After right-wing media drummed up fears that last year’s IRS budget increase would lead to an “army” of militarized tax collectors, House Republican members just voted to slash the Revenue Services budget. In recent weeks, right-wing media has revived the claim that Democrats are arming the IRS to support their years-long crusade to demonize the IRS.
As the Biden administration neared the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act — a sprawling piece of legislation that targets greenhouse gas emissions, prescription drug costs, and the federal deficit — right-wing media launched an effort to spread misinformation about the legislation, often focusing on a proposed budget increase for the IRS. Fox News populated the discourse around the IRA with claims that the legislation would increase taxes and that the IRS budget increase would be used against Republicans. The most enduring of those claims was the categorically false theory that the Biden administration planned to hire 87,000 armed IRS agents to go after conservatives, small businesses, and average Americans.
Relying on an intentional misreading of the IRA, along with heavily circulated screenshots of IRS job listings detailing that candidates would need to carry a firearm, Fox News propagated the narrative that the government is going to war with its own people, a narrative that spread throughout right-wing media. Here are some of the...
Federal authorities say a California vascular practice and its physician agree to pay more than $6.73 million to resolve allegations that unnecessary interventional procedures were billed to Medic...