1A

It’s that time of the year again. Have you finished filing your return?

Doing taxes this season has been particularly fraught – for both taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service. It’s been a year since DOGE slashed federal funding and cut droves of federal employees. Those departures hit the IRS hard. Its leadership has largely turned over.

Also, Republicans in Congress took back billions of dollars the agency had received to improve its systems. Then, they gave the IRS even more tax code changes to enforce.

Can the IRS handle it all? And what do taxes – and a functional tax agency – have to do with the strength of U.S. democracy? We sit down with a panel of experts to find out.

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The Democrats are having a moment. They’ve enjoyed massive turnout for recent primaries, special elections, and local races. And voter data shows they’re also gaining support among Republican and independent voters.

In Wisconsin, liberal judge Chris Taylor recently won a spot on the state Supreme Court by nearly 20 points. That’s nearly double the margin of victory another liberal candidate in 2025.

Some Republicans are worried about what wins like these mean for the GOP’s performance in the midterms. And as a shrinking job market, high inflation, and a costly war in Iran drag down the economy, Democrats are seizing the moment to capture voters.

In this installment of our weekly politics series, “If You Can Keep It,” we go deep on the Democrats’ recent successes. How are voters responding to a Republican party struggling to deliver on its promises?

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The U.S. and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire after President Donald Trump threatened that “a whole civilization will die” in a social media post this week. Iranian officials are temporarily reopening the Strait of Hormuz as long as the truce remains unbroken.

Trump also signed an executive order this week that restricts mail-in voting, a practice he’s long criticized due to his belief that it leads to fraud. There is no evidence for the president’s claim.

Meanwhile, the president’s former attorney general, Pam Bondi, has signaled she will not appear for a scheduled Congressional deposition over the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.

And, in global news, despite the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, Israel is continuing its offensive in Lebanon meant to target the terrorist group Hezbollah.

Now that the Strait of Hormuz has temporarily reopened, analysts are expecting that it will take weeks for global energy supplies to rebound.

JD Vance was in Europe this week for a visit to Hungary where he repeatedly praised its president, Victor Orban, and attacked the European Union.

We cover the most important stories from around the world in the News Roundup.

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In 2019, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, the first openly gay governor elected in the U.S., signed a bill banning conversion therapy in the state. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that ban may be unconstitutional.

Conversion therapy seeks to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The practice has been deemed unethical and ineffective by most major mental health groups. And a study from the Trevor Project found that young people who go through conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to have reported attempting suicide compared to those who did not.

Only one Supreme Court justice dissented in this case. Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that this decision “opens a dangerous can of worms” and “threatens to impair states’ ability to regulate the provision of medical care in any respect.”

What’s behind the Supreme Court’s decision that will likely overturn this ban? And how might this decision affect nearly two dozen other states that have similar bans?

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After threatening massive attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure, Donald Trump is agreeing to a ceasefire to end the war in Iran.

On Tuesday morning, the president posted on social media that “an entire civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” referring to his Tuesday night deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz for trade.

Tuesday evening, the president extended that deadline and agreed to a two-week pause in fighting, writing in a social media post that his decision is based on conversations with Pakistan army chief and its prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said ships will be able to pass through the strait for the next two weeks in compliance with the ceasefire. Araghchi also said Iran will stop military attacks as long as it is not attacked.

Plus – hiring in most of the country is at a virtual standstill. That’s according to the most recent labor market figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The hiring rate fell to 3.1 percent in February. That’s the lowest since April 2020, when the pandemic shuttered many businesses. Job openings also dropped over by the hundreds of thousands compared to January.

Those losses are being felt most by young people. According to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for college grads reached 5.6 percent last year, outpacing the national rate of 4.2. And a November report by the Stanford Digital Economy Lab shows a “substantial decline” in job openings for early career workers in fields most vulnerable to artificial intelligence.

So, how are Americans feeling about the current job market? And how could U.S. and Israel’s war in Iran make a chilly jobs market even colder?

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