand that he's anti-Semitic or assumed or just straight on Islamophobia.

But comments and constructions like that are helpful for people to reach those people. But again, again, we don't know how many Republicans voted in that election. I don't think it was a huge amount. But we'll start to see those numbers. And we'll see how much Haley Stevens is going to be supportive of the Democratic nominee. I would think a decent amount still wants to have a career in democratic politics. And we should also just note

an absolute disaster if you are someone looking to Chuck Schumer and Christian Gillibrand to lead the party because either A, they're incompetent, or B, they also have absolutely no idea where the Democratic Party is.

I mean, both things can be true, but your perspective may vary depending on where you are at politically. If I was one of these, you know, Democratic establishment types, I'd be very concerned that we have the two most incompetent people in charge of finding candidates. I don't know who else, you know, who else was on the bench in Michigan for the establishment. But it must have been pretty thin, pretty thin. And I wonder if there aren't like some APEC and crypto and AI billionaires who are just kicking themselves today. Like maybe if we just dumped another $30 million into that race. it would have been worth it.

I think another $30 million would have maybe pushed her over the edge. $90 million. One-tenth what has spent in the past couple of presidential campaigns. We need to raise taxes. Indeed. Also, let's turn. We don't have a Donovan McKinney speech. because I think it was just called this morning.

But that's big news. That is a guaranteed another DSA are in the house. Yeah, he just posted his first victory tweet 11 minutes ago. So but very excited. We can put this up here, I suppose. Here's that tweet. Detroit, he writes, I'm honored beyond measure to be your Democratic nominee to represent our mighty 13th in Congress.

Taking back our seat, taking back our power has always been the core of our movement. I am so excited for all our community we'll accomplish together. Thank you, Michigan 13th. That's exciting. I mean, that was a long shot race. And lastly, William, Will Lawrence, one of the founders of the Sunset Movement, sunrise movement, sorry. Speaking of sunset. Sunset movement was Joe Biden.

Exactly. I was going to say. I actually have my sunset movement card. Sam's a sunset movement partner. Yep. Here's Will Lawrence in East Lansing. Yeah. Because this is the truth.

Everybody here in the 7th District, regardless of your blood. persuasion. We share so much more in common. We share so much more in common than that what separates us. We share so much more in common than these billionaires in Silicon Valley and Wall Street and these insiders in DC. We're going to find that common ground. We're going to build up. We're going to build up. And I'm telling you that on data centers, on war, on housing and healthcare, and on elite accountability, we are going to bring people together into a new way of politics beyond these old, Thanks.

Exciting wins there. Again, in Missouri, Corey Bush lost. She did not have much by way of fundraising. Wesley Bell had millions more than she did. And Hartsall Gray lost in the fourth dish, but he came close. And he also, I think, was overlooked,

and I think he was considered a lot. long shot but had there been resources there this time around we could have seen a different outcome I suspect there'll be more resources next time because he got redistricted into a less favorable district and we had him on left reckoning shortly after that and he's like I still think we have a chance

and he was right they had a chance yeah good effort and I hope to see him again and for Will Lawrence's chances he's facing a Republican incumbent who squeaked out one election so far and that was to replace the list of slotkin so he's not he's only a one term incumbent who barely eeked out in 2024. And speaking of losers last night,

it's not just Chuck Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand, who took it on the chin last night. Elisa Slotkin, I think, had supported against Lawrence, was it? I got to check my notes here. But her preferred candidate, and I think it was in that Lawrence race, came in third. The one that she endorsed. Now, she did her endorsement on... Induced Mazden.

Yeah. And that was in the Lawrence race, right? Yep. Now, to be fair, she did her endorsement. on, with invisible ink that she got from the CIA. The guy was a Navy seal. It was a, yeah, it was one of those dead drop endorsements.

And if somebody didn't actually look in the, underneath the mailbox, you have to squeeze lemon juice on it and then gently put a flame below it. And it will reveal the endorsement. The secrets of the deep state Democrats. Exactly. So that's good news. There's going to be a lot.

There's a lot of work. And it also, I think like, look, next week is Minnesota and you should ignore polling. Yep. If we have a lesson from this, it is ignore polling. Particularly, look, it's very difficult to get quality polling from a primary. It's just nobody wants to spend the money on it. and get, you know, quality polling.

And it's just, it's very difficult to predict. But before we go to a commercial in a moment, we're going to be talking to Stephanie Menempser. I think we need, we cannot close out the Michigan primaries without one last time. And oh, we should say it's not going to be the last time. No. No, we're going to be playing this clip probably for well past my retirement. But we just need it.

I want that Michigan fist! Yep, you got it. I want the Michigan fist. And we got it. You got it. Michigan has been fisted. X-Try, X-Tree. Read all about it.

Michigan fisted. we just have this uh one at is that it okay um like i say in a moment we're going to be talking to stephanie menemster um on her piece about the implosion of the irs everything we hear about trump's corruption is bad but the stuff that really is going to have a lasting impact on a material basis on people for years to come is the utter destruction of nearly all of our government agencies. The one that gives the government revenue is a really important one, not just because it gives it revenue, but also it is a way of limiting wealth inequality.

We'll be talking to her in a moment about that. First, I want to thank Zoc Doc for sponsoring today's episode. Super easy to put off doctor's appointments. Right. I had a hard time biting into a pickle today. And dentist appointments. Zoc doc can't take away the psychological blocks that you have. Brian.

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We will put the link in the podcast and YouTube descriptions and at majority.com. Quick break. When we come back, we'll be talking to Stephanie Menemser. We are back, Sam Cedar on the Majority. report emma viglin is out today want to welcome back to the program stephanie mensomer uh she is a staff reporter uh in the mother jones washington bureau uh and uh stephan i've been waiting for someone to write a piece about this and it's we're in a hard sort of like temporarily hard time to sort of fully get a full picture of just how bad it is. But I was saying before the break that as bad as like

Trump's corruption is, the real story is how this era of the Trump Republican rule has undermined all sorts of government agencies. And of course, the IRS, they have been gunning for. This has been a Republican project for decades and decades. And I mean, maybe 100 years. I mean, not quite, but close. Tell us, let's start with sort of like anecdotally how you stumbled on to this story. But we had seen, you know, the attacks were blatant. But just give us like your first anecdote. And then I want to go into what the Biden administration had done,

some of the history of the IRS funding. Sure. Well, I had gotten a letter from the IRS, and after I'd done my taxes, and they said, we've corrected or we've changed your return, and now you owe us a whole bunch of money. And I looked at it, and the numbers were all weird, and I realized, as I went through it, I'm like, I don't actually owe them any money. I paid all of this, and they just don't seem to have credited me for my payments. And so I thought this should be easy enough to fix, right? I'll just call them and I'll send them my records and that should be it. But calling them proved to be impossible.

I spent hours and hours and hours on hold with the IRS getting disconnected. Sometimes I'd be on hold for two hours and then get disconnected. Sometimes you call and they say that the phones are so overwhelmed, you can't even be put on hold. And I realized, so then I asked my accountant, I was like, is there something I'm missing. I'm like, is there some other way to get in touch with them and resolve this? And she said, I don't know. I can't get through either. And there's like a special line for tax practitioners to be able to help, you know, their clients resolve stuff. And they can't get through that either. And that's when I realized, oh, wow, it's finally broken. And part of the reason I realized that last

year I did a story on the IRS about all the layoffs and the job cuts because I'm from Ogden, Utah, and there's a giant IRS service center in Ogden. So, like, my relatives had worked there. Everybody works at the IRS if you live in Ogden long enough. And so I was there as they were laying off all these people. And people warned last year, like, oh, they're doing all this during tax season. It's going to be a disaster. The tax season is going to implode, whatever. But it didn't really because they hadn't fully finished getting rid of everybody because they put all these workers on like administrative leave. They paid them not to work, but they were still there through tax season. And so a lot of those people didn't actually leave the IRS until like October.

So we're just now starting to see the impact of what all those job cuts meant for like customer service functions at the IRS. And as I discovered, it was really bad. Let's just go back a little bit. the underfunding the IRS seemed to be a bipartisan project really in the you know I'm thinking the aughts and even the teens

if you look at the graph of funding for the IRS it just sort of slowly goes down and simultaneously what we saw is the percentage of audits of people making not much money went up relative to people making a lot of money because it's just more expensive.

You need more manpower, person power, to go after wealthy people because they have more sophisticated sort of tax dodges. And then during the American Rescue Act, and I guess the IRA under Biden, we saw a big bump in IRS funding. How much of that money landed before it was all sort of like stripped away? Well, they took it away in phases. So I think initially it was something like $80 billion that were going to invest in the IRS and that was going to go to like hiring customer service people and auditors and investigators and also upgrading the technology, which was really out of date.

and then Congress clawed it back in kind of chunks. And I think in the end, maybe it was like $10 or $13 billion that they did actually get to hang on to. But you probably remember there were people like Ted Cruz were warning that, you know, Biden was going to hire 87,000 jackbooted thugs the IRS to go and torture American citizens over their taxes. And so they really politicized, you know,

this really basic function of just collecting revenue for the government and turn it into something, you know, nefarious when, in fact, it's just the way things have to work if you want to have a functioning democracy. And if I remember correctly, the data came in and we started seeing the audit rate for people making over $400,000 went up, but everything else stayed essentially static. And we also know that for every dollar you spend on IRS enforcement, you make like $7. I mean, this is the biggest, one of the best return on investments we could have in the government, it seems. It all pays for itself. It really does. And it's, you know, there's some, you know, they measure in, I think, I forget what they call it,

but there's a gap between how much people actually owe and what they actually pay. And it's getting wider and wider because people on the upper end of the income scale start paying. And they know they can get away with it. So as long as that's the case, you know, there's all kinds of revenue that the government should have that's quite uncollected. And what we're looking at now, though, is sort of a, like almost another tier level of a problem. That is just completely dysfunctional. They got rid of the, I can't remember what they called it, the freedom file or whatever it was that they had piloted. Will you tell us just a little bit about that?

Because that, that seems like they're really trying to ruin the IRS. Like they wanted to just, it seems like, just completely go away. Well, I think that they just also want to punish like normal people. That's my, you know, when I was trying to, when I was sitting on hold for hours, trying to get I mean, the direct pay, minor saying is it was basically so that you don't have to pay turbo tax to file your really simple 1040 form. You should be able to, the idea was you should be able to just file your taxes online, especially if they're not too complicated.

And it should be free. Like, you shouldn't have to pay these companies to buy their software and then have to pay to submit it when you're doing something that you have to do and the government is happy to have you do it online because also getting people to file their taxes online is good for, you know, less paper. They don't have to hire as many people to open the mail and stuff like that. So it was a win-win all the way around. But, you know, TurboTax, I think, had fought this for years.

And so I think the Trump people just caved and said, yeah, okay, we'll get rid of that. And, you know, God forbid the government should actually work right and help people do something that they need to do. It was piloted, I think, in the first year of the Biden administration. and then by last year, I think it was available to just about everybody, and then it was abruptly cut off. I'm not even sure I would characterize it as a cave as much as it is like we just got around to getting rid of it for you guys. What have you heard, you know, there's a lot of anecdotes in your piece,

But what have you heard in terms of like actual data to suggest that there is a tremendous amount of dysfunction at the IRS? I mean, it's a brilliant. Look, it's a brilliant plan, right? If you want to turn the American public against the IRS and they're doing the same thing with Social Security as far as I can tell, you just make it really difficult for people to deal with them. And the harder you make it, the more people are going to resent the agency and not necessarily. realize it's because it's woefully underfunded. Right. And I think, you know, there, so the data that you're talking about is the IRS's own

data says that they are not responding to phone calls. It's remarkable. Like, you know, millions of people call the IRS. And this data actually, I think, mostly comes from during the tax filing season, which is bad because the numbers were bad during the tax filing season, even though the Trump administration actually tried to keep that from being a total disaster or they moved a lot of people around to make sure that they answered more phones. So they cut 40% of the IT department at the IRS and the people that were left, they didn't keep

them doing IT. They had some of them like answering the phones just because they didn't have enough people to do customer service. And so they had this kind of, you know, triage during tax season. But as one of the former taxpayer advocate told me, she said, where I, you know, measure the effectiveness of the agency is on April 16th. It's the day after everybody files their returns. And that's when the IRS started sending all these letters like the one I got saying, you know, you did it wrong or actually you owe us way more money than you paid or whatever. And that's what people actually

need to interact with the agency. Because like 99% taxpayers never need to talk to the IRS. They just and their taxes in, everything is fine. They get their refunds and they go about their business. But for the other people who have a problem, they really do need to talk to somebody. And it's not always, there's not always a technological fix for this. And so that's where you start to see the cracks and that things are really imploding. Because I talk to all kinds of lawyers who represent low-income taxpayers and people who just practice tax law. And they said, some of them, there's one guy I talked to him. He's been doing this for 50 years.

And he said, I've never seen it as bad. I have like five or six cases. I'm just completely stymied on because I can't get through to anybody at the IRS. There is nobody there. And, you know, as the former HR director from the IRS who got pushed out early last year by Doge, she told me, she said, well, you can't expect to get rid of 30% of your workforce and still function. And that's, I think, what we're seeing. And is that the 30%?

Do we have a breakdown of, like, you say, was it 40% of the IT department was gotten rid of? that seems like a bad idea to me but how much do we know what the percentages are in the different sort of like aspects of the way they operate? You know, I don't have all that right in front of me but it was it was across the board

I mean honestly they took aim at stuff like you know, anybody who audited rich people money laundering that all went out the door. I actually talked to you know people who had been involved in money laundering operations that Those people are gone.

They're all the tech people, customer service, the people who do nonprofit work, because, you know, God forbid, you should audit like a tech, you know, a Tea Party group or something. Or, you know, some political nonprofits. So they're not really auditing political nonprofits. But pretty much it's across the board. Everybody. They're all the way from the mailroom and up to upper management. I mean, they haven't had an IRS commissioner since Trump took office. They've gone through a bunch of people.

I guess maybe they confirmed Billy Long, but they haven't had. They've made up a fake job to be the CEO of the IRS because they can't get anybody confirmed in this position because Trump hasn't picked anybody who's competent. We should say Billy Long, who was the first nominee, he had come up with some type of like commercial scheme about taxes. Hadney or something to that effect? Or he was pitching like a plan. plan to to evade taxes, like a, prior to this.

Just a couple of things that you wrote here. You cite a report to Congress from the Taxpayer Advocate Service, which was an independent agency within the IRS, found that live humans answered 20% fewer calls during the tax season. Hold times jumped anywhere from 81 to 161 percent. Only 17% of the calls handled by the voice bot system were completed. The worst service came on phone lines dedicated to people who owed money to needed help, such as an installment plan. Live operators answered only 30% of more than 3 million calls over the first, like, four months of the year. it goes on and on

where did like did did you get any comments from like the administration or people working in the IRS to the extent that they like showed that they cared that this was considered a problem I imagine there's still a lot of people working at the

IRS who are pulling their hair out about this but any of the people who are in a position to make like decisions like is there a plan or is it just to literally let this thing sort of just like fall apart? Well, I think they finally have realized that they went too far and they're trying now to scramble to hire people. They're having these hiring fares and I think they got authorized to hire like another 8,000 people.

But I don't think it's going very well because after what they did to the federal workers, I don't think a lot of people are rushing to go back there. But I try to ask you. Well, it was funny. While I was writing the story, weirdly enough, I started getting press releases from the IRS. They must have gotten a new, they must have hired a new press person. And so they started sending me these press releases about IRS holding Saturday hours in its taxpayer assistance center. And this is so great.

And we're going to be helping people. And so I emailed the woman back. It said, hey, I just happened to be writing a story about this. And also these taxpayer assistance center. which, you know, you've closed all of them, mostly this year. And I had said that my questions and then she never responded. But she sent me a new press release yesterday about something from the IRS was doing. And so I have no idea what the strategy is.

I mean, I don't think there was one. I think that Doge just came in and they wanted the data. You know, there were those guys who walked out of there with us, you know, with USB tribes full of Americans' personal information. I think they thought they would be able, they were so smart. they would just be able to whip the place in the shape with some easy technological fix. And it turned out that it wasn't that easy. And I think there's also just some sort of nihilism involved that they just wanted to destroy the place.

And that's what they've done. Have you, are you aware of any members of Congress or that presumably Democrats, who are, like, creating a dossier or, like, this is what we need to do on day one. We need to have legislation that rebuilds the IRS. I mean, I wonder if this is happening for any agencies, but, I mean, it should be. But have you heard of anybody? I have not. You know, I think that members of Congress are aware.

Actually, some of them are probably painfully aware that this is happening, because when I talk to advocates and lawyers who work with people who've got tax problems, they said now when they can't get through the phone lines, they just go straight to their representative. So all these people have tax problems are trying to use their Congress people as a back door to get through and solve these issues. And so I haven't dug too deep into that, but members of Congress are definitely hearing from their constituents that they can't get to the IRS. So I don't know what they plan to do about that. And just generally as a revenue, problem. Like the cuts that they made, I think that, you know, the, they're not going to collect something

like $900 billion in taxes. So that's a huge hole in the budget. You know, it's like they're going to keep spending all this money on the Iran war. And, you know, they're spending three million dollars a day to have the National Guard march around in front of my office, you know, doing that thing. And so all that's going to add up and they're not bringing any money. So I think we're headed for a pretty decent crisis that Congress is going to have to do something about. I couldn't agree more. I just wish there were somebody there was somebody out there starting to. I mean, hopefully there's somebody who's got a plan.

But Stephanie Mensomer, the piece is in Mother's Jones. The IRS is imploding. Thanks for coming on today. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. All right, folks. That's it for the first half. of the program.

This is, I mean, this is honestly, well, there's a lot of things that keep me up at night. But one of the things that keeps me up at night is just this sort of like, the IRS, the EPA, the FDA, the CDC. I mean, it would just keep going on, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the FTC, like all of these agencies, like our science research,

all of these government-funded agencies have been so decimated in terms of, particularly in terms of like just institutional knowledge. And they're going to be just as dysfunctional, probably worse, frankly, you know, January 21st, 29 when President Buttigieg is sworn in or President AOC

or Sarah Nelson or Sarah Nelson. Sean Fane gets sworn into presidency. These have to be repaired. And it's very difficult to do that when the American public doesn't have a story

about how they're destroyed. I mean, you think about how long conservatives have dined on the idea that the DMV is bad to explain like why you wouldn't give funding to government. And the fact of the matter is, you know, more often than not, I think the DMV is actually pretty good. Everybody who's interacting with the IRS right now is like, this agency sucks. and it sucks because it's been so disempowered and defunded. And it's going to make it that much harder. We need to start hearing Congress and hopefully we'll get this if Democrats take the House

and, God willing, the Senate will have hearings to create these narratives, essentially these very truthful narratives, but what's been going on at these agencies and what needs to be done to fix them and why they're important to the American public. Hopefully I can go to sleep tonight now that I said that. I still got to worry about the sciatica. What's that?

Still got to worry about the sciatica. I got to worry about the sciatica and then the cat. I mean, everything. Broken AC. Oh, good. This is important. After 12 years.

in this office. The air, sir, Europe. The air conditioning unit has been fixed. It was, uh, did, did I tell you what? You saw it right. It was installed incorrectly, apparently. The air conditioning unit is a built-in unit. We have been in this office, and by we, I mean me, because nobody else here has been here

that long. Um, since 20, early 2014. And was it, was it 2014? Yeah. I mean, I got here 2015. Maybe it was actually late 2013. And during that entire time, the air conditioning did not work. And apparently the heat must not have been working.

It's just like it was getting, bringing in vaguely cooler or vaguely warmer air. Sort of placebo. Yeah, exactly. It's on. Must be warm in here. Yeah, you can hear the motor running. Exactly. And apparently the two, like, the input and the output tubes, I didn't see how they were fixing it.

Were improperly installed and they were reversed. Oops. The one thing you don't want to happen. I'm actually a little chilly. No, it's a bit chilly. That's what that's what the guys downstairs said. They're like, you guys are going to need a sweater now. Meanwhile, what are we going to do with that freaking thing there?

That extra portable unit. Oh, he brought that down the basement. Will you take that? Can I? I'd love that. I think we can work something out. If you give it to me, I'll go to the dentist. That might be worth it.

Because then it's just going to be. be like, uh, I need six weeks off for all the dental surgery I need. Folks, it's your support that makes this show possible. It's, uh, your membership keeps this show surviving and thriving and subsidizes, uh, Brian getting a new air conditioner and some wooden teeth and some wooden teeth. Go to join the majority report.com. Again, join the majority report. become a member support the show uh when you do you know i get the uh um fun half but you also get

the i am us during the fun half and watch me read just a small percentage i have even uh i would say based upon where the irs is now i have a similar response rate on the iams but we just get so many. Yeah, it's only late off 40% of our IT crew. Exactly.

Also, just coffee. coop. Fair trade coffee, hot chocolate. Use the coupon code

majority. Get 10% off. Hey, donate your Twitch Prime subscription to us.

You can just do it for a month. Doesn't cause you nothing. No, actually, you're already

paying for it if you pay for Amazon Prime they might as well fill it, are way. Exactly. Also,

give us a review. on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever it is. Give us a like on YouTube. Tell your friends. Tell your family. We have had to go to subscriber-only chat on YouTube because we got hit with a massive spam bot thing yesterday.

So a good time to subscribe to majority. Is that right? Yeah, it was crazy. It's like hundreds of accounts tweeting, like, don't try to silence us. So our mods had to switch to subscriber-only chat. Who were they, were they bots? Yeah, it was like,

100 or so of the same kind of bot with... Who were we going to try in to silence? The bots, I guess. It's like don't... Because I was trying to like individually ban them and it was just way too much. It was crazy. That was during the night stream last night?

Or it might have been Monday, yeah. The last dates. But who do you think is sending those bots? Was it like ads or... Um, hmm. Probably... That's a good question. Maybe poker and sushi with the bots?

I don't know. I don't want to accuse Jillian Michaels. I'm joking. It's probably not Julie Michaels. Do you see how I coded mine? I said poker and sushi with the bots. Somebody should look into whether or not Jillian Michaels sending bots after us.

Yeah, I mean, it's just a weird coincidence. Matt. A left reckoning yesterday. before our stream last night put up a show with Griscom where we talked about Vivek Romo-Swamy talking to a bunch of young fascists

at the Young Americans for Liberty Conference. You know, the liberty lovers who want to deport hundreds of millions of people with the feds. They booed Vivek for not being American despite being born in Cincinnati. Where the event was in his hometown.

And it's one of those situations where like, man, this is both these sides can they both lose? And we also talk about Bill Mar and how he's always been a horrible I guess you could call him liberal reactionary. So yeah, check out Left Reckoning at patreon.com. So it's Left Reckoning.

Quick break. We'll be right back. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now. But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What?

What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for a second. The majority. Emma, welcome to the program. Hey. Matt. Who?

What is up, everyone? Fun hack. No, me. You did it. Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. on crap. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappointment.

Everyone, I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Women? Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude?

But dude, you want to smoke this? Seven, eight? Yes. Yes? It is you. Oh, it's me. I think it is you. Who is you?

No sound. Fricking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets, and we can discuss capitalists. I'm gonna guess no way. Libertarians. They're so stupid, though. Common sense says, of course.

Gobbled Egook. We fucking nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge men. I'm positively clovery. I believe 96, I want to say. 857. 210.

35. 501. 1 half. 3-8s. 9-11 for instance. $3,400, $1,900. $6.5,4,

$3 trillion sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making a class. But let me say this. Poop. You call it satire, Sam goes satire. On top of it all? My favorite part about you is just like every day, all day.

Obviously. Yeah. Suns out, guns out. I don't know. But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares?

Is enabled, folks. Got to jump. You got to be quick. I get a jump. The clock. We're already late. And the guy's being a dick. So screw him.

Sent to a gulong? Outrageous. Like, what is wrong with you? Love you. Love you. Bye-bye.