The enemies list

Recently: Why do the governments of so many major powers seem so shaky these days? Marc Weitzmann on immigration, regulation, and the end of a political era.

Today: Trump officials are turning the United States’ tax collector into an investigation tool—with a target list that includes opposition donors. Loyalists are replacing career officials; lawyers are losing oversight; and the safeguards Congress put in place after Watergate face a real test.

+ For members: Why has theft become Uganda’s main system of government? Mahmood Mamdani, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State.

& New music from AFI ...

Developments

• Weaponizing the tax collector. In the U.S., the Trump administration is restructuring the criminal-investigation division of the federal Internal Revenue Service to enable probes of Democratic donors and left-wing groups, according to a Wall Street Journal report published on Wednesday. Gary Shapley, an adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, has compiled a list of potential targets. The plan involves installing Trump allies in the tax-collection agency’s criminal unit—the IRS-CI, which has more than 2,000 investigators—and reducing the role of lawyers who review sensitive cases. U.S. federal law prohibits most executive officials from requesting investigations of specific taxpayers, protections Congress enacted after President Richard Nixon used the IRS against political enemies in the 1970s.
• Covert action confirmed. U.S. President Donald Trump meanwhile acknowledged on Wednesday that he authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct operations in Venezuela, and said his administration is considering land-based strikes. Trump said he approved the covert action to stem drug flows and migration. The acknowledgment followed a New York Times report. The U.S. military has conducted multiple strikes on boats in Caribbean waters in recent weeks—attacks the administration has characterized as targeting drug traffickers, though it has provided no evidence. Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro has condemned the strikes as representing an “unprecedented” violation of international law. When asked whether the CIA has authority to act against Maduro, Trump called the question “ridiculous”—adding, “Venezuela is feeling heat.”
• Curtailing the Voting Rights Act. Also in the U.S., the Supreme Court appeared ready on Wednesday to weaken the Voting Rights Act—a 1965 law that prevents states from drawing electoral districts in ways that dilute black and Latino voting power. At issue is whether Louisiana’s creation of a second majority-black congressional district violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause. Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned whether race should remain a redistricting factor indefinitely. A ruling against the Act could trigger redistricting battles across the American South. Republican-led states in Texas, Missouri, and Utah are already pushing mid-decade redistricting ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
• Europe’s aerial defense. The European Commission unveiled plans on Thursday for a continent-wide “drone wall”—a networked anti-drone system aimed at protecting European airspace from Russian incursions. The proposal calls for initial capacity by the end of next year and full operation by 2027. The initiative follows suspected Russian drone violations across at least 10 European Union and NATO states in recent weeks, including 21 drones entering Polish airspace in early September. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said “drones are redefining warfare” and defenses are “no longer optional.” The plan faces skepticism over costs and questions about whether Brussels is encroaching on NATO’s role.
• Forty-eight hours to de-escalate. Pakistan and Afghanistan announced a temporary ceasefire on Wednesday following days of deadly border clashes. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said the two-day truce was at Afghanistan’s request; Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said it came at Pakistan’s insistence. The fighting killed dozens, including civilians, after Pakistani airstrikes last Thursday in Kabul targeted militants from the Pakistani insurgent group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Both countries closed border crossings on Sunday. The escalation threatens to destabilize a region where the Islamic State and al-Qaeda are still looking for footholds, and follows deteriorating relations since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.

The enemies list

The Internal Revenue Service—America’s federal tax-collection agency—maintains a criminal-investigation division with more than 2,000 agents. Since the 1970s, after Nixon tried using the IRS against enemies, federal law has made it a crime for White House officials to request investigations of specific taxpayers. Protections were built in: IRS lawyers review cases, sensitive investigations require additional oversight, and any official receiving an improper request has to report it or face prosecution.

Now the Trump administration is dismantling those safeguards. Shapley’s target list includes the liberal billionaire and Democratic Party mega-donor George Soros, according to officials who spoke to The Wall Street Journal. The mechanism: install loyalists in IRS Criminal Investigation, reduce lawyer oversight, eliminate the procedural barriers that blocked earlier attempts. Trump allies had tried stripping tax-exempt status from certain nonprofits through normal channels but “encountered obstacles,” officials said. The criminal division offered a way around.

Senior IRS lawyers have privately warned that at least one proposed case appears vindictive and politically motivated. The question isn’t whether laws are being broken. The question is whether safeguards Congress installed post-Nixon will hold when tested by officials who understand precisely which rules to rewrite, which lawyers to replace, which procedures to eliminate.

But the list is real. The plan’s in motion. And those protections are being dismantled from the only place anyone can really dismantle them from: inside.

From the latest despatch

‘Beyond corruption’

Why has theft become Uganda’s main system of government? Mahmood Mamdani, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State.

Yoweri Museveni has been the president of Uganda since 1986 and is seeking a seventh term in next year’s election. He’s pledged to fight corruption.

It’s a fight Uganda desperately needs. Back in 2011, the World Bank gave Uganda a US$23 million grant, partly for the Ministry of Public Service to set up a college for policy studies—but when a Ugandan parliamentary committee showed up for inspection, they found nothing but a shack.

Museveni has a credibility problem, though. His own campaign paid parliamentarians to remove the presidential two-term limit, letting him stand in the 2006 and 2011 elections. In one scheme, the government wired money to more than three hundred members of parliament—sixteen of whom returned what they called an outright bribe. And in 2022, he gave a series of speeches saying there was nothing wrong with a little official corruption, provided the loot stayed in the country.

“Corruption has in fact become so rampant that the existing vocabulary can no longer capture it,” Mahmood Mamdani writes in Slow Poison. “We are beyond corruption, which is often discreet,” one regime insider tells Mamdani. “Our public posture now is more that of prostitutes, who display their wares in public, for all the world to know these are for sale to the highest bidder.”

‘Ash Speck in a Green Eye’

It’s October, so possibly time to make room for some pulsing goth rock. The Northern California band AFI has moved through many styles over the years, but the influences here are clear: Bauhaus, The Cure, The Sisters of Mercy. AFI’s singer, Davey Havok, has had to adjust after voice trouble in recent years pushed him lower in his range—into Peter Murphy and Andrew Eldritch territory.