DOGE’s next target: IRS
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Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
Things are getting tense at the Internal Revenue Service. Layoffs are looming smack in the middle of tax season as part of DOGE’s mission to cut the federal workforce. Meanwhile, the commerce secretary says President Donald Trump wants to abolish the agency altogether. Get ready for a Kai rant! Plus, Trump wants to know if there’s still gold at Ft. Knox. No, really! And, finally, we’ll smile about all the good things that have happened to you lately.
Here’s everything we talked about:
- “Joint Chiefs Chairman CQ Brown on list to be possibly removed by Hegseth” by ABC News
- “Commerce Secretary Lutnick: Trump’s goal is to abolish the IRS” from Axios
- “I.R.S. to Begin Laying Off Roughly 6,000 Employees on Thursday” from The New York Times
- Watch: “Trump wants to know if there’s gold in Fort Knox” by AP News
- Watch: “Fmr. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on U.S. gold reserves at Fort Knox” from CNBC Television
- “What to know about Fort Knox’s gold depository that Musk wants audited” from Axios
- “A campus sign said, ‘Tell us something good.’ Students delivered.” by The Washington Post
Join us tomorrow for “Economics on Tap.” The YouTube livestream starts at 3:30 p.m. Pacific time, 6:30 p.m. Eastern.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Uh, all right, Jess, |
| 0:01.8 | and whenever you are ready... |
| 0:03.8 | Let me make sure my phone are... |
| 0:05.0 | Uh, yeah, I'm just gonna say. |
| 0:06.7 | Okay, you know what? |
| 0:07.6 | Maybe I'm not really ready. |
| 0:08.5 | No, I'm fine. |
| 0:09.1 | I'll start. |
| 0:09.8 | Hey, everybody, I'm Kyle Rosdolle. |
| 0:10.9 | Welcome back to Make Me Smart. |
| 0:12.0 | Where we make today makes sense. |
| 0:13.4 | Kimberly is out today, and I tomorrow? Yeah, just today. Just today. Just today. Surprise guest tomorrow. Somebody will tell me, I guess. |
| 0:25.1 | Anyway. |
| 0:26.7 | Yeah. Hi, Kai. It's good to be back on Make Me Smart. Thanks everyone for joining us on this Thursday, |
| 0:31.9 | February 20th. And I should say, we're in the same place right now. We're in L.A. Which is bizarre. We were just having a whole conversation about how weird it is to be with somebody in a studio. |
| 0:40.8 | Yeah. |
| 0:41.0 | It's very bizarre. |
| 0:41.8 | Anyway, we'll do not what we usually do on a Thursday. |
| 0:45.2 | We're just going to do some news and some smiles and then get on about your day. |
| 0:48.7 | What do you got? |
| 0:50.0 | All right. |
| 0:50.5 | Let's talk about the IRS. Oh, do we have to? There's a lot going on, Kai. So there's news out today that, you know, in the middle of tax filing season, the IRS is laying off six, seven thousand. |
... |
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