Trump's Trials - Trump is looking to use the IRS for his own political ends. Nixon tried it too

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

From utilizing tax data to trace immigrants without legal status to threatening Harvard University's tax exemption, President Trump has been trying to use the IRS for his own political purposes, in ways that may seem unprecedented.But they're not. Former President Richard Nixon laid the groundwork more than four decades ago, when he tried to use the tax collector to punish his enemies and assist his friends, as NPR's Scott Horsley reports.Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Scott Detro and this is Trump's Terms from NPR. We're going to be doing all sorts of things nobody ever thought was even possible. President Trump has brought back strength to the White House. We can't just ignore the president's desires. This will be an entirely different country in a short period of time. Every episode we bring you one of NPR's latest stories about the 47th president and how he is trying to remake the federal government. Today's story starts right after this.

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As NPR's Scott Horsley reports, Trump is employing tactics last seen in the Watergate era. President Trump has vowed to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status, writing on social media, it's what they deserve. That would be a serious blow for Harvard, which depends on tax-free gifts and a tax-free endowment for nearly half its annual revenue. It's also not exactly a new idea. One of the things that Nixon did consider was threatening the tax exemptions of universities. Joseph

Thorndyke directs the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts. He was unhappy about student protests about the war in Vietnam. He wanted universities to silence those protests, to crack down on them. And that sounds very familiar if you're reading the paper these days. In fact, much of what Trump's attempting to do at the IRS seems drawn directly from Richard Nixon's playbook. Oval office tape recordings from 1971 reveal how Nixon tried to install a hand-picked enforcer at the IRS to do his bidding.

I want to be sure he is a ruthless son of a bitch, that he will do what he's told, that every new contact in your home, CIC, that he'll go after our enemies and not go after our friends. Not as simple as that. Nixon wanted to be able to snoop on people's tax returns. He compiled an enemies list of people he wanted the IRS to investigate. And he wanted the IRS to refrain from targeting his political allies. Those plans were not always successful, Thorndyke says, but not for lack of trying.

Nixon tried very hard to misuse the IRS. Really, really hard. Congress certainly saw that as a danger afterwards. You know, if the president is developing enemies lists and sending them the IRS and essentially saying, I want you to audit all these people I don't like, well that's worrisome. And so Congress was very interested in preventing that kind of misuse of the IRS. After Nixon left office, Congress passed laws to protect the IRS and taxpayers from White House meddling. Those laws are now being tested by the Trump administration.

One law strictly limits who can have access to taxpayer information. Last month, the IRS struck a deal to share taxpayer data with immigration officials to help find and deport people who are in the country illegally. That data sharing is being challenged in court. The Treasury Department defends it as, quote, breaking down data silos. But Mike Kircher of NYU's tax law center says those silos were put there for a reason after the abuses of the Watergate era. If the IRS is now forced to share data with people who it's not supposed to, that increases the risks of political targeting, then that's both a violation of the law, but also is a potential

violation of some of these norms about the rule of law. Congress also tried to prevent a rerun of Nixon's enemies list by prohibiting the president and people around him from requesting an IRS investigation. That hasn't stopped Trump from calling on the IRS to strip Harvard and other Ivy League schools of their tax exemption, alleging they've failed to combat anti-Semitism on campus amid protests over the war in Gaza. Tax-exempt status, I mean it's a privilege. It's really a privilege and it's been abused by a lot more than Harvard. Leading Democratic senators have called for an investigation into Trump's actions. More than a decade ago, the IRS got in hot water for the way it scrutinized tax-exempt

applications from conservative Tea Party groups. Congressional Republicans responded by cutting the IRS budget, which led to a decade of reduced tax enforcement. Now Trump is cutting thousands of jobs at the IRS, including nearly a third of tax auditors, as part of a widespread effort to shrink the federal workforce. Thorndyke says that'll make it harder for the IRS to go after wealthy tax cheats. Just starving the agency of staff, that really blows back immediately on taxpayers. The nation's tax system works best when people feel confident that others are paying their

fair share. That suffers when the tax collector is understaffed or under political pressure. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington. Before we wrap up, a reminder, you can find more coverage of the Trump administration on the NPR Politics Podcast, where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down the day's biggest political news, with new episodes every weekday afternoon. And thanks as always to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsored messages. You can learn more at plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow. Thanks for listening to Trump's Term terms from NPR. podcast.