BREAKING: Trump Wants the IRS to Audit His Enemies

Journalist and student visas have been capped at 240 days, the DHS threatened to jail state officials who won't purge voter rolls, and a GOP senator wants to sanction Canada over wildfire smoke

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

A Treasury tax official was pushed out after warning the White House not to meddle in IRS audits. DHS is now capping journalist visas at 240 days, and just 90 days for Chinese nationals. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened to jail state election officials who refuse to scrub their voter rolls. And a Republican senator wants to formally sanction Canada over wildfire smoke.

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Trump Wants the IRS to Audit His Enemies

There is a federal law that says the president cannot pick who the IRS audits. It comes with up to five years in prison. The Treasury official who mentioned this is now out of a job.

Kenneth Kies, an assistant Treasury secretary and acting chief counsel of the IRS, is leaving in the coming weeks after clashing with the White House behind the scenes. In one recent meeting, he argued that a potential request would violate Section 7217 of the tax code.

That’s the Nixon-era shield. It bars the president, vice president, and White House staff from asking the IRS to start or stop an audit of any particular taxpayer. IRS employees who get such requests must report them or face the same penalties.

It couldn’t be determined what the White House wanted, or whether it plans to follow through now that Kies is gone. The taxpayers at issue could be individuals, corporations, or nonprofits.

Trump’s team says the problem was Kies. After the story surfaced, administration officials and allies reached out to privately criticize him as difficult and insufficiently loyal to the president’s agenda.

In fairness, Kies made a classic Washington mistake: he read the law.

DHS Caps Journalist and Student Visas

If you’re a foreign journalist covering the United States, your deadline just got shorter.

The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday finalized a rule slashing the durations of visas for students, exchange visitors, and journalists. F visas for college students and J visas for exchange programs will now be capped at the length of the program or four years, whichever comes first. Need more time to finish your degree? File an extension with USCIS and wait.

The part that should chill anyone who reads the news for a living: I visas, for members of the media, will be capped at 240 days. For Chinese nationals, 90 days. Under current rules, journalists’ visas can last years.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the rule reclaims the government’s “ability to properly screen, vet, and monitor individuals within our borders.” He also said foreign students have been staying “indefinitely” by “perpetually enrolling in courses to avoid having to leave.”

The rule also guts Optional Practical Training, the post-graduation window that lets foreign graduates find jobs and eventually qualify for H-1B visas. And it shrinks the time students have to leave or transfer after graduation from 60 days to 30.

The reason this isn’t bigger news is because most of the outlets covering the change employ foreign journalists on those visas. We don’t have that problem. We have a different one: we need readers to pay for what they read. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, today would be a good day.

DHS Threatens States Who Won’t Purge Voter Rolls

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced Friday that state officials who refuse Washington’s new election demands could be held accountable “by fines, by penalties, and even—depending on how far it goes—prison time.”

The demand: scrub the voter rolls or lose federal grants used to run elections.

Mullin said the administration, working with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, would make “security enhancements mandatory” for any state that wants reimbursement. Machines have to be secured, he said, and “your voter registration lists need to be scrubbed.”

Here is the main problem. Homeland Security has no authority to withhold federal grants or force states to purge their rolls. Only Congress can do that.

And the fraud he’s fighting doesn’t exist. A 2024 statewide audit in Georgia found 20 non-citizens on the rolls out of 8.2 million residents — 0.00024 percent. Only nine had ever voted, all years ago, before ID was required. The other 11 never voted at all.

The pledge came hours after Trump delivered a national address stuffed with false claims about his 2020 loss to Joe Biden. One might call it ironic that the administration is threatening prison over election integrity on the same night the president lied about an election on live television. One might also call it the plan.

GOP Senator Wants to Sanction Canada Over Wildfire Smoke

The United States Senate is now drafting legislation to punish Canada for being flammable.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), a close Trump ally, announced Thursday that he will introduce a bill to sanction Canada and Canadian officials over wildfires that have pushed smoke and haze across the United States. He called it an “atrocity” and reposted a photo of a hazy, deserted boulevard in Cleveland.

Moreno’s office argued Canada should have invested in forest thinning, fuel reduction, prescribed burns, and enforcement against arson. Major cities including Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Minneapolis registered dangerous air quality Thursday.

Four Michigan Republicans in the House — John James, Jack Bergman, John Moolenaar, and Lisa McClain — wrote an angry letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney. “This is the third consecutive year we have had to write to Canadian officials,” they complained.

Then they escalated. If Canada won’t manage its forests, the lawmakers wrote, the United States will “act on our own,” including “our own agencies exploring direct involvement in cross-border fuel reduction and firefighting.”

Canada has been sending us firefighters since 1982. We’re sending them sanctions and a letter.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

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The Onion Is Helping Sandy Hook Families on the Ashes of Alex Jones’ Infowars. The Onion, which has been trying to take over Infowars since winning it at a bankruptcy auction in 2024, has launched a parody of Alex Jones’s conspiracy empire under its own site. The new InfoWars is complete with satirical shows, rainbow-logoed merch, and a $100,000 opening donation to the Sandy Hook families who Jones still owes $1.4 billion for calling their children’s murder a hoax. Jones, who has been stripped of everything but an iPhone and a microphone, sued to stop it and called the sale a “Frankenstein bid,” which is a rich accusation from a man who built a media empire on the claim that dead children were actors.