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The acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service is resigning over a deal to share immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the U.S., according to two people familiar with the decision.Melanie Krause, who had served as acting head since February, will step down over the new data-sharing document signed Monday by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The agreement will allow ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records.Two people familiar with the situation confirmed Krause was resigning and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.The IRS has been in upheaval over Trump administration decisions to share taxpayer data. Acting Commissioner Douglas O’Donnell announced his retirement from the agency after roughly 40 years of service in February as furor spread over Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency gaining access to IRS taxpayer data. Krause replaced him.Acting chief counsel William Paul was removed from his role at the agency last month and replaced by Andrew De Mello, an attorney in the chief counsel’s office who is deemed supportive of DOGE, according to two other people familiar with the plans who were also not authorized to speak publicly.The Treasury Department says the agreement will help carry out President Donald Trump’s agenda to secure U.S. borders and is part of his larger nationwide immigration crackdown, which has resulted in deportations, workplace raids and the use of an 18th century wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants.Advocates, however, say the IRS-DHS information-sharing agreement violates privacy laws and diminishes the privacy of all Americans.The basis for the agreement is founded in “longstanding authorities granted by Congress, which serve to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans while streamlining the ability to pursue criminals,” said a Treasury official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to explain the agency’s thinking on the agreement.Tom Bowman, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, said disclosing immigrant tax records to DHS for immigration enforcement “will discourage tax compliance among immigrant communities, weaken contributions to essential public programs, and increase burdens for U.S. citizens and nonimmigrant taxpayers. It also sets a dangerous precedent for data privacy abuse in other federal programs.”Todd Lyons, acting ICE director, told reporters at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix on Tuesday that the agreement will help ICE find people who are collecting benefits they aren’t entitled to and are “kind of hiding in plain sight” using someone else’s identity.Working with Treasury and other departments is “strictly for the major criminal cases,” Lyons said.The IRS had already been called upon to help with immigration enforcement earlier this year.Noem in February sent a request to Bessent to borrow IRS Criminal Investigation workers to help with the immigration crackdown, according to a letter obtained by the AP. It cites the IRS’ boost in funding, though the $80 billion infusion of funds the federal tax collection agency received under the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act has already been clawed back.A collection of tax law experts for the NYU Tax Law Center wrote Monday that the IRS-DHS agreement “threatens to violate the rights that many more Americans have under longstanding laws that protect their tax information from wrongful disclosure or dissemination.”“In fact, it is difficult to see how the IRS could release information to DHS while complying with taxpayer privacy statutes,” they said. “IRS officials who sign off on data sharing under these circumstances risk breaking the law, which could result in criminal and civil sanctions.”The memo states that the IRS and ICE “will perform their duties in a manner that recognizes and enhances individuals’ right of privacy and will ensure their activities are consistent with laws, regulations, and good administrative practices.” Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat contributed to this report from Phoenix. Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Tesla starts selling cars in Saudi Arabia on Thursday, a country where on a 900-kilometre (559 mile) stretch of its main east-west highway linking the capital Riyadh and the holy city of Mecca there isn’t a single charging station. Electric vehicle sales in the kingdom totaled just 2,000 last year, according to Telemetry analyst Sam Abuelsamid, fewer than Tesla sold between breakfast and dinner on an average day. But Saudi Arabia has huge plans for EVs that Tesla has not been able to tap, partly because of a feud between its billionaire CEO Elon Musk and the kingdom’s powerful Public Investment Fund sovereign wealth fund that dates back to 2018. A new political landscape has given Musk an opportunity to change that. Relations between Riyadh and Musk have improved since he took a high-profile role in U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign and then a top position in his administration, slashing the federal bureaucracy. In a coup for Riyadh, Trump is set to visit Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks in his first foreign trip, after asking the kingdom in January to spend upwards of $1 trillion in the U.S. economy over four years, including military purchases. “Plenty of business people are thinking about how to position their firms around President Trump’s anticipated visit to the Gulf,” said Robert Mogielnicki, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “I suspect Tesla wants to firmly plant their flag in the Saudi market before President Trump’s visit and then try to capitalise on momentum thereafter.” MISSING OUT Musk could do with a boost. Tesla posted a 13% drop in first-quarter sales earlier this month, its weakest performance in nearly three years, driven by a backlash against Musk’s politics, rising competition, and delays for a Model Y refresh. But Musk has work to do in Saudi Arabia after his public spat with PIF boss Yasir al-Rumayyan. The dispute started when Musk tweeted in 2018 he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private after a meeting with the PIF. In the ensuing lawsuit filed by investors when a bid failed to materialise, tense text messages between Musk and al-Rumayyan were made public. In the following years, Musk missed out on the billions Riyadh has poured into its Vision 2030 programme to diversify the economy away from oil. The kingdom is investing an estimated $39 billion in developing the EV sector, according to a 2024 report by consultants PwC. Tesla’s Saudi debut also lags that of Chinese giant BYD, which opened its Riyadh showroom in May 2024. CHALLENGES Now Tesla has arrived in Saudi Arabia, it faces a number of challengeseven if one of them is unlikely to be the angry protests against Musk’s politics that have recently dogged its operations in Europe and the United States. These include the paucity of charging stations and summer temperatures that can top 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), draining EV batteries more rapidly. As of 2024, Saudi Arabia had just 101 EV charging stations, compared with 261 in neighbouring United Arab Emirates, a country with a third the population, data from Statista based on Electromaps showed. Most are in major cities, making long journeys across desert highways unfeasible. “I think charging is probably one of the main, if not the main, point of concern,” said Carlos Montenegro, BYD’s general manager in Saudi Arabia, adding Saudi drivers clock up many more kilometres each year than in other markets. Around 70% of the cars BYD sells in Saudi Arabia are hybrids rather than pure EVs, Montenegro said. Fahd Abdulrahman, a Saudi browsing at BYD’s Riyadh showroom, said driving range was his major concern about buying an EV. “I drive a lot, my average is more than 50,000 km (per year). I am afraid that an EV would not serve for that.” Yet Riyadh has massive development plans, which include a goal of 30% EV adoption by 2030. It has formed the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Company, which aims to boost the number of chargers to 5,000 by 2030, 50 times the current number. “EV adoption (in Saudi Arabia) will likely remain below leading countries, such as China, but could still see growth in the coming years,” said Seth Goldstein, equity strategist at Morningstar. “I see growing EV demand as more fast chargers are built and affordable long-range EVs enter the market.” Pesha Magid and Manya Saini, Reuters
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E-Commerce
A day care facility in a Texas county that’s part of the measles outbreak has multiple cases, including children too young to be fully vaccinated, public health officials say.West Texas is in the middle of a still-growing measles outbreak with 505 cases reported on Tuesday. The state expanded the number of counties in the outbreak area this week to 10. The highly contagious virus began to spread in late January and health officials say it has spread to New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Mexico.Three people who were unvaccinated have died from measles-related illnesses this year, including two elementary school-aged children in Texas. The second child died Thursday at a Lubbock hospital, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended the funeral in Seminole, the epicenter of the outbreak.As of Friday, there were seven cases at a day care where one young child who was infectious gave it to two other children before it spread to other classrooms, Lubbock Public Health director Katherine Wells said.“Measles is so contagious I won’t be surprised if it enters other facilities,” Wells said.The measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is first recommended between 12 and 15 months old and a second shot between 4 and 6 years old.Maegan Messick, co-owner of Tiny Tots U Learning Academy, where the outbreak is occurring, recently told KLBK-TV in Lubbock that they’re taking precautions like putting kids who are too young to get the vaccines together in isolation.“We have tried to be extremely transparent,” she told the TV station.There are more than 200 children at the day care, Wells said. Most have had least one dose of the vaccine, though she added, “we do have some children that have only received one dose that are now infected.”The public health department is recommending that any child with only one vaccine get their second dose early, and changed its recommendation for kids in Lubbock County to get the first vaccine dose at 6 months old instead of 1. A child who is unvaccinated and attends the day care must stay home for 21 days since their last exposure, Wells said.Case count and hospitalization numbers in Texas have climbed steadily since the outbreak began, and spiked by 81 cases from March 28 to April 4.On Tuesday, the state added another 24 cases to its count and two additional counties, Borden and Randall. One more person was hospitalized since Friday, with 57 total.Gaines County, where the virus has been spreading through a close-knit Mennonite community, has the majority of cases, with 328 on Tuesday. Neighboring Terry County is second with 46, followed by Lubbock County with 36.The Texas Department of State Health Services tracks vaccinations rate for kindergartners, though the data doesn’t include homeschooled children or some kids who attend private school. Gaines County’s rate is 82%, which is far below the 95% level needed to prevent community spreadand health officials have said it’s likely lower in the small religious schools and homeschooling groups where the early cases were identified.In Terry County, the vaccination rate for kindergartners is at 96%, while Lubbock County is at 92%.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention met with Texas officials Monday to determine how many people it would send to West Texas to assist with the outbreak response, spokesman Jason McDonald said Monday. He expected a small team to arrive later this week, followed by a bigger group on the ground next week.The CDC said its first team was in the region from early March to April 1, withdrawing on-the-ground support days before a second child died in the outbreak.A spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said late Sunday that the governor and first lady were extending their “deepest prayers” to the family and community, and that the state health department had sent epidemiologists, immunization teams and specimen collection units to the area. AP reporter Amanda Seitz in Washington contributed to this report. Jamie Stengle, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
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