Ted Turner 1938-2026

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Some people are visionaries. Some people are great leaders. Few people can do both at the same time. Ted Turner was one of those special people.

In the wake of his death on May 6 at the age of 87, much has been written about his brash in-your-face style. I never met or worked for him. But I have many friends and colleagues who did. To a person, they sing his praises as a tough but fair leader. That he was a visionary is clear when you consider his impact on media in general and journalism in particular.

I remember sitting in the WBBM-TV newsroom in Chicago in 1979, when Turner announced his plans for CNN, the Cable News Network. I was a writer and producer at the CBS owned station and most of the people in our newsroom though Turner’s idea was crazy. I thought otherwise.

Turner has already had a major impact on the media landscape. The 1970s saw the spread of cable television systems across the nation. These stations repeated the broadcasts of the TV stations in their markets, offering better TV pictures but little else. Turner saw an opportunity. That’s what visionaries do.

Operating out of Atlanta, in 1970 Turner bought WJRJ-TV, a struggling UHF station launched in 1967. He renamed it WTCG (Turner Communications Group), jokingly claiming it stood for “Watch This Channel Grow”. On December 17, 1976, Turner used a satellite to beam WTCG’s signal nationwide, creating the first nationally distributed independent station. He allowed the cable companies to use it for free. He made money selling what was now advertising for a nation-wide audience. In 1979, the call letters were changed to WTBS. Over the years, it used various brands like “SuperStation WTBS,” “TBS Superstation,” and finally just “TBS”.

That was just the start.

Turner’s defining achievement was CNN, the Cable News Network. which he launched in 1980. At a time when television news was confined to fixed evening broadcasts, he gambled that audiences would want a constant stream of reporting, and he was right. CNN’s live coverage of the Persian Gulf War made the network a global force and helped normalize the modern era of 24-hour news.

He was never content with one success. Turner expanded into entertainment with TNT, Cartoon Network, and Turner Classic Movies after acquiring valuable film and animation libraries. He also bought the Atlanta Braves, giving the city a beloved team and tying his name to Atlanta’s rise as a major sports and media center.

Turner’s public image was as memorable as his business record. He was outspoken, impatient with convention, and comfortable being controversial. That directness earned him the nickname “The Mouth of the South,” but it also reflected a confidence that helped him bet on ideas others dismissed.

Beyond media, Turner devoted much of his later life to philanthropy and conservation. He gave about $1 billion to establish the United Nations Foundation, co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and used his land holdings to support wildlife restoration, especially bison conservation.

He also became one of the country’s great landowners and a passionate advocate for the natural world. His ranches, herds, and preservation efforts made him a larger-than-life figure in environmental circles, while projects like Captain Planet reflected his desire to teach younger generations about stewardship.

In his final years, Turner lived with Lewy body dementia, which he disclosed in 2018. Even as his health declined, his influence remained visible in the media world he helped create and in the institutions that grew from his philanthropy. He is survived by his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Turner had three wives, including the Oscar winning actress Jane Fonda. They all survive him.

Turner’s life was marked by audacity, reinvention, and outsized effect. He turned cable television into a global platform, made philanthropy part of his public identity, and left behind a media landscape that still bears his imprint. For better or worse, much of modern television carries the stamp of Ted Turner. He was one-of-a-kind.

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John Roberts is …

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John Roberts is displeased. John Roberts is exasperated. John Roberts is frustrated. John Roberts is annoyed. John Roberts is irked. John Roberts is any other of the many synonyms my thesaurus suggested instead of the word I originally used, which it found to be “vulgar.”

What has the Chief Justice of the United States in high dudgeon (I thought of that one myself) is the reaction to the Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which drove a stake through the heart of the only section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 the Court had not previously decimated. With the vote falling along party lines, many critics condemned the decision as racist and political.

Speaking to a conference of judges and lawyers from the 3rd U.S. Circuit in Pennsylvania, Roberts never mentioned the case, or any other, by name, but said the Court is “simply not part of the political process.”

“I think, at a very basic level, people think we’re making policy decisions, we’re saying we think this is how things should be, as opposed to what the law provides,” Roberts said. “I think they view us as purely political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do.” He complained that people treat the Court with “hostility.” And his only nod to the fact that the outcry came in the wake of this latest decision was to say, “One thing we have to do is make decisions that are unpopular.”

I don’t know what is worse. That Roberts actually believes what he says. Or that he knows it’s a lie but thinks we are stupid enough to believe it.

Let us acknowledge, the idea of a nonpartisan, neutral court handing down rulings with no guiding light beyond their own jurisprudence is a long-running myth in American history. The court has and always will be a political institution. Yet in my lifetime, I have watched the Court drift farther and farther to the right. Away from the principals of individual rights which it had once protected.

The current conservative majority on the Court has also tossed aside precedent cases with abandon. Think of Dobbs, which overturned a fifty-year precedent on women’s rights. And it has increasingly placed itself in a position to make policy, a function that properly belongs with the elected branches of government which the Court now routinely ignores.

The Voting Rights Act was not one of the everlasting laws which lay on the books for centuries. It has been repeatedly reviewed and reauthorized by Congress, with the reauthorizations signed by the President. Most recently, it was reauthorized in 2006 and extended to 2031, when it was due for another review. This is the way the people’s voice is heard. The elected branches consider and enact the laws. This was a policy decision, whether the Chief agrees or not. There is no logic to a Supreme Court that decides, twenty years after a Congressional review, that the law is no longer to be enforced.

It was a blatantly political act. The proof immediately demonstrated as Louisiana and Tennessee moved to redraw their districts without waiting for the next regular reapportionment. This is what Donald Trump, afraid of losing his majority in Congress, begged the states where Republicans control the government to do. In each case, the new maps will affect districts currently held by people of color. People who just happen to be Democrats.

The New York Times in September 2025, analyzed the emergency applications made to the Supreme Court during the Biden and second Trump administrations. Their reporting shows the political bias of the Justices. Yes, it works both ways. But Trump has made far more use of the so-called “shadow” docket in his second term. His applications far outnumber those of Biden. And Trump has won most of them, usually on party-line votes.

If there is any doubt as to the partisanship of the current Supreme Court, take note once again at Louisiana v. Callais. Under normal Supreme Court procedure, the clerk waits 25 days to send the orders down, allowing for a motion for reconsideration to be filed. Immediately following the April 29, 2026, ruling, a group of voters asked the Court to bypass the usual 25-day waiting period, (Rule 45), arguing that the Louisiana legislature needed to move quickly to draw a new map for the 2026 elections.

On May 4, 2026, Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the Louisiana decision (also Dobbs), granted this request, allowing the judgment in Callais v. Louisiana to be sent down immediately, clearing the way for a new, Republican-favored map to be drawn. The three liberal dissenters screamed bloody murder. The Court itself it says it only expedites orders a few times a decade. Of course, this was one of those times because it was necessary for the majority to achieve its partisan goals. The Court’s partisan decisions have immediate consequences.

It is also worth noting that Alito’s written opinion exposes his hypocrisy. Just last December, in other voting rights case decided along partisan lines, Alito wrote, “The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections. (Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens. 2025), I guess confusion is only a problem if it benefits people of color. It is fine if it benefits White voters.

The partisan action by the nation’s highest court is being copied down the line. Yesterday Tennessee enacted a new congressional map that carves the city of Memphis into three separate parts. The Republican-led legislature used a strategy known as “cracking” to split Memphis—a majority-Black city and the state’s last remaining Democratic stronghold—among three predominantly white, Republican-leaning districts. By mixing the city’s voters of color with white suburban and rural populations, the map effectively dilutes the voting power of the minority community and is expected to eliminate the state’s only Democratic seat in Congress.

In Virginia, a state like Louisiana and Tennessee, was a Confederate state which permitted slavery, the state’s supreme court struck down a voter-approved redistricting amendment, upholding a lower court ruling that had declared the measure unconstitutional less than 24 hours after last week’s special election and briefly halted its implementation. The vote was 4-3, four Republicans outvoting three Democrats on the bench.

Let everyone understand what has happened here. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decisions killing the Voting Rights Act, EVERY former Confederate state is moving to completely eliminate Black representatives. This should be more than enough proof that voting rights still need protection and racism is far from gone in this country. The Court effectively said the Fifteenth Amendment guarantees members of the minority the right to vote. But it does not guarantee them the right to have their vote count.

We are in the middle of a partisan redistricting war. We have the Court of John Roberts to thank.

I don’t care if he is angry. So am I.

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R.I.P. V.R.A.

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John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States, has achieved his life goal. With the Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, he has killed the Voting Rights Act. Roberts made the destruction of the VRA of 1965 his lifelong crusade. His opposition to the Act dates back to his days as a law clerk for then Associate Justice William Rehnquist. Rehnquist notoriously wrote a memo in 1952 stating, “I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be re-affirmed.” Plessy was the infamous “separate but equal” case institutionalizing racism in public schools. It was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

Roberts first wrote, “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” in 2007, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. Since then, the quote has become a defining slogan for his judicial philosophy on race, later appearing in other landmark rulings like Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), which ended affirmative action in university admissions.

The record of the Roberts Court is clear:

  • Shelby County v. Holder (2013): Roberts authored the 5–4 majority opinion that effectively struck down Section 5, the “preclearance” requirement for states with a history of racial discrimination. He argued that the coverage formula was based on “decades-old data and eradicated practices” and that “our country has changed”.
  • Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021): Roberts joined Justice Alito’s majority opinion that made it harder for plaintiffs to win Section 2 “vote-denial” cases. The ruling introduced “guideposts,” such as the “usual burdens of voting,” that limit the Act’s ability to challenge neutral-looking rules like ballot-collection bans.
  • Allen v. Milligan (2023): In a surprise to many legal observers, Roberts authored a 5–4 opinion upholding Section 2 to strike down Alabama’s congressional map for underrepresenting Black voters. He reaffirmed the Gingles precedent, stating that the law remains a vital tool against discriminatory redistricting.
  • Louisiana v. Callais (2026): Most recently, the Court ruled 6–3 that creating two majority-Black districts in Louisiana violated the Equal Protection Clause. Critics argue this decision, supported by Roberts, may effectively signal the end of Section 2’s power to protect minority voting strength against partisan gerrymandering.

Roberts’s position is hard to argue with on its face. The problem is that his view of the world does not match reality. Roberts let Justice Samuel Alito do the dirty work of writing the opinion in Louisiana v. Callais. Alito used Roberts’s rose-colored glasses.

Alito wrote that “things have changed dramatically” in the South and used that as a basis for concluding that the relevant protections of the Voting Rights Act are no longer needed in the way they once were. Quite a stretch for someone who claims to be an “originalist.” The framing echoes language Roberts had used in Shelby County to gut Section 5 of the VRA — Roberts had written that “voter turnout and registration rates now approach parity” and that “blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare.” Research shows that ruling led to hundreds of new laws which had the effect of restricting voting.

This is reminiscent of a metaphor used by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissenting in Shelby County. Ginsburg called that decision equivalent to “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

What is striking here is not this view of the current state of race relations in the country. It is that this view is being used as a justification for the Court’s action at all. The conservative majority is in full lawmaking mode here, a position it hypocritically denies it assumes. In fact, in the time since the 2022 Dobbs decision on abortion, the conservatives have been rewriting precedent with abandon and placing themselves in what is traditionally the role of the elected branches.

Justice Elena Kagan argued in her Louisiana v. Callais dissent that the majority opinion renders Section 2 of the VRA “all but a dead letter.” Kagan wrote that Section 2 had been “repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress,” and that only Congress — not the Court — has the right to declare it no longer needed.

Alito insists the Court did not completely strike down section 2. But the Court significantly reworked the 40-year-old framework established in Thornburg v. Gingles, making three changes that will collectively make it much harder for voters of color to bring cases under Section 2 of the VRA. First, illustrative maps submitted by plaintiffs must meet all of a jurisdiction’s political objectives, including partisan goals. Second, evidence of racially polarized voting must control for partisan preferences. Third, in the “totality of circumstances” phase, plaintiffs must present strong evidence of present-day intentional racial discrimination — historical evidence of past discrimination carries much less weight.

I came of age during the turbulent 1960s with protests, sometimes violent, over the issues of Civil Rights, Woman’s Rights, and the war in Vietnam. Only one of three Americans alive today was alive then. Still, I am surprised to find so many students have failed to learn from the history of those days. Apparently, the conservatives on the Supreme Court have never learned or forgotten that history as well.

The Voting Rights Act was a major victory. It provided a mechanism to remedy the nearly total lack of Black Americans serving in Congress from the southern states, which had significant Black populations. Congress determined that was due to what were called Jim Crow laws, enacted in southern states, making it difficult for Blacks to vote in spite of the Fifteenth Amendment. Congress reauthorized the Act in 2006, extending it until 2031, finding it was still necessary. The vote in Congress was nearly unanimous.

The Court now substitutes its wishes for those of Congress, a pure exercise of judicial activism. In the immediate aftermath, Louisiana suspended its May 16 primary to allow the legislature to draw a new map, and Alabama filed an emergency motion seeking to stay a court order that had required it to maintain two majority-Black districts. A new era, call it Jim Crow 2.0, has arrived.

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What Would Tom Say?

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What Would Tom Say? That’s the question running through my mind as I watched Charles III, King of Great Britain and Ireland and lots of other places, address a joint session of the Congress of the United States of America.

Tom is Thomas Jefferson, founding father, first Secretary of State, third President, and principal author of the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain by the thirteen colonies henceforth to be known as the United States of America.

In the Declaration, written 250 years ago, Jefferson accuses Britain’s then King George III of being a tyrant, “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

Jefferson asserts that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it.”

Which is what made Charles’ speech so extraordinary. The British monarch, subtly but unquestionably, lectured Donald Trump and the US Congress on the meaning of tyranny and a government’s responsibility to its people and the world. Charles was essentially holding a masterclass in democratic values, wrapped in diplomacy and charm.

He framed the moment as one of “great uncertainty,” said the US and UK face challenges “too great for any one nation to bear alone,” and declared that violent attacks on leadership “will never succeed”. He also emphasized that “executive power is subject to checks and balances,” which got attention because it sounded like a reminder about limits on presidential power.

The remarkable thing is how he pulled it all off, staying scrupulously nonpartisan on the surface while promoting centuries of common interests in areas where Trump has sought a sharp break from established US policy. Trump reportedly called it a “great speech.” Whether he caught all the subtext is another question.

Charles invoked the Magna Carta, the US Bill of Rights, “the rule of law, the certainty of stable and accessible rules, and an independent judiciary resolving disputes and delivering impartial justice” — and he did so on the same day the White House was pursuing new tariffs to circumvent a Supreme Court ruling. The timing was not lost on anyone.

After opening with a quote by Oscar Wilde, who was famously imprisoned for homosexual acts, Charles proclaimed that “it is the very fact of our vibrant, diverse, and free societies that gives us our collective strength,” a message fundamentally at odds with the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity.

Charles called for continued commitment to Ukraine and NATO, comments that came directly after Trump had openly expressed interest in withdrawing the US from NATO, citing what he felt was a lack of support from fellow members during the war with Iran.

He was unequivocal in rejecting Trump’s claim that NATO allies never sacrifice for the US, pointedly reminding Congress that after 9/11, when NATO invoked Article 5 for the first time, allied nations answered the call “shoulder to shoulder, through two World Wars, the Cold War, Afghanistan.”

Charles lamented the “disastrously melting ice caps of the Arctic,” in direct contrast to the White House’s position that climate change is a hoax. He urged Washington to avoid becoming “ever more inward-looking,” a direct pushback against Trump’s “America First” approach.

Whether Trump got the message is anyone’s guess. The critiques were wrapped in layers of diplomatic language, historical references (Magna Carta, English Common Law), and royal charm. Charles is a master of saying things with a smile that sting later on reflection. If you’re not listening for the subtext, you might just hear flattery.

What’s genuinely fascinating is that it almost doesn’t matter. The speech was addressed to Congress and the watching world just as much as to Trump. The lawmakers in that chamber, and the cameras broadcasting it, were the real audience for those pointed lines about judiciary independence and Ukraine.

Trump later called it a “great speech.” But the looks on the faces of Vice-President J.D. Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson registered pain at several points. Both of them are actually interesting cases precisely because they do have historical literacy. Johnson is a constitutional lawyer by training, when Charles started citing Magna Carta and English Common Law as the roots of American democracy, Johnson would have felt every word of that. Vance has a Yale Law degree and has read widely. These aren’t men who would miss what Charles was doing.

The British Empire’s decline is actually a remarkably instructive case study precisely because it wasn’t conquered or suddenly collapsed. It hollowed out from a combination of forces, overextension, the costs of two world wars, rising nationalism in colonized nations, and critically, its own internal contradictions between preaching liberty while practicing empire. The decline was gradual, then sudden.

Charles, the literal embodiment of that former empire, was standing in Congress essentially saying we learned these lessons the hard way, please don’t repeat them. There’s something almost poignant about that. A king whose ancestors ruled a quarter of the world’s surface, now watching anxiously as the nation that replaced British dominance potentially walks toward some of the same traps.

Will we learn from history? Or repeat it?

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3 Down, 12 to Go

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When Donald Trump began his second term in the White House, there were fifteen original heads of executive departments like State, Defense and Treasury. There were seven additional cabinet-rank officials. Of the fifteen, Trump has fired three.

Trump’s first term saw a revolving door of cabinet-level officials. A newcomer to the Washington bureaucracy, Trump took advice from Republican insiders and appointed several department heads who had some experience in government. They stupidly put their oath to uphold the law and Constitution ahead of their loyalty to Trump. The Donald was not going to make that mistake again.

The second time around Trump followed the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 gameplan closely. That’s the plan he swore he had never heard of during the election campaign. The plan mapped the transition of the American government into an authoritarian regime managed for the benefit of the moneyed elite, the billionaire class. The plan dictated that Trump install loyalists in these positions. That he did, putting into positions of power a motely group of the least qualified people ever entrusted to run the government of the United States.

Trump did not fire the three cabinet officers because of their incompetence. He fired them because they made him look bad.

Noem No More

Kristi Noem, Homeland Security secretary, was the first Trump cabinet secretary to walk the plank. Noem previously served at the governor of South Dakota and a member of the House of Representatives. She did have some experience in cybersecurity and state disaster management, but nothing at the national level.

The Republican controlled Congress showered Noem with money designed to turn the agency onto a super federal police force dedicated primarily to the mass deportation of immigrants. The scale was extraordinary. The reconciliation funding alone was nearly nine times DHS’s FY2024 budget. The list of Noem’s abuses of authority is long and cases suing her and the department are pending in scores of lawsuits from Los Angeles to Chicago to Minneapolis, all cities which her hastily hired and poorly training agents invaded and attacked people indiscriminately. In Minneapolis, two American citizens were killed by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol, both agencies reporting to Noem.

Noem also had a taste for luxury travel. In 2025, the Coast Guard (under DHS) signed a $172 million contract for two long-range Gulfstream G700 jets, marketed as having the “most spacious cabin in the industry.” DHS said the purchase was for safety reasons, noting the existing jet Noem used was over 20 years old and beyond operational limits. The jets were intended for official travel by Noem, the deputy secretary, Coast Guard commandant, and other top DHS officials.

Noem had intended to purchase a Boeing 737 Max 8 for personal and official travel. The plane was originally leased by her and her aide/Corey Lewandowski for domestic trips, including high-profile deportation missions, and also for Cabinet-level travel. It was equipped with a queen-size bed, showers, a kitchen, four flat-screen TVs, and a cocktail bar. ICE had initially bought it before Noem’s ouster, but after she was fired the White House took control of the purchase. The administration decided to keep the jet and make it available to Melania Trump and other cabinet secretaries.

Many of these excesses would be caught by the department’s Inspector General. But Trump learned his lesson about the IGs during his first term. In January 2025, Trump terminated at least 17 IGs at once via email, citing “changing priorities”. These officials, meant to be independent watchdogs over federal agencies, were widely described as part of a “purge,” with many removals occurring without the required 30-day notice to Congress. 

None of that had much to do with Trump’s decision to fire Noem. Trump fired Noem, a staunch loyalist, for violating the only rule the Trump administration cares about. The rule that says you don’t show up the boss.

In the end, it wasn’t the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis that cost Noem her job. Nor was it her immediate reaction to prematurely paint both the mom-of-three and the veterans’ nurse as wannabe terrorists and aspiring cop killers. It wasn’t the sexual relationship she allegedly had with Lewandowski (both are married and have denied the relationship), the exorbitant spending on executive jets, or the public messaging from her agency which was riddled with White nationalist dog whistles and error-prone descriptions of immigrants.

Before cameras and a packed audience at a Congressional hearing called to ask Noem how she was spending the money they had appropriated, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana asked a series of questions about the $220 million ad campaign Noem has executed, mostly for television ads featuring herself, and how that squared with Noem’s stated promise to root out waste from her agency. Kennedy had to ask more than once whether Trump approved that spending spree before Noem provided a direct answer: “Mmhmm, yes.”

That response, it turned out, was the embattled Cabinet secretary’s final straw. Kennedy got a call from Trump later that evening. The president, Kennedy told CNN, “Was pissed. Her version and the president’s version of whether the president, A) was informed and B) consented are decidedly different,” Kennedy said. (Trump told NBC News that he hadn’t known about the advertising campaign. “I wasn’t thrilled with it,” he said.)

Bye Bye, Bondi

Attorney General Pam Bondi was the next to bite the dust. Bondi, who had been one of Trump’s personal lawyers and the Attorney General of Florida, turned the Department of Justice into the primary instrument of Trump’s revenge on political opponents. She fired career attorneys who had worked on investigations into Trump during the Biden administration. And she allowed FBI Director Kash Patel to fire FBI agents who had worked on those investigations. These people are nonpartisans who are assigned by the top political officers. They are not in a position to pick and choose their cases. She also turned traditionally nonpartisan employees, including assistant U.S. Attorneys, Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), and the Office of the Pardon Attorney into political hacks.

But that is not why Trump fired her. Pam Bondi was fired by President Trump due to dissatisfaction with her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and perceived underperformance in pursuing investigations against his political adversaries. In other words, she didn’t cover-up enough, and her efforts to deliver of his promise of retribution against his perceived enemies fell short. Trump cannot understand why some lawyers and many judges take seriously their oath to uphold the law and the Constitution. Bondi was a true believer and completely loyal to her liege lord. But she couldn’t bend everyone in the judicial system to her will.

Lori Leaves

Trump’s labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, appears to have left after a misconduct investigation, not simply for routine political reasons. Reports say the probe involved allegations of misconduct and possible abuse of power, including claims that led to senior staff being placed on leave or resigning.

One account says she had been under a watchdog probe, senior staff were placed on leave or quit, and her schedule was increasingly disrupted because the controversy had made her politically toxic. There were also related allegations involving her husband, which added to the turmoil around the department.

Chavez-DeRemer’s resignation was not announced by President Trump, unlike the other recent Cabinet firings, but by White House communications director Steven Cheung on social media. The moral here is don’t create a scandal that takes the focus off the president or he won’t know you. The White House framed her exit as a move to a private-sector role.

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13 Hours and $240 Later

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Did you file your tax return? Are you getting a refund or do you owe money? Did you fill out the form yourself? Did you use tax software? Did you hire an accountant?

Each year we spend an average of $240 to prepare and file our annual tax returns, according to the IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service. We spend on average thirteen hours filling out the forms. People in other countries think we’re nuts.

While the U.S. requires taxpayers calculate their own liability, in approximately 36 countries the government provides a pre-filled statement of income and tax due based on third-party data.

How do other countries do it?

Denmark, Norway, and Sweden use Tax Agency Reconciliation: In this system, the tax authority generates a fully completed return. Citizens simply review it online and click “confirm” if they agree or submit amendments if they have additional deductions or income. The process can take as little as fifteen minutes and cost taxpayers nothing.

The United Kingdom and Japan use Exact Withholding: The system aims to withhold the exact amount of tax from paychecks throughout the year. For many salaried workers, this eliminates the need to file a year-end return entirely.

In Australia and France, the process is called Partial Pre-filling: The government fills in common data like salary and bank interest, but the taxpayer must still add more complex information manually.

Why doesn’t the United States use one of these methods?

Tax Code Complexity: The U.S. tax code is heavily reliant on individual-specific deductions and credits (like dependents or business expenses) that the IRS cannot easily predict without taxpayer input.

Reporting Lag: The IRS often doesn’t receive third-party W-2 and 1099 data until mid-year, long after the April filing deadline has passed.

Industry Lobbying: The multi-billion-dollar tax prep industry has historically lobbied against government-run filing tools to protect their market share.

The first item can be solved with a simplification of the U.S. Tax Code, which runs a whopping 6,871 pages (more than 75,000 if you add the IRS regulations, a 14-week reading assignment). The complexity of the code reeks of special provisions designed to serve special interests. It is why the average taxpayer believes, with justification, that the tax code is rigged against them and in favor of the rich and powerful individuals and corporations. See Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt) Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act.

The second item can also be handled with changes to IRS procedures. Already, third-party data must be filed with the IRS before the tax filing deadline. There are penalties if they are not. These penalties, which are money fines, can be raised and enforcement diligently applied. The late filings will undoubtedly be greatly reduced.

And then we come to the third item on my list. Like everything else in the good old U S of A, industry lobbying is the juggernaut elected officials at all levels of government, in desperate need of money to finance their elections, cannot resist.

For the 2026 tax filing season, the IRS expects to receive approximately 164 million individual income tax returns. Filing trends show a nearly even split between those who self-prepare using digital tools and those who hire professional assistance.

As of March 27, 2026, filing broke down like this:

2026 Count% Change from 2025
Total Returns Received88,424,000-1.3%
Returns from Tax Pros45,854,000-1.1%
Self-Prepared Returns41,017,000+1.4%
Average Refund Amount$3,521+11.1%

The DYI Market

The do-it-yourself tax preparation landscape is primarily divided among a few major players:

  • Intuit (TurboTax): Dominates with 60% of the market.
    • While its overall unit count for lower-revenue filers declined by 2% in 2025, its total consumer revenue grew by 10% ($4.9 billion) as it successfully pivoted toward higher-income filers and more complex returns.
  • H&R Block: Holds the second-largest position in the digital space.
    • In the broader digital and accounting landscape, H&R Block often competes head-to-head for visibility, capturing a 35.8% click share in paid search (PPC) compared to TurboTax’s 32.17%.
  • FreeTaxUSA: Emerged as a significant challenger for budget-conscious filers, capturing roughly 14.5% of recent search interest.

Lobbying Surge and Industry Influence

Now… look at the lobbying by tax providers:

  • Record Spending: In 2025, Intuit (TurboTax) and H&R Block spent a combined $7.1 million on federal lobbying—the highest annual total on record for these two firms.
  • Long-term Investment: Since 2003, these companies have invested more than $103 million in federal lobbying, frequently targeting efforts to prevent the IRS from developing its own tax preparation software.
  • Political Contributions: Intuit alone contributed $1 million to President Trump’s inaugural committee and distributed approximately $1.8 million to Republican members of Congress in 2024 to solidify opposition to free government filing.
  • Revolving Door Strategy: Nearly 70% of Intuit’s 84 lobbyists in 2025 were former government employees, many of whom previously served on key tax-writing committees in Congress.

The Death of Direct File

The IRS did have a pilot program to allow taxpayers to file returns directly with an online site. It was called Direct File. The Biden administration pushed for it, fighting against industry lobbying. It served 141,000 taxpayers with virtually no promotion in 2024. The Trump administration killed it.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury cited high operational costs ($138 per return in the pilot year) and limited participation as the primary reasons for shuttering the program. Despite the “limited use” claim, participation actually doubled from approximately 141,000 users in 2024 to nearly 300,000 users in 2025 before the program was cut. The Trump administration’s explanation was like any of the other lies to come out of this pay-as-you-go administration.

Intuit and H&R Block stocks soared on the news.

Think about the cost in time and money the next time you vote.

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Artemis II

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I held off on this. Didn’t want to jinx it. Now that the Artemis II crew is back, safe and sound after a near perfect mission, I can write about the thrill once again of seeing humans reach the moon for the first time in 53 years. With all the divisiveness and strife of today’s world, it is nice, even if just for a moment, to reflect that somethings can still be achieved in the name of all mankind.

I still remember asking my parents for permission to stay home and the watch the flight of the first living thing America sent into space. It was 1961. The passenger inside the Mercury capsule was Ham, a chimpanzee. I was in grade school. Ham paved the route. Alen Shappard followed. Eight years later Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

Eight years from first flight to the moon landing in 1969. Fifty-three years from the sixth and last moon landing, Apollo 17 in 1972, to Artemis II. How did we get so distracted, and jaded, and why did we take so long?

Those were the questions in my mind as I watched the splashdown in the Pacific off the coast of San Diego. And listened to the mostly mediocre coverage from the television networks. I thought of Walter Cronkite, Frank McGee, Roy Neal, and Jules Bergman. They had gravitas. This time around the reporters hadn’t even bothered to read the history, and they wouldn’t shut up.

Of course, they were not even born when Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon. I suppose they should be forgiven their ignorance. But it is hard to forgive their lack of homework.

If you follow this column, you know I frequently write about space. I’ve even published here what is thought to be the best-known photograph ever taken, the “Earthrise” photo, earth in color, taken by astronaut William Anders on the Apollo 8 mission. Apollo 8 went into lunar orbit but did not land. A copy of that photograph has hung in my office for decades.

Artemis II Commander Reis Wiseman paid homage to that historic picture with what is now being called, “Earthset.” Captured on April 6, 2026, at 6:41 p.m. EDT, the image shows a crescent Earth slipping behind the rugged lunar horizon as the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity, flew over the Moon’s far side.

On the same day the Artemis II crew captured a historic total solar eclipse from a unique vantage point on the far side of the Moon. This event, lasting nearly 54 minutes, provided a perspective never before witnessed by humans, showing the Moon as a dark orb fully obscuring the Sun while revealing the solar corona and several distant planets. These are the awe-inspiring photos reproduced above.

Donald Trump made the traditional presidential call to the crew. There is an irony here. Richard Nixon, a Republican got to talk to the Apollo 11 crew after the first moon landing even though the entire program had been championed by Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, Democrats. Nixon cancelled the last three Apollo flights.

Trump told the Artemis II crew, “Today, you’ve made history and made all America really proud”. He emphasized that the mission was a precursor to a permanent lunar presence, saying, “We’ll plant our flag once again… we’ll establish a permanent presence on the moon”.

Empty words in my book. Trump’s FY 2027 budget request proposes a 23% decrease in NASA’s overall funding, reducing it to $18.8 billion from its current level of $24.4 billion. Despite overall cuts, funding specifically for the Artemis moon missions would increase by nearly 10% to $8.5 billion. This is intended to fully fund lunar landers, spacesuits, and transportation to ensure astronauts return to the surface by 2028.

But the “Science Mission Directorate” faces a 47% cut, dropping from $7.25 billion to $3.9 billion. This would likely lead to the termination of over 40 missions, including those focused on Earth observation, climate research, and astrophysics. No need for those egghead scientists to continue to explore the cosmos. Or to use NASA’s unique ability to look down on the earth and monitor what we are doing to the environment, a topic Trump calls a “hoax.” Endangered projects include a follow on to the fantastic space telescopes and the mission to pick up and bring back to earth soil samples still being collected by the amazing Perseverance Rover, searching for signs of ancient microbial life since landing on Mars in 2020.

This request mirrors a similar proposal for the 2026 fiscal year that was soundly rejected by Congress, which ultimately restored NASA’s funding to roughly $24.4 billion. Space advocates, including The Planetary Society, have labeled the new 2027 proposal an “extinction-level event” for space science. The final budget will be determined by Congress later this year.

I wonder if Trump realized the hypocrisy of his conversation with the astronauts. I also wonder if he realized the crew included a woman, an African American, and a Canadian. Just the kind of diversity he decries as “woke” and undesirable.

There appears to be something about viewing the entire earth with one’s own eyes that changes a person. Earth, with all its people, seems so small and insignificant. Ruth Graham of The New York Times writes about the philosophical and theological aspects of that impact. She quotes from the Book of Psalms, the Greek astronomer Ptolemy, theologian Andrew Davison of the University of Oxford, and actor William Shatner, Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, among others.

My thoughts on this subject turn to Carl Sagan’s novel Contact. The alien making first contact with a human tells our protagonist, Eleanor Arroway, that humans are newcomers and technologically backward, yet promising, often referencing the vastness of the universe to put humanity in perspective. In his screenplay for the film (Contact, 1997), three different characters ask the same question, “Are we alone?” Three other characters give the same answer, “The universe is a pretty big place. It’s bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So, if it’s just us… seems like an awful waste of space.”

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