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The IRS is back in Republicans crosshairs following a ProPublica report based on the confidential tax records of the wealthiest Americans.

Republicans have long disliked the tax-collection agency, and have been critical of President BidenJoe BidenFormer Rep. Rohrabacher says he took part in Jan. 6 march to Capitol but did not storm building Saudis picked up drugs in Cairo used to kill Khashoggi: report Biden looking to build momentum for Putin meeting MOREs proposal to give the IRS significantly more resources. Now, GOP lawmakers are amplifying their attacks on the IRS in light of an unauthorized disclosure of tax data to ProPublica, arguing that it undermines taxpayers ability to have confidence in the agency.

This is an astonishing breach of trust that should make taxpayers very concerned, Rep. Kevin BradyKevin Patrick BradyOn The Money: House Democrats line up .5T in spending without budget | GOP takes aim at IRS | House Democrat mulls wealth tax Republicans open new line of attack on IRS To address labor shortages, Congress should try a return-to-work bonus MORE (Texas), the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, told reporters Friday.

He said he expects to bring up the disclosure this coming week with Treasury Secretary Janet YellenJanet Louise YellenTreasury, IRS announce tool to help non-filers register for child tax credit Republicans open new line of attack on IRS Why the Democrats need Joe Manchin MORE, who is scheduled to testify at an annual hearing on the president's budget.

ProPublica published a report Tuesday detailing how prominent U.S. billionaires like Jeff BezosJeffrey (Jeff) Preston BezosOn The Money: House Democrats line up .5T in spending without budget | GOP takes aim at IRS | House Democrat mulls wealth tax What will Elon Musk and Richard Branson do about Jeff Bezos flying into space? Republicans open new line of attack on IRS MORE and Elon MuskElon Reeve MuskOn The Money: House Democrats line up .5T in spending without budget | GOP takes aim at IRS | House Democrat mulls wealth tax What will Elon Musk and Richard Branson do about Jeff Bezos flying into space? Republicans open new line of attack on IRS MORE in certain years have paid little-to-no federal income taxes. The article also found that the richest Americans paid little in taxes when compared to their wealth gains.

It is unclear who provided the tax information to ProPublica or how it was obtained.

We do not know the identity of our source. We did not solicit the information they sent us, ProPublica wrote. The source says they were motivated by our previous coverage of issues surrounding the IRS and tax enforcement, but we do not know for certain that is true. We have considered the possibility that information we have received could have come from a state actor hostile to American interests.

It is illegal for federal employees to make unauthorized disclosures of tax-return information. Administration officials said the matter has been referred to several agencies, including the inspectors general for the Treasury Department, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

While lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have raised concerns about the nature of the disclosure, Republicans in particular have been hammering the issue.

Prior to the ProPublica report, Republicans had been criticizing proposals in Bidens $1.8 trillion American Families Plan to increase compliance with tax laws by providing the IRS with an additional $80 billion over a decade and to increase the amount of information that financial institutions report to the agency about account activity. Republicans are using the ProPublica article to step up their criticisms of those proposals.

"This most recent publication of taxpayer data is especially concerning in light of the Administrations proposal to provide the IRS with a massive amount of unprecedented mandatory funding aimed partly at mandating collection of additional private and personal information from everyday Americans through financial institutions, including detailed information about their checking and savings accounts," Senate Finance Committee Republicans said in a letter Friday to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

Conservatives predicted that the disclosure of the tax documents would doom Bidens IRS enforcement proposal.

I think this kills the effort, said Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist.

Brady said the disclosure to ProPublica has close to dealt a death blow to the White White Houses plans.

Republicans said that the recent disclosure of wealthy Americans' tax records is not the first time that there has been an unauthorized disclosure of tax information.

GOP lawmakers also speculated about the motivations behind the disclosure, given that the article comes as Democrats are pushing to increase taxes on the wealthy and corporations to pay for Bidens infrastructure proposals. Republicans generally are opposed to Democrats proposals to raise taxes on the rich and corporations.

It looks political at this time when this information is being used even today to advance the Democrats narrative that the wealthy individuals dont pay enough of their taxes, Rep. Lloyd SmuckerLloyd Kenneth SmuckerGOP's Gohmert, Clyde file lawsuit over metal detector fines Republicans open new line of attack on IRS House GOP fights back against mask, metal detector fines MORE (R-Pa.) said at a Ways and Means Committee hearing on Thursday.

Its not new for Republicans to criticize the IRS, particularly when a Democrat is in the White House.

The agency was a major target of conservatives during the Obama administration following a 2013 report from TIGTA that found the agency had subjected Tea Party groups applications for tax-exempt status to extra scrutiny.

A subsequent report in 2017 from the inspector general found that there were also left-leaning groups subjected to extra scrutiny.

Republican strategist Ford OConnell said the Tea Party controversy of the Obama era is still on the minds of many GOP voters, and that attacking the IRS in the wake of the ProPublica report makes sense politically for Republicans.

If the goal is to fire up the base before 2022, certainly just uttering the letters I-R-S will do that, he said.

Many working-class Republicans are no fans of the rich, but they do believe its only a matter of time before the taxman cometh for them, OConnell said.

Democrats have also expressed concerns about the disclosure of tax information, and are supportive of investigations. But they have also sought to put a focus on the contents of the ProPublica article, arguing that its findings highlight the need to raise taxes on the rich.

Administration officials have defended the White House proposal to increase the amount of information banks report to the IRS, saying it would help collect more of the taxes already owed.

Mark Mazur, deputy assistant secretary for tax policy at Treasury, said at Thursdays Ways and Means hearing that the proposal would help the IRS better focus on situations of gross noncompliance that deserve some attention.

Democrats also pushed back on GOP suggestions that there was a politically motivated leak of tax data.

This fits a pattern of trying to stoke distrust of the IRS and limit its ability to fully and fairly administer the tax laws, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard NealRichard Edmund NealRepublicans open new line of attack on IRS Ireland, loved by Biden, is obstacle to tax deal Bottom line MORE (D-Mass.) said in a statement.

It is disheartening that such unsubstantiated accusations are being made at a time when we are seeking to provide the IRS with funding and staffing to address noncompliance by the wealthiest taxpayers.

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Republicans open new line of attack on IRS | TheHill - The Hill

The humorist and author Mary Lasswell once wrote that God made Texas on his day off, for pure entertainment, because you can find a little bit of everything and a lot of nothing here.

Texas has embarked upon a campaign to make it more difficult for registered voters to cast their ballots.

Thats a fitting epitaph for the ongoing battle over voting rights in the nations second-largest state, which has taken a turn toward the surreal over the past two weeks. But for as laughable as the apparent implosion of Texas Republicans voter suppression efforts might be, theyre also a sobering reminder of the continuing impact of the U.S. Supreme Courts evisceration of the federal Voting Rights Act in 2013.

Lets start at the beginning. Like a handful of other states in which Republicans control all three branches of government, Texas has embarked upon a campaign to make it more difficult for registered voters to cast their ballots at least putatively in response to never-substantiated claims about fraud and other malfeasance during the 2020 election (in which, it should be noted, former President Donald Trump won Texas by over 630,000 votes).

At the forefront of that campaign is the misleadingly named Election Integrity Protection Act, or, as its referred to locally, SB7. The Texas Senate passed SB7 shortly after 6:00 a.m. on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, after voting on party lines to expedite consideration of the measure and to allow for last-minute addition of un-debated amendments. Among other things, the bill would:

Democrats in the Texas House managed to block final passage of the bill by staging a walk-out which deprived the lower chamber of a quorum on the last day of its scheduled legislative session (the Texas legislature is, believe it or not, only a part-time concern). Because of the timing, the move effectively killed the bill, at least for the moment.

Something strange has happened in the intervening fortnight: Some Republican members of the Texas legislature appear to be having second thoughts.

But Governor Abbott, who, in response, has threatened to defund the legislature by vetoing its budget (never mind the state constitutional questions such a move would provoke), has also suggested that hell add the bill to matters he directs the legislature to take up in a special session that hes likely to call for later this summer. In the immediate aftermath of the Democratic walkout, then, it seemed like only a matter of time before SB7 would make its way to the Governors desk for signature.

But something strange has happened in the intervening fortnight: Some Republican members of the Texas legislature appear to be having second thoughts. The ban on Sunday morning voting was chalked up to a typo. The provision allowing judges more easily to overturn election results has since been described by one of the bills sponsors (who claimed not to know who had added that provision to the bill) as horrendous. And the list goes on. Even the staunchest defenders of the bill have had trouble defending its most controversial provisions now that theyve been subjected to meaningful (which is to say, any) public scrutiny.

There are, of course, two possible explanations for these lawmakers after-the-fact recriminations: Theyre either telling the truth (and so were about to railroad through significant voting restrictions of which they were unaware); or theyre not (and are unwilling to defend provisions publicly that they were all too happy to support privately).

We may never know which is more accurate. But the larger point here is that this is no way to run a railroad and its certainly no way for the nations second-largest state to revise its election laws. Indeed, before 2013, most of this nonsense would not have been possible.

Under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Texas was a preclearance jurisdiction. In English, that meant that, every time the state wanted to change its election laws, it needed the changes to be pre-cleared by the Justice Department to ensure that the changes were not an effort to unlawfully or unconstitutionally deprive individuals of their right to vote. If the Justice Department rejected proposed changes, states could challenge that decision in federal court. But the preclearance regime exerted powerful leverage on states to avoid such mischief when it came to rewriting the rules for voting, since they would never get the last word.

In 2013, though, the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act when it held that the formula the statute used for identifying preclearance jurisdictions was unconstitutional at least in part because it had not been updated in years and in part because, by treating states differently, it deprived them of their equal sovereignty under the Constitution. Although the majority opinion in Shelby County, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, invited Congress to fix the coverage formula to put the preclearance regime back on firm constitutional footing, it did so knowing that political obstacles especially the shadow of the filibuster in the Senate rendered such reform a dead-letter.

And so, here in 2021, while the filibuster continues to prevent the Senate from taking up federal election reforms passed by the House, the mischief that the VRA was enacted to prevent is, instead, flourishing as states enact, or come perilously close to enacting, voting restrictions that their supporters refuse to publicly defend.

For 50 years, the Voting Rights Act made it much harder for state legislatures to play such transparent partisan politics with our right to vote. Until and unless Congress restores it, though, its up to us the voters to hold our state representatives responsible for using the fiction of election abuses as justification for the suppression of votes that are perfectly legal, but that they just dont like.

Steve Vladeck is a professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law whose teaching and research focus on federal jurisdiction, constitutional law and national security law. He is co-editor-in-chief of the Just Security blog (@just_security) and co-host of "The National Security Law Podcast" (@nslpodcast).

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Texas Republicans clearly didn't read the election bill they almost passed - MSNBC

Republicans dont like President Biden very much. Among Republicans, his approval rating sits somewhere between 10 and 20 percent in most recent surveys, and his disapproval rating hovers between 75 to 90 percent.

On the one hand, theres nothing that unusual about members of the other party holding disproportionately negative attitudes about the president. Democrats similarly really disliked former President Trump. Bidens topline approval rating also isnt that bad hes currently at 53 percent approval and 41 percent disapproval, per FiveThirtyEights presidential approval tracker thanks to positive opinions of the president among Democrats (overwhelmingly) and independents (albeit marginally).

Yet, there is something different about GOP opposition to Biden, something that has only emerged as a trend in recent years: Most Republicans dont just disapprove of the job Biden is doing as president they strongly disapprove of his job performance.

We looked at presidential approval polling data from the first six months of presidencies dating back to George W. Bush and found that, compared to Bushs early tenure, fewer Americans from the opposing party are lukewarm in their disapproval of the president. Meanwhile, the share of respondents who say they strongly disapprove of the president has trended upward during Trump and Bidens time in office. Consider that only around 3 in 10 Democrats strongly disapproved of Bush during the first six months of his presidency, but more than 6 in 10 Republicans have expressed strong disapproval of Biden over the first roughly five months of his time in office.

Average share of Americans from the party thats out of office who strongly or somewhat approved or disapproved of the presidents performance during the first six months of his first term

Bidens approval ratings based on polls released as of June 9, 2021.

To avoid overweighting any one pollster, approval ratings were calculated based on an average of polls from each pollster.

Source: Polls

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his abysmal overall approval rating, Trump had the most damning strong disapproval rating, on average, with 72 percent of Democrats saying they disapproved of his job as president. But Biden isnt that much better off than Trump, as a similar share of the Republicans who disapprove of Biden do so strongly.

Members from the other party were once more willing to give a new president some benefit of the doubt early on or at least, their opposition was not quite so baked in, as the figures for both Bush and Barack Obama suggest. Whats more, there hasnt been a corresponding change in how strongly the presidents own party feels about him. Members of the presidents party overwhelmingly support him, but there hasnt been an uptick in those who say they strongly approve of him.

This lack of crossover support for presidents in their first term in office points toward one of the most animating forces in American politics today: Increased disdain and hatred of ones political opponents, known as negative partisanship. As the chart below shows, opinions about the other party have become far more unfavorable since the late 1970s. In other words, its not that surprising that Americans are far less likely to approve of and more likely to intensely dislike presidents from the other party right from the moment they take office.

Such hostile sentiments reflect a world in which each major party increasingly believes the other poses a threat to the countrys well-being. Consider that in 2019, the Pew Research Center found that about three-fourths of Americans thought that Democrats and Republicans not only disagreed over plans and policies, but that they also couldnt agree on basic facts. This is certainly borne out in attitudes toward the economy: Democrats thought the economy was immediately doing worse once Trump took office, while Republicans immediately thought it was getting worse after Biden won the 2020 election. And in the lead-up to the 2020 contest, Pew also found that about 9 in 10 of both Biden and Trump supporters felt that the victory of the other partys presidential nominee would lead to lasting harm, a sign of how each side increasingly finds the other to be an unacceptable political alternative.

Looking ahead, such deep dislike will likely keep Republicans opposed to Biden regardless of his administrations actions. It also means that like Trump, Biden will likely have to rely on his own partys support to buoy his overall numbers. So far, Biden has managed to pull that off with approval from around 90 percent of Democrats, but fierce Republican opposition might mean that his overall approval rating moves only by small degrees, like Trumps, making it hard for him to crack the mid-50s overall.

Now, its possible that a major crisis could weaken Democratic approval toward Biden, much like the onset of the Great Recession helped take Republican approval of Bush below 70 percent for much of the end of his presidency. However, Trumps overall approval rating and approval among Republicans remained relatively unchanged amid the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the fact that a majority of Americans didnt think Trump was handling the coronavirus response well.

So as Biden closes in on six months in office, its clear that attitudes toward his presidency are sharply polarized, with Republicans intense dislike of Biden reflecting what we know about the deep antipathy that Americans feel toward the opposing party even in the first few months of a presidents time in office. Those are sentiments that are likely to keep both camps more firmly entrenched in their partisan camps moving forward.

Mary Radcliffe contributed research.

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Republicans Really, Really Dislike Biden. But Its Not Just About Him. - FiveThirtyEight

A trio of House Republicans on Monday introduced a resolution to censure and condemn Democratic Reps. Ilhan OmarIlhan OmarGreene apologizes for comparing vaccine rules to Holocaust House Republicans introduce resolution to censure the 'squad' The Memo: Democratic tensions will only get worse as left loses patience MORE (Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-CortezAlexandria Ocasio-CortezAdams, Garcia lead in NYC mayor's race: poll House Republicans introduce resolution to censure the 'squad' This week: Democrats face fractures in spending fight MORE (N.Y.), Rashida TlaibRashida Harbi TlaibHouse Republicans introduce resolution to censure the 'squad' Progressives rally behind Omar while accusing her critics of bias Omar: I wasn't equating terrorist organizations with democratic countries MORE (Mich.) and Ayanna PressleyAyanna PressleyHouse Republicans introduce resolution to censure the 'squad' Progressives rally behind Omar while accusing her critics of bias House candidate in Chicago says gun violence prompted her to run MORE (Mass.) for what they call defending terrorist organizations and inciting anti-Semitic attacks across the United States.

The resolution, introduced by Reps. Michael WaltzMichael WaltzHouse Republicans introduce resolution to censure the 'squad' Overnight Defense: Ex-Pentagon chief defends Capitol attack response as GOP downplays violence | Austin, Biden confer with Israeli counterparts amid conflict with Hamas | Lawmakers press Pentagon officials on visas for Afghan partners Overnight Defense: Pentagon chief to press for Manchin's support on Colin Kahl | House Dems seek to limit transfer of military-grade gear to police MORE (R-Fla.), Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), cites a number of incidents involving the four lawmakers, sometimes referred to as the squad, including the most recent controversy surrounding Omar and her comments equating war crimes committed by the U.S. and Israel to those by the Taliban and Hamas terrorist groups.

The resolution also cites the four lawmakers referring to Israel as an apartheid state and points to Tlaib accusing the Israeli government of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.

We cannot turn a blind eye to Members of Congress openly defending terrorist attacks by Hamas against our close ally Israel nor their dangerous rhetoric which has contributed to anti-Semitic attacks across the country, Waltz said in a press release.

Banks sounded a similar note, saying in the release that the lawmakers have repeatedly denigrated America and our closest ally.

The most recent controversy involving the squad members began when Omar was questioning Secretary of State Antony BlinkenAntony BlinkenGreene apologizes for comparing vaccine rules to Holocaust Detainee fates hang over Biden meeting with Putin ICC relations with US undergoing 'reset' with Biden, prosecutor says MORE during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last week about the International Criminal Court's (ICC) investigations of alleged crimes by the Taliban and the U.S. in Afghanistan, in addition to the accusations against Hamas and Israel in the Gaza conflict.

Omar, in a tweet with a clip of her questioning Blinken,wrote, "We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. I asked @SecBlinken where people are supposed to go for justice."

We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity.

We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.

I asked @SecBlinken where people are supposed to go for justice. pic.twitter.com/tUtxW5cIow

Omar, a Somali refugee and one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, has since made efforts to clarify her remarks, saying she was not equating the U.S. and Israel with terrorist organizations.

On Monday, I asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken about ongoing International Criminal Court investigations. To be clear: the conversation was about accountability for specific incidents regarding those ICC cases, not a moral comparison between Hamas and the Taliban and the U.S. and Israel, she said in a statement.

In response, Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiNew Mexico Democrat Stansbury sworn into Haaland's old seat Greene apologizes for comparing vaccine rules to Holocaust Overnight Health Care: Biden pleads for more people to get vaccinated | Harris highlights COVID-19 vaccination safety | Novavax COVID-19 vaccine shown highly effective in trial MORE (D-Calif.) and her entire leadership team last week issued a rare joint statement that sought to quell the growing controversy while adding that drawing false equivalencies between democracies and groups that engage in terrorism, citing Hamas and the Taliban, foments prejudice andundermines progress toward a future of peace and security for all.

On Sunday, Pelosi said House leadership did not rebuke Omar, and called her a valued member of the caucus, during an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union."

The censure resolution also follows a successful effort by House Democrats in February, when the chamber voted, largely along party lines, to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor GreeneMarjorie Taylor GreeneGOP efforts to downplay danger of Capitol riot increase The Memo: What now for anti-Trump Republicans? Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she's meeting with Trump 'soon' in Florida MORE (R-Ga.) of her committee assignments for endorsing conspiracy theories, racist dogma and violence against Democratic politicians.

The Hill has reached out to Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley forcomment.

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House Republicans introduce resolution to censure the 'squad' | TheHill - The Hill

On June 8, Senate Democrats and Republicans came together to pass the $200-billion Innovation and Competition Act, a broad legislative package aimed at advancing the nations R&D competitiveness with China. The 68-32 vote was a rare bipartisan convergence on two frequent points of division: money and state involvement in the economy.

But thats not all that was striking about the vote. Also noteworthy is the bills proposed creation of 18 regional technology hubs to spur economic growth in new places, which represents the nations most significant foray into regional policy in decadesmaybe since the Great Depression.

For decades, Congress has neglected the nations sharpening regional divides. New economic trends spawned a growing gap between the dynamic, superstar metropolitan areas and everywhere else. Meanwhile, policymakers quibbled, argued, and stood by as chasms opened between income levels in coastal, tech-focused metro areas and those areas left behind.

A 2019 Brookings report documented that just five top innovation metro areasBoston, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego, and San Jose, Calif.accounted for more than 90% of the nations innovation sector growth from 2005 to 2017.

But what to do to counter this dramatic divergence hasnt always been clear. Since the 1960s, Congress place-based responses have mostly amounted to limited, ad-hoc investments in grants, programs, and tax benefits that have been too small and too inconsistent to resolve the huge economic forces pulling the nation apart. What resulted has been inaction.

But now, senators from both sides of the aisle have come together to recognize the economic, social, and political crisis of interregional inequalityand endorse the use of place-based government action to counter it.

Lawmakers have drawn on arguments and ideas from Brookings and MIT professors Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson to respond to regional divergence by creating a set of place-based tech hubs in inland America aimed at catalyzing local economic growth. Originally, the bill proposed creating eight to 10 hubs scattered across the heartland at a cost of $10 billion over five years. By the time of the final vote, the number of hubs had doubled to at least 18, supported by the same budgetreflecting a push from smaller states senators so that more towns and rural areas could get a slice of federal R&D spending.

Despite the change, something approaching a bipartisan consensus about the nations regional divergence problem seems to have coalesced. A preponderance of senators from big states and small statesand blue states and red onesappear to generally agree that:

This is a milestone, and a far cry from the philosophical and policy divides that have typically embroiled all three of these propositions.

Still, the idea of creating sizable tech hubs prompted fierce debate among the senators about the geography of the program, while the regional question could encounter stiffer headwinds in the House. Whats more, nothing currently under consideration comes near to meeting the needed scale of comprehensive action to counter the nations gargantuan regional imbalances. Truly meeting the challenge will require pairing much larger place-based interventions such as innovation hubs with place-conscious adjustments to big universal programs addressing topics such as poverty, infrastructure, workforce development, aid to localities, and market concentration, as notes sociologist Robert Manduca.

Despite these cautions, this weeks Senate vote really could go down as a watershed. Within the bills top-line focus on industrial policy lies an emerging consensus that the nations ruinous regional divides arent working for anyone, and need to be addressed. Now, finally, we can start to do so.

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Senate Republicans and Democrats agree: Time to close regional economic divides - Brookings Institution