This Week’s Under-reported News Summary – July 23, 2025

Compiled by Bob Nixon

  • Supreme Court expands Trump's presidential executive power, allowing mass firings of employees in over a dozen federal agencies
  • New IRS system to share confidential immigrant tax data with ICE
  • Some, but not all, Afghans who worked with British military secretly relocated to U.K.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s extremist majority once again on July 8 issued a ruling upholding the expansion of President Trump’s executive power.  This time the Justices’ decision allows Trump to order the mass firings of government employees.  As has happened before, the high court relied on the so-called shadow docket, issuing an emergency procedure staying lower-court injunctions.

(“The Supreme Court as Enabler of Dictatorship,” American Prospect, July 9, 2025; “Supreme Court Allows Trump Admin to Implement Plans to Significantly Reduce the Federal Workforce,” SCOTUSblog, July 8, 2025)

ProPublica reports the Internal Revenue Service is building a computer program that would give Trump Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents unprecedented access to confidential tax data in order to deport undocumented immigrants who file taxes. In June, the acting general counsel at the IRS, Andrew De Mello, refused to turn over the addresses of 7.3 million taxpayers sought by ICE, and was quickly forced out of his job.

(“The IRS is Building a Vast System to Share Millions of Taxpayers Data with ICE,” ProPublica, July 15, 2025)

A new report reveals that thousands of Afghans who had worked with the British military during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, were covertly moved to the U.K. under a secret operation. In February 2022, information about 19,000 Afghans who had applied to move to the U.K. after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in the fall of 2021, appeared on Facebook due to an inadvertent leak of data by a British official.

(“Thousands of Afghans Relocated to UK Under Secret Scheme after Data Leak,” Guardian, July 15, 2025; “Thousands of Afghans Were Moved to U.K. in Secret Scheme After Data Breach,” BBC, July 15, 2025)

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