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Fox News Ignores $500B IRS Loss That Dwarfs DOGE 'Savings'

Fox News and Fox Business have seemingly ignored bombshell reporting from The Washington Post detailing how disruptions at the Internal Revenue Service created by the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency may result in the loss of half a trillion dollars of federal tax revenue this year.

This roughly $500 billion loss — which would represent nearly 10 percent of expected tax revenue to be gathered by the IRS by the April 15 tax filing deadline — dwarfs the alleged savings generated by DOGE from the firing of federal workers, closing of offices and agencies, and the cancellation of government contracts, which Fox personalities have enthusiastically promoted.

Fox’s refusal to inform viewers about how DOGE has crippled the IRS comes as no surprise given the network’s long track record of demagoguing against the agency.

Trump-driven IRS turmoil may cost 10 percent of federal revenue, which Fox ignored

In a March 22 story, The Washington Post reported that “staff cuts and disruptions related to the U.S. DOGE Service have officials bracing for a sharp loss of revenue” of up to a 10 percent decrease in federal tax receipts, a shortfall of over $500 billion. From the story:

Senior tax officials are bracing for a sharp drop in revenue collected this spring, as an increasing number of individuals and businesses spurn filing their taxes or attempt to skip paying balances owed to the Internal Revenue Service, according to three people with knowledge of tax projections.

Treasury Department and IRS officials are predicting a decrease of more than 10 percent in tax receipts by the April 15 deadline compared with 2024, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share nonpublic data. That would amount to more than $500 billion in lost federal revenue; the IRS collected $5.1 trillion last year. For context, the U.S. government spent $825 billion on the Defense Department in fiscal 2024.

…

The prediction, officials say, is directly tied to changing taxpayer behavior and President Donald Trump’s rapid demolition of parts of the IRS.

Fox has repeatedly promoted the comparatively meager DOGE savings reportedly totaling $130 billion as of March 28, a figure that reporting makes clear is hugely exaggerated. But according to a Media Matters review, Fox News has not covered this Post story showing a staggering loss in revenue due in part to DOGE. In a review of transcripts on Fox News and Fox Business from March 22 - 27, we found that Fox failed to report on the Post’s exclusive.

However, during this period, Fox Business anchor Liz Claman did acknowledge the importance of the IRS, saying: “I think we do need people at the IRS making sure people pay their taxes, because this country is not gonna run without tax revenue.”

Fox hyped DOGE’s supposed savings

Fox personalities have been eager to applaud DOGE’s efforts to upend much of the United States government, claiming the department is pursuing cost savings and efficiency.

Fox host Sean Hannity: “There’s $500 billion that was identified by Sen. Rand Paul … in previously approved spending that they believe they have the ability to cut. That's a big number.” Hannity continued, “We're getting into the trillions of dollars which was the goal originally.” [Fox News, Hannity, 3/5/25]
Fox host Jesse Watters celebrated “federal agencies getting DOGEd.” Watters emphasized that the DOGE “whiz kids” are “already saving a billion bucks a day.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 2/4/25]
Fox host Laura Ingraham: “DOGE ends the gravy train.” Ingraham asked, “Are there any sane Democrats left in Washington? Do any of them care about the billions being stolen from the U.S. taxpayers, stolen through waste, stolen through negligence, fraud, abuse?” Ingraham then celebrated an announcement of 167 contract cancellations. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 2/14/25]
Fox & Friends hosts gushed over the supposed DOGE savings and supported a DOGE “dividend check” to Americans. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 2/20/25]
Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo celebrated that “DOGE has exposed so much wasteful spending” before suggesting “digging into Medicare and Medicaid.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 3/10/25]

Reports have shown DOGE’s savings are exaggerated

PBS’ News Hour: DOGE “has posted what it calls a wall of receipts on its Web site that claims it has saved billions by cutting certain federal contracts. But reports and government documents prove that many of these so-called savings are either misleading or incorrect.” PBS White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López explained: “As The New York Times first reported, five of DOGE's biggest contracts that they say have resulted in savings ended up being deleted from that wall of receipts after outlets pointed out that there were errors. And some of the biggest errors in savings are, as CBS first reported, a USAID contract for $650 million that was listed three times, as The Intercept first reported, a Social Security contract listed as $232 million, instead of $560,000, and an ICE contract that DOGE listed as $8 billion, when, in reality, it was $8 million.” [PBS, News Hour, 2/26/25]

AP: “Nearly 40% of the federal contracts that President Donald Trump’s administration claims to have canceled as part of its signature cost-cutting program aren’t expected to save the government any money.” A February analysis by The Associated Press found that “more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 794 in all, are expected to yield no savings.” [The Associated Press, 2/25/25]

Gizmodo: “DOGE Just Keeps Deleting Its ‘Savings.’” Gizmodo reported on March 3 that DOGE “has repeatedly had to pull examples of so-called savings down after it was revealed that it actually didn’t save taxpayers anything.” According to the article, DOGE “changed or removed more than 40% of the more than 1,000 contracts it claimed to have canceled over the previous week, according to the New York Times. Included in that overnight alteration was the outright removal of five of the seven largest contracts it claimed to have cut.” [Gizmodo, 3/3/25]

NY Times: DOGE removed identifying information from its website to make its claimed savings harder to fact-check, before reversing course. The New York Times reported that DOGE “began making its new mistakes harder to find” following news outlets’ reporting on the group’s “error-filled data that inflated its success at saving taxpayer money.” The Times reported that DOGE began posting claims of new cuts without identifying information, and that it later removed the identifying information from the publicly available source code, making its claims nearly impossible to verify. The Times reported in a later story that DOGE “added some of the missing details,” allowing the public to check its claims of savings again. [The New York Times, 3/13/25, 3/18/25]

Fox has long demagogued against the IRS

Fox pushed a lie about increased IRS funding in the Inflation Reduction Act hundreds of times. In August 2022, Fox promoted the false claim that the IRA added 87,000 employees to the IRS at least 203 times, and House Republicans used these lies to justify a push to cut billions in enforcement funding from the agency. Some of the funding was successfully used to collect taxes owed by the richest Americans who otherwise may not have paid what they owed. [Media Matters, 6/7/24]

Fox also pushed unhinged demagoguery about the extra IRS funding, claiming that it would fund a militia to “hunt down and kill middle class taxpayers.” Then-Fox host Tucker Carlson claimed, “They're hiring another 87,000 armed IRS agents just to make sure that you obey. Got it?” Others on Fox described the potential wave of IRS hiring as an “economic, financial militia against regular people” deployed by those who “want to control you”; a “new army”; a “new Gestapo” Biden will use in an “abusive, corrupt manner”; “a Praetorian Guard that will be unleashed again” to “grab all the cash they can by any means necessary”; and “part of an orchestrated campaign to target Americans and have the federal government be at war with those Americans.” [Media Matters, 8/16/22]

During the Obama administration, Fox manufactured a scandal over the IRS scrutinizing political nonprofits. Before it came out that the IRS had also investigated progressive-aligned nonprofit organizations, Fox worked in concert with Republican politicians in an attempt to manufacture a scandal about the IRS supposedly targeting conservative nonprofits. [Media Matters, 8/20/13]

Methodology

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network for either of the terms “IRS” or “Internal Revenue Service” from March 22, 2025, when The Washington Post published its exclusive reporting that tax revenues could drop by 10% compared to 2024, through March 27, 2025.We timed segments, which we defined as instances when the possible IRS revenue shortfall was the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of the possible shortfall. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed the possible shortfall with one another.We did not time passing mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned the possible IRS shortfall without another speaker engaging with the comment, or teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about the possible shortfall scheduled to air later in the broadcast.We rounded all times to the nearest minute.

Why Would Ted Cruz Try To Cripple A Major Anti-Bribery Statute?

Why Would Ted Cruz Try To Cripple A Major Anti-Bribery Statute?

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Analysis: Cantor Loss Proves All Politics Is Local

By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times

The stunning primary defeat of Eric Cantor this week was, by any metaphoric measure, an enormous event: an earthquake, a volcanic explosion, a political tsunami.

But, at bottom, it also underscored some of the essential truths of politics, none more so than that old chestnut — oft-quoted and ascribed to the late ex-House Speaker Tip O’Neill — that all politics is local.

And, it might be added as a corollary, woe to the politician — whatever the office or their presumed import — who takes re-election, and by extension the people he or she represents, for granted.

Rep. Cantor of Virginia was the No. 2 Republican in the House leadership and, both logically and politically, the heir to House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio. There was even talk of Cantor someday running for president and, if his dreams were realized, becoming the first Jewish president in the country’s history.

However, that leadership position and Cantor’s unrequited ambition meant a great deal of time and travel away from his district, which left him ripe for attack by his underfunded, little-regarded challenger, college professor David Brat.

That argument — that a lawmaker has lost touch with the folks back home — is another old political standby; it produced a similarly historic upset in 1994 by Republican George Nethercutt, who ousted then-House Speaker Tom Foley in the national GOP wave.

“We need a listener,” Nethercutt repeatedly told voters, “not a speaker.”

Cantor had the burden, as do all congressional leaders, of serving dual masters, his constituents and the national needs of his party. Those are increasingly diverging in a GOP split between what might be called, for simplicity’s sake, the pragmatists and the purists.

The pragmatists believe that compromise is a necessary part of the political process. The purists, the animating force of the tea party movement, would rather lose elections than surrender what they believe to be fundamental conservative principles.

Perhaps the most important flashpoint has come over the issue of immigration. Many Republicans believe the party must join Democrats to pass some form of legalization for the millions in the country without legal documentation. Others call that amnesty, the battle cry that Brat used in the race against Cantor, who supported some easing of immigration law.

Too late did Cantor realize the strength of Brat and, more broadly, voters’ disdain for the type of give-and-take required of someone in Cantor’s position. A last minute blast of ads that underscored his concern went nowhere.

“This is the grass roots flexing its muscle and reminding members of the Republican leadership — and reminding all Republicans — that this is a very conservative party at the grass-roots and they’re angry,” said Stuart Rothenberg, who analyzes campaigns nationwide for his nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report.

“And they care more about their anger and expressing their anger and electing someone who will express their anger than they are about electing someone who gets the best deal in negotiations with the White House or the Senate.”

The ouster of Cantor was widely seen as a victory for the tea party, and it most assuredly was.

But also on Tuesday night two-term Sen. Lindsey Graham easily romped past six primary opponents in South Carolina, a pugnaciously conservative state that had been a hotbed of tea party support. Indeed, Graham was once seen as one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents facing a primary challenge this year.

He bent some, but not much, in the direction of his party’s purists. Mostly, though, Graham sneered at his tea party challengers and said he wanted not just to win, but to pound his opponents into South Carolina’s dirt, to show there was still a place for compromise inside the GOP.

The key difference was that Graham knew he had a challenge and responded forcefully, raising a small fortune by South Carolina standards, starting his campaign early and stumping tirelessly.

Two states, two vastly disparate outcomes and one fundamental truth, which illustrates why Tip O’Neill, dead for 20 years, is gone but not politically forgotten.

AFP Photo/Mark Wilson

U.S. Stocks Pare Losses In Early Trade

New York (AFP) — U.S. stocks were flat in early trade on Thursday, paring back hefty opening losses after a batch of mixed economic data.

After 45 minutes of trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 63.77 points (0.39 percent) at 16,205.22.

The S&P 500, a broad measure of the markets, shed 9.34 (0.50 percent) at 1,843.22, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index tumbled 34.48 (0.83 percent) to 4,139.10.

“Stocks are searching for direction as investors weigh economic data and the situation in Ukraine,” Wells Fargo Advisors said in a market note.

First-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits fell last week, by 10,000 to 311,000, the Labor Department said, adding to signs of a firming jobs market.

The Commerce Department revised upward its estimate of U.S. economic growth in the fourth quarter to an annual rate of 2.6 percent, matching analyst expectations.

And pending home sales fell for the eighth straight month in February, by a steeper than expected 0.8 percent, to the lowest level since October 2011, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Citigroup plunged 4.4 percent in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s rejection of its share buyback and dividend increase plans due to weakness in its results in stress tests.

Facebook dropped 2.0 percent after losing 6.9 percent on Wednesday, as investors question its $2 billion deal to buy virtual reality company Oculus.

Candy Crush maker King Digital sank for a second day after its IPO, losing 2.7 percent to $18.48, compared to the IPO price of $22.50.

Yahoo added 0.7 percent. Yahoo Japan said it would buy almost all of domestic telecom company eAccess from its parent Softbank Corp. in a deal valued at around $3.2 billion.

Twitter leaped 3.3 percent. The company on Wednesday added Facebook-style photo tagging and bumped up the number of images that iPhone users can share in a single post.

Bond prices were mixed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was unchanged from Wednesday at 2.70 percent, while the 30-year yield fell to 3.53 percent from 3.55 percent. Bond prices and yields move inversely.

NY-9 Race Leaves Obama Little Room To Maneuver On Israel

Though it is hardly scientific to brandish a few poll numbers about and claim to know that Democrats lost Anthony Weiner’s once-safe House seat because of Jewish Democratic disillusionment with Barack Obama’s stance toward Israel, the electoral outcome nonetheless portends further collapse of peace efforts, as Obama lacks the political room to continue to push for Palestinian claims and a two-state solution with such a toxic environment back home.

Indeed, while many are quick to point to the district’s having gone 55 percent for the president in 2008 — and argue Obama has no shot at winning a national election if he loses here next November, which may well be the case — the most important outcome of the campaign may be yet another obstacle to negotiations, the president reluctant to make noise or generate coverage for pushing Israel to make concessions when a key element of the Democratic base is threatening revolt.

The irony, of course, is that the Democratic candidate was Jewish and yet was hammered over the Israel issue by his gentile opponent. Orthodox Jews in the district also reportedly soured on him for backing gay marriage in the State Assembly.

Political prognosticators, usually on the right, have for years claimed that “this will be the election” where Jews turn on Democrats, whether for their Israel stances or other reasons.

Time and again, though, Jewish voters have shown their progressive instincts, some 78 percent pulling the lever for Barack Hussein Obama last time around.

So while predictions these voters will turn against Obama next fall are premature, what we do know is that lingering discomfort with Obama has combined with his modest pushes for Israeli concessions to effectively inculcate a narrative that the president has a “Jewish” problem. And that’s a problem not just for Americans, but those in the troubled disputed territories who desperately need a halt to violence.

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The National Memo is a political newsletter and website that combines the spirit of investigative journalism with new technology and ideas. We cover campaigns, elections, the White House, Congress, and the world with a fresh outlook. Our own journalism — as well as our selections of the smartest stories available every day — reflects a clear and strong perspective, without the kind of propaganda, ultra-partisanship and overwrought ideology that burden so much of our political discourse.
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Trump-driven IRS turmoil may cost 10 percent of federal revenue, which Fox ignored

Fox hyped DOGE’s supposed savings

Reports have shown DOGE’s savings are exaggerated

Fox has long demagogued against the IRS

Methodology

Why Would Ted Cruz Try To Cripple A Major Anti-Bribery Statute?

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