Trump sued the IRS. Now it’s banned from auditing his past tax returns.

Summary

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Apple News Today — May 20, 2026

Episode: Trump sued the IRS. Now it’s banned from auditing his past tax returns.
Host: Gideon Resnick (in for Shumita Basu)
Summary Prepared by: [Your Name]

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Episode Overview

This episode examines several major news developments:

• The unprecedented IRS settlement with former President Trump, banning audits of his past tax returns.
• Ongoing political turmoil within the Republican Party as Trump-backed candidates defeat GOP rebels.
• Deepening tensions both within the Supreme Court and in American political institutions.
• Additional updates on domestic terrorism, Congressional efforts to restrict executive war powers, and a highlight from the English Premier League.

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Key Discussion Points

1. IRS Settlement with Trump

Timestamps: 00:05, 03:16 – 07:00

• The IRS agreed to halt any audits or investigations into former President Trump’s past tax returns—an extraordinary outcome following Trump's lawsuit against the IRS.
  • “There's never been a situation where a president sued the IRS and then as part of that was able to extract this concession from his government. And so we are in uncharted territory in that sense.” —Eric Tucker (AP), 00:13
• The deal immunizes Trump, his family, and businesses from past tax investigation but does not bar future probes.
• Trump’s lawsuit emerged after an IRS contractor leaked his tax returns; settlement details include a $1.8 billion compensation fund for those who say they were pursued by the DOJ for political reasons.
• Concerns were raised over the fund’s scope and transparency:
  • “It is true that this is unusual, that is true, but it is not unprecedented.”—Acting AG Todd Blanche, 04:22
  • Critics, including Senate Democrat Patty Murray, labeled the fund a “slush fund” and “blatant corruption,” suggesting it could reward Trump allies (05:11).
  • Acting AG Blanche denied President Trump or his family could access compensation, but the structure remains controversial, with Trump allowed to fire any member of the oversight panel (06:21).
• The episode highlights the unusual nature and significant political implications of the arrangement, with Chief criticism focused on possible conflict of interest and lack of checks.
• Notable moment:
  • “You are acting today like the President’s personal attorney. And that’s the whole problem… You have a whole banner of his face hanging over the Department of Justice.”—Rep. Thomas Massie to Acting AG Blanche, 06:04

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2. Republican Primaries and Trump’s Influence

Timestamps: 00:24, 01:03 – 02:57

• Trump-backed candidates continue to oust independent-minded Republicans:
  • Thomas Massie, a critic of Trump and the party’s fiscal policies, lost his Kentucky primary to Ed Gallrine. The race was the most expensive House primary to date.
  • Massie's defeat follows that of Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, who had voted to convict Trump during impeachment.
• Trump’s active endorsements intensify divisions:
  • Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a loyalist with a checkered record, in a primary challenge against Senator John Cornyn. Paxton's history includes impeachment in 2023 and ongoing scandals (02:23).
  • “His endorsement, in my opinion, is the most significant endorsement in my lifetime. So when he endorses, it has a tremendous impact.”—Ken Paxton, 02:11
• Party leaders express unease:
  • Senate Majority Leader John Thune reaffirms support for Cornyn but states:
    • “None of us control what the president does. He made his decision about that. That doesn’t change the way I feel.”—Thune, 02:57

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3. Supreme Court Fractures and Public Disputes

Timestamps: 07:00 – 10:13

• Supreme Court justices are airing grievances publicly:
  • Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized the Court's rush to decide on Voting Rights Act cases:
    • “It is so important for the public to perceive us as neutral, nonpartisan. We have to have in our democratic society neutral adjudicators of these kinds of disputes. … Public confidence is really all the judiciary has.”—Jackson, 07:39
  • Bloomberg’s Greg Storr notes a shift towards justices making pointed public remarks (08:24).
  • Tensions have surfaced between Justices, such as Sonia Sotomayor’s apology to Brett Kavanaugh (08:37), and Clarence Thomas’s admission that relationships are “different compared to previous eras.”
• External criticism has escalated:
  • President Trump personally criticizes justices—even those he appointed—for perceived slights, particularly after controversial rulings on tariffs (09:09).
• Chief Justice John Roberts rebuffs claims of a partisan court, while Storr predicts more visible division as the term concludes, with major cases on transgender rights, birthright citizenship, and executive power still pending (09:39).

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4. Other Major Headlines

Timestamps: 10:13 – End

• San Diego Mosque Attack: Teen gunmen with white supremacist views killed three at a major mosque; a security guard’s actions minimized further harm.
  • The FBI highlighted the suspects’ “hateful rhetoric … spanning across races and religions.”
• War Powers Resolution:
  • Four Republican senators join Democrats in advancing a bill to require congressional authorization for military action in Iran; recent Trump-backed primary winner Bill Cassidy supported the measure.
• Sports Highlight:
  • Arsenal wins the English Premier League for the first time in 22 years, with further potential for Champions League victory.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the unprecedented IRS deal:
  • Eric Tucker: “We are in uncharted territory in that sense.” (00:13)
• On Trump’s political leverage:
  • Ken Paxton: “His endorsement ... is the most significant ... in my lifetime.” (02:11)
• Critiquing AG Todd Blanche:
  • Thomas Massie: “You are acting today like the President's personal attorney.” (06:04)
• Supreme Court impartiality:
  • Justice Jackson: “Public confidence is really all the judiciary has. That's our currency…” (07:39)
• Supreme Court fractures:
  • Greg Storr: “The suggestion ... is that those are cases that are going to deeply divide the court overall.” (09:39)
• FBI on hate crimes:
  • “Their hateful rhetoric, quote, did not discriminate, spanning across races and religions.” (10:13)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• IRS-Trump Settlement Overview: 00:05 – 07:00
• GOP Primaries & Trump Endorsements: 00:24 – 02:57
• Supreme Court Tensions: 07:00 – 10:13
• Mosque Shooting, Senate War Powers, Arsenal Victory: 10:13 – end

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Tone & Structure

This episode maintains a brisk, fact-centered tone, interweaving expert reporting with direct audio from the newsmakers themselves. Voices of caution, concern, and partisanship are all present, giving listeners a nuanced picture of the turbulence currently affecting American institutions and democracy.

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Conclusion

In sum, the episode delivers insight on an unprecedented legal arrangement exempting Trump from past IRS scrutiny, ongoing GOP realignment under Trump’s dominance, visible strains within the Supreme Court, and urgent updates on violence, war powers, and sports. Each segment showcases direct expert voices, timely reporting, and the shifting landscape of contemporary American politics.

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Transcript

[Gideon Resnick]

Good morning. The IRS agrees to end any audits into President Trump's taxes. The Associated Press explains an increasingly complicated settlement.

[Eric Tucker]

There's never been a situation where a president sued the IRS and then as part of that was able to extract this concession from his government. And so we are in uncharted territory in that sense.

[Gideon Resnick]

Another rebel within the GOP is defeated as Trump supporters sweep primaries and Bloomberg explains the growing tensions in outside the Supreme Court.

[Greg Storr]

All these comments suggest that we're probably going to have more fireworks to come.

[Gideon Resnick]

It's Wednesday, May 20th. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News today. One of the more independently minded Republicans was defeated yesterday after a Trump backed candidate won a critical primary. I have called and conceded the race. We've been honorable the whole time and

[Thomas Massie]

we're going to stay that way.

[Gideon Resnick]

Thomas Massie lost in Kentucky's 4th congressional district against Ed Gallrine, a candidate recruited by Trump. The race, projected to be the most expensive US House primary ever, topples the man who led a bipartisan effort to force the release of government files on Jeffrey Epstein. Described by Trump variously as both a smart cookie and a third rate grandstander, Massie had developed a reputation for creating problems for the White House. He criticized the Iran war and voted against the Republicans signature tax and spending bill over fears about the national debt. This is just the latest in a series of attempts to oust fellow Republicans who crossed the president. Most recently, this strategy led to the defeat of Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy over the weekend, who had voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges during his first term. And the president appears intent on continuing this trend. Earlier in the day, Trump. Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his bid against incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn. Paxton has been a staunch Trump ally and supported the president's false claims about the 2020 presidential election. He welcomed the president's backing at a campaign event yesterday.

[Ken Paxton]

And I'll tell you what, I'm so honored to have President Trump's endorsement. His endorsement, in my opinion, is the most significant endorsement in my lifetime. So when he endorses, it has a tremendous impact.

[Gideon Resnick]

Republican leaders in Texas and other advisors around Trump had reportedly urged him to support Cornyn to avoid putting up a more divisive general election candidate. Paxton has faced a number of scandals, including misuse of public funds, and he was impeached in 2023 by the majority Republican Texas House. The state Senate later acquitted him. Meanwhile, Cornyn's fellow Republicans on the Hill were upset with the president's decision and worried that it could lose them the seat and conceivably the advantage in the Senate. Here's how Senate Majority Leader John Thune responded to a question from reporters about whether he was disappointed.

[Ken Paxton]

I've made it very clear for months now, and Senator Cornyn is a principal conservative. He is a very effective senator for the state of Texas. But I don't none of us control what the president does. He made his decision about that. That doesn't change the way I feel.

[Gideon Resnick]

The runoff election in Texas between Cornyn and Paxton is next week. The IRS has been effectively banned from investigating past tax returns of President Trump, his family, or his businesses. That's according to unprecedented new details of a deal that Trump reached with the DOJ to end his lawsuit with the nation's tax collector. The agreement also brings to an end any pending inquiries into his tax arrangements that might still exist. It only applies to conduct from before the date of the settlement agreement and doesn't appear to rule out future IRS probes. As a reminder, Trump sued the IRS after a contractor within the department leaked his tax returns to the media. On Monday, it was revealed that Trump had agreed to drop his suit in exchange for a $1.8 billion compensation fund for those who believe they were pursued by the DOJ for political purposes. Yesterday, before the latest details had become public, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche faced a grilling by Senate Democrats over the compensation fund.

[Todd Blanche]

It is true that this is unusual, that is true, but it is not unprecedented. And it was done to address something that had never happened again either. So there is an unprecedented nature of what we did yesterday in response to years and years of weaponization.

[Gideon Resnick]

And he refused to rule out compensation for those who carried out violence during the January six riot at the US Capitol, even those who attacked police officers.

[Eric Tucker]

So a lot of Democrats are calling it a slush fund, and they're saying this is basically set up to reward allies of President Trump.

[Gideon Resnick]

Eric Tucker is a Justice Department reporter for the Associated Press.

[Eric Tucker]

And so people believe that when Acting Attorney General Top Blanche is talking about this fund, what he's really talking about is a mechanism to compensate people who were investigated under the Biden administration.

[Gideon Resnick]

That was the argument from Senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. She described it as blatant corruption. What is happening is you write the check, Trump and his cronies cash it. American taxpayers who are already being whacked with high prices are going to foot the bill. Blanche said there were no limitations on who could apply for access to the money and reiterated that the president and his family are exempt from payouts. The deal also drew criticism for the potential conflict of interest between Trump and the doj, especially as Blanche has personally represented the president in the past. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen noted this yesterday as he accused Blanche of weaponizing the DOJ on behalf of the president. Blanche pushed back on that.

[Todd Blanche]

The fact that I used to be President Trump's lawyer is just a fact, but I am the acting Attorney general. So don't say the President's former personal lawyer will do something. The acting Attorney General will do something.

[Thomas Massie]

Mr. Attorney General, you are acting today like the President's personal attorney. And that's the whole problem. You've got his whole, you have a whole banner of his face hanging over the Department of Justice, and you and everybody else walks under it. And you are acting like you're his current personal attorney.

[Gideon Resnick]

Blanche will appoint a five member board to oversee the fund, but President Trump will reserve the right to fire anybody on the panel at will.

[Eric Tucker]

It's not clear to any of us at this point what the decision making process is going to be like or exactly which individuals the department might have in mind. And so part of the questions that we really heard Blanche, Blanche have to confront were the logistics questions and how transparent this process would be. And he said, look, there are privacy laws that mandate us keeping some of this quiet, but I do believe in transparency. And so in terms of the appeal process and what that's going to look like, I think there are a lot of questions that still remain in the public mind about how this is going to work.

[Gideon Resnick]

The top lawyer at the Treasury Department resigned on Monday after the DOJ announced the settlement. There's been a notable rise in public disagreements between Supreme Court justices in recent weeks. Typically, dissent is reserved for written judgments, but justices have taken to making public comments that show some strains on the bench. One example came this week as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized the Court's decision to expedite the release of its ruling on the Voting Rights act as it risked making the court appear to be taking one side on last minute redistricting battles.

[Ketanji Brown Jackson]

It is so important for the public to perceive us as neutral, nonpartisan. We have to have in our democratic society neutral adjudicators of these kinds of disputes. And we know that public confidence is really all the judiciary has. That's our currency in terms of people upholding the rule of law, is that everybody has to agree and go to a court and to allow a court to resolve it.

[Greg Storr]

And she essentially said they're betraying their principles the way we usually do things in search of a result, namely to speed up the redistricting process there in a way that was likely to help Republicans.

[Gideon Resnick]

Greg Storr covers the Supreme Court for Bloomberg and told us about the fractures that he's seeing.

[Greg Storr]

The justices have done an awful lot of public appearances, and some of those have given them occasion for saying some things out loud that maybe they wouldn't and in public that maybe they might not have said in previous years.

[Gideon Resnick]

Mostly tensions on the bench are only ever hinted at indirectly. But recently, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor apologized to Brett Kavanaugh for suggesting he probably doesn't really know any person who works by the hour. And last week, Clarence Thomas, the longest serving justice, acknowledged that the relationship between his colleagues was, quote, different compared to previous eras. Critics from the left believe the court has not scrutinized the administration's moves enough. But President Trump has also attacked the court repeatedly following its decision to strike down his flagship tariff announcements.

[Greg Storr]

Donald Trump is definitely adding fuel to the fire here. He is in a way that we're almost getting used to. But we should always remember how remarkable they are personally criticizing justices, including some of the ones he appointed because they rolled against him on the big tariff case. A few months ago, Chief Justice John

[Gideon Resnick]

Roberts pushed back on the idea that the court issued partisan rulings. During an appearance in Pennsylvania this month, Storr told us that tensions between justices were always more likely to flare up. At this time of year.

[Greg Storr]

It's not unusual to have this sort of back and forth, especially as we get towards the end of the term where you have bigger and bigger decisions coming down involving things like the rights of transgender athletes, involving Donald Trump's efforts to restrict birthright citizenship, involving the president's effort to fire the heads of independent agencies. So some really big issues are still before the Supreme Court. And the suggestion that we're perhaps taking from these comments is that those are cases that are going to deeply divide the court overall.

[Gideon Resnick]

The court has over 30 cases to decide before the end of this term. And finally, a few other stories were following. The two teenagers suspected of killing three people at San Diego's largest mosque shared white supremacist views online, according to authorities. The FBI said their hateful rhetoric, quote, did not discriminate, spanning across races and religions. The suspects approached the mosque armed with rifles and handguns and killed three men and then themselves. A mosque leader said the attack could have been a lot worse if not for one of the victims, a security guard named Amin Abdullah, who shot back and initiated a lockdown to protect nearby children. Yesterday, local police hailed him as a hero. In the Senate, four Republicans joined Democrats to advance a war powers resolution, which would end the Iran war unless President Trump got congressional authorization. It's only a procedural vote and faces steep hurdles before going into effect, but it marks a victory for lawmakers who have wanted this kind of authorization as spelled out in the Constitution. The latest Republican to join Democrats in favor of the vote was Senator Bill Cassidy, who was just defeated in a Trump backed primary challenge over the weekend. And it's been 22 years in the making, but Arsenal are back on top of the English Premier League. That's the moment that chaos erupted inside the Arsenal training ground as the team learned they would be lifting this year's soccer trophy. The title was solidified after rival Manchester City's penultimate game ended in a draw on Tuesday. Arsenal have dominated the league, sitting atop the Premier League table since October. The title for Arsenal comes a full generation after the team last won the league and seven years after its team manager took on a brutal overhaul of the squad. And the celebrations might not yet be over. They have a chance to win the UEFA Champions League for the first time in their history. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we have a narrated article. Coming up next, Scientific American reports on NASA's ambitions to build a nuclear reactor on the moon to power an eventual lunar base. If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News plus Narrated to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.