Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Before Donald Trump became president and after, his exceedingly complex and voluminous tax returns came under regular scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service. The number of agents assigned to the audit team: one. After Trump left office, the IRS said it was beefing up the audit team, to three. The tax agency itself acknowledged that it was still overwhelmed by the complexity of Trump’s finances and the resistance mounted by the former president and his sophisticated army of accountants and lawyers, which included a former IRS chief counsel and raised questions early last year about why even three...

WASHINGTON — It has been called President Joe Biden’s “shadow army,” described as a strike force to shake down small businesses with assault rifles and likened to a militia of auditors on search-and-destroy missions. Decades of Republican antipathy toward the Internal Revenue Service have reached new levels of enmity with the passage of a Democratic-backed bill that gives the agency $80 billion to beef up its ability to go after tax cheats. But Republicans, who have long accused the IRS of unfairly targeting conservatives, have seized on the law to fan unfounded conspiracy theories about the threat that mom-and-pop shops...

President Trump will ask Congress on Monday for $8.6 billion in additional funding to build a wall along the United States border with Mexico, a person familiar with the details said on Sunday. The request, which will come as part of Mr. Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget proposal, is certain to reignite a conflict with Democrats that led to a record-long government shutdown this year. Mr. Trump had previously requested $5.7 billion to build a wall but was rebuffed by both Democrats and Republicans, who approved a spending bill that did not include the funding. That resulted in Mr. Trump declaring...

The agreement reached by President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China to effectively pause their trade war and work toward a pact appears to be aimed at giving the two leaders some political breathing room after an escalating fight has begun inflicting economic damage on both sides of the Pacific. The temporary truce, forged over a working dinner on Saturday night in Buenos Aires, does little to resolve the deep differences between the two nations and is more a political agreement than a substantive one. Both sides immediately positioned the cease-fire as a domestic victory while staking out areas...

The death certificate for the father of the controversial Mexican judge confirms that Curiel’s parents were not U.S. citizens when he was born. Death records from Indiana records confirm that Salvador Curiel died a Mexican citizen in 1964… not as the New York Times’s Alan Rappeport reported in an anti-Donald Trump article. But Rappeport claimed that the elder Curiel had died a U.S. citizen. He didn’t. Here’s what Rappeport wrote: Judge Curiel, 62, was born in East Chicago, Ind., to parents who had emigrated from Mexico. Raul Curiel said their father, Salvador, arrived in Arizona as a laborer in the...

He has said that the wall would be built from precast concrete and steel and that it could be 50 feet tall, if not higher. After calling for it to extend across the entire 2,000-mile southern border, he more recently said half that length could be sufficient because of natural barriers. He has pegged the cost at $4 billion to $12 billion, most recently settling on around $10b. Some see that as low. “There’s a lot of logistics involved in this, and I don’t know how thoroughly they’ve thought it out,” said Todd Sternfeld, chief executive of Superior Concrete, a...

While Mr. Trump complains that protesters are violating his First Amendment rights, many of his critics wonder about their own ability to speak out. At a Trump campaign event held at Valdosta State University in Georgia last month, several black students complained to the police that they did not understand why they were kicked out. Lee Rowland, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said that because campaign events are considered “political theater,” candidates who rent event spaces have the right to disinvite anyone they choose. Those who resist could be charged with trespassing.

Donald J. Trump’s series of victories on Super Tuesday complicated the “Never Trump” movement that has been percolating in corners of the Republican Party, leaving the Manhattan businessman’s remaining rivals struggling for new ways to halt his march to the presidential nomination. After months of carefully plotting their primary state strategies, campaigns were left crunching numbers on Wednesday morning and dusting off history lessons about contested conventions and arcane ballot rules. On the face of it, campaigning proceeded as usual on Wednesday, with Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio set to touch down in Kansas and Michigan for rallies; Kansas...

Says James O'Keefe's Project Veritas "considers itself a journalism organization". In contrast with a certain gray woman "of questionable virtue" lecturing young girls on the subject of chaste personal practices?

Donald J. Trump continues to overheat the Republican Party’s speech on immigration. What is his latest protest against political correctness? “Anchor babies.” [Snip] The phrase is as offensive as the word “illegals” for many immigrants who come to America.

Sometimes, you really have to give the New York Times credit for the sheer amount of reportorial labor it undertakes. This is not one of those times. A couple of Times reporters spent Friday morning basking in praise for their “nice scoop” — the less-than-remarkable public knowledge that Marco Rubio was written four traffic tickets over the course of two decades — but, as Brent Scher of the Washington Free Beacon pointed out, neither of the reporters in the byline — Alan Rappeport and Steve Eder — nor the researcher also credited by the Times for the piece — Kitty...