On today’s show: ProPublica’s Andy Kroll examines how Trump’s cuts at the IRS could make it harder for the federal government to root out fraud. Dylan Baddour of Inside Climate News joins to explain a case at the Supreme Court pitting Texas against the federal government on nuclear-waste disposal. Leslie Patton, a consumer reporter at Bloomberg News, examines what happened to one company as the backlash to black-plastic kitchen utensils grew. Plus, the Supreme Court denies Trump’s request to cancel nearly $2 billion in foreign aid, D.C. officials will remove Black Lives Matter Plaza, and why scientists genetically engineered woolly mice. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: What topics are covered in today's episode?
Good morning. It's Thursday, March 6th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, the debate over where to put the country's nuclear waste, consumers are taking the risk of plastics more seriously, and how scientists are trying to revive the woolly mammoth. But first, to the Internal Revenue Service.
Tax season is upon us, but roughly 7,000 employees were recently fired by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's Doge team. They've said their goal is to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in the government.
The IRS has been hit especially hard by these cuts, ProPublica reports, because it did a lot of hiring and training in 2024, which means a lot of people were still in their probationary period a few weeks ago when they found out they were being cut.
Last year's hiring wave came after Congress had underfunded the agency for a good part of the last decade, which led to chronic understaffing, poor customer service, and plummeting audit rates.
ProPublica spoke with more than a dozen current and former IRS employees, most of whom worked for the Large Business and International Division, or LBNI, which audits some of the highest dollar amount tax returns filed in the country.
Almost half of the engineer positions in LBNI, that is people who have specialized expertise and can weigh in on more complicated tax returns, appear to have been eliminated in the recent cut. And these current and former employees told reporter Andy Kroll that that could make it more difficult for the agency to audit some of the wealthiest people and businesses in the country.
This is the division that handles the most complicated, highest dollar amount, largest tax returns of all the tax returns filed. So we're talking about publicly traded corporations, really complicated private partnerships, and high net worth individuals.
The LB&I specialists focus on auditing big businesses like major tech companies, pharmaceutical companies, and oil and gas companies.
A big part of what the IRS does is root out waste and fraud in tax returns to identify places where taxpayers, whether they're people or companies, are claiming tax perks that they shouldn't be claiming or they're claiming too much or they're hiding money from the federal government. So the IRS, you would think, fits squarely within that mission laid out by Trump and Musk.
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Chapter 2: How have Trump’s IRS cuts affected the agency?
First, to a flurry of updates from the Trump administration in Washington. The Supreme Court denied the president's request to cancel $2 billion in foreign aid, siding with a lower court judge who recently ordered the administration to immediately release the money owed under existing contracts.
In further fallout from Friday's disastrous meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump ordered the CIA to halt intelligence sharing with Ukraine. The U.S. has shared intelligence with Kyiv since the early days of the war to help Ukrainian forces target invading Russian forces more effectively. And it's not clear if the pause will be temporary or permanent.
And less than 48 hours after imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Trump agreed to make an exception for one month for automobile imports that qualify for duty-free treatment under a trade agreement negotiated during his first term. This move came after he spoke with executives from three of the largest automakers in the U.S., General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis.
Staying in Washington for a moment, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser confirmed that the city will remove Black Lives Matter Plaza, a two-block stretch in downtown D.C. near the White House, which got that name along with a mural after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
This week, a Republican lawmaker introduced a bill to the House requiring Bowser to rename the area or risk losing federal funding from Congress. And when the local NBC affiliate asked her why she agreed to make the change, the mayor said it was fair to say the White House didn't like it. And finally, the woolly mammoth is making a comeback of sorts.
Scientists are working toward that goal, but in the meantime, they've made some significant strides in genetically engineering mice that carry some of the key characteristics of the extinct woolly mammoth, like their thick, hairy coats. Picture a normal lab mouse, but poofier. Here's what one of the researchers, Beth Shapiro, told NPR.
This is really validation that what we have in mind for our longer-term de-extinction projects is really going to work.
The company says reviving extinct species like the mammoth and the dodo could help repair ecosystems. But critics have questioned if they'll be able to thrive in today's environment and if that money is better spent trying to save species currently at risk of extinction. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
And if you're already listening in the news app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next. New York Magazine takes you behind the scenes of how this one-stop shop that sells everything from cashmere to caviar recruited a generation of consumers. If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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