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iceland
'The Clown Show Continues': Billy Long Out at IRS, But Probe to Persist
Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden said that "my investigators have obtained alarming information pertaining to Long's conduct at the IRS that we have begun to investigate."
Aug 08, 2025
Less than two months after U.S. Senate Republicans confirmed Billy Long as head of the Internal Revenue Service, the scandal-plagued commissioner confirmed on Friday that he is leaving the IRS to serve as President Donald Trump's ambassador to Iceland.
U.S. Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)—who opposed Long's IRS nomination with the rest of the chamber's Democrats—pledged in a Friday statement that a probe of the outgoing commissioner will continue.
"From the minute Trump announced Billy Long as his IRS pick it was obvious this would end badly, but every Senate Republican voted to confirm his nomination anyway," said Wyden. "He didn't even last two months on the job. Let's not forget that there wasn't a vacancy at the time Trump announced Long's nomination. Danny Werfel, a skilled leader with fans among Democrats and Republicans, had years left on his term."
The senator pointed out that "in just a handful of months, Trump and his crew have already gutted taxpayer service, weaponized IRS data against innocent taxpayers, and set us up for disaster when next year's filing season comes around. This is what Trump does—pick incompetent, unserious people for serious jobs, and sit back as the damage piles up."
"Billy Long left Congress a few years ago and went straight into the tax fraud industry, his only real experience in tax before his nomination," he added. "My investigators have obtained alarming information pertaining to Long's conduct at the IRS that we have begun to investigate, and that process will continue regardless of whether Trump stashes Long away in some foreign embassy."
The ouster was initially reported by The New York Times, which noted that "Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will serve as acting commissioner until a permanent replacement takes office," according to a senior Trump administration official.
Long then confirmed the development on his personal social media account, saying that "it is a honor to serve my friend President Trump and I am excited to take on my new role as the ambassador to Iceland. I am thrilled to answer his call to service and deeply committed to advancing his bold agenda. Exciting times ahead!"
He later added a joke about Immigration and Customs Enforcement: "I saw where former Superman actor Dean Cain says he's joining ICE so I got all fired up and thought I'd do the same. So I called Donald Trump last night and told him I wanted to join ICE and I guess he thought I said Iceland? Oh well."
A spokesperson for Bessent's department, which includes the IRS, said in a statement: "Treasury thanks Commissioner Long for his commitment to public service and the American people. His zeal and enthusiasm to bring a fresh perspective to the federal government was evident in both the House of Representatives and as part of the Trump administration. A new candidate for commissioner will be announced at the appropriate time."
Long previously represented Missouri in the U.S. House, where Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Richard Neal (D-Mass.) responded to the IRS commissioner's exit with a statement blasting Trump.
"We don't even need more details on Trump's latest scuttle to know how damaging his presidency has been for the IRS," Neal said. "With nearly a new commissioner each month and weakened customer service from his mass firings, the rampant instability comes at the expense of all who rely on it. One thing is for sure: Secretary Bessent should focus on his own job before collecting more responsibility."
Several critics, including Neal, highlighted that Long was preceded by several IRS leaders this year. As retired Adm. Mike Franken, a former Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Iowa, put it on social media: "IRS Commissioner Billy Long is removed, the sixth change this year, by the guy who only hires 'the very best people.' The clown show continues."
Long's firing prompted widespread speculation that he was leaving the IRS because he refused to comply with an order from the president. Journalist Josh Marshall wondered, "How bad did the ask have to be for a Trumpy sleazebag like Billy Long to say no?"
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How's Iceland's 4-Day Work Week Working? 'Incredibly Well,' Study Says
"The Iceland story offers a very different vision to countries across Europe that are grappling with low productivity but trying the same old failed methods," said one researcher.
Oct 25, 2024
Iceland's economy grew more than all but one other rich European nation and its workers reported higher well-being, lower stress, and better work-life balance after the country reduced its standard work week from 40 to 36 hours, research published Friday affirmed.
The study—released by a pair of think tanks, London-based Autonomy Institute and Alda (Association for Sustainability and Democracy) of Reykjavík, Iceland—"offers new insight into the program of working-time reduction that has taken place in Iceland, following successful public sector trials in the country."
"After successful pilot schemes in the Icelandic national government and Reykjavík City Council between 2015 and 2019 which found improvements to employee well-being as well as productivity, historic labor agreements between Icelandic trade unions and employers 'embedded' the right to shorter hours for hundreds of thousands of workers," study authors Guðmundur Haraldsson, Jack Kellam, and Rowan Trickett noted.
The new report analyzed the results of studies conducted by the Social Science Research Institute at the University of Iceland, the Icelandic Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration "to understand job patterns,
work environment, and the reasons why individuals left paid employment" in 2021 and 2022.
Key findings include:
- 62% of people working reduced hours reported being more satisfied with their schedule;
- 97% of workers thought that shorter working hours had made it easier to balance work with their private life, or at least kept the balance the same as before (with more than half, 52%, thinking it had improved); and
- 42% of those who had moved to shorter hours thought that it had decreased stress in their private life, vs. 6% who felt it had increased.
"This study shows a real success story: Shorter working hours have become widespread in Iceland... and the economy is strong across a number of indicators," Haraldsson said in a statement.
Indeed, as CNN reported Friday:
In 2023, Iceland's economy expanded by 5%, a growth rate second only to that of Malta among rich European economies, according to the International Monetary Fund's latest World Economic Outlook, published earlier this week. That is much higher than the country's average growth rate of almost 2% in the decade between 2006 and 2015.
"Overall, the Icelandic economy has remained strong post the introduction of a widespread shorter working week," Autonomy Institute research director Will Stronge said in a statement. "The evidence we've collected suggests that when workers have a better work-life balance and are better rested—the economy benefits too."
"The Iceland story offers a very different vision to countries across Europe that are grappling with low productivity but trying the same old failed methods," he added.
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The Return of Whaling
The industry is on the cusp of winning a major victory over the global conservation movement that has fought for decades to bring this murderous practice to an end once and for all.
Jun 15, 2024
Whaling is seen as an evil of the past, memorialized in events like ritual recitations of Moby Dick. Or invented as a metaphor for the worst of humanity’s greed—the Tulkun hunts in Avatar: The Way of Water. But commercial whaling hasn’t actually stopped, it’s merely scaled back. Japan, Iceland, and Norway still engage in commercial whaling.
On May 9th, a spokesperson for the Japanese government announced that they were intending to set a hunting quota for fin whales. A week earlier, the Kangei Maru, a brand new, state of the art whaling factory ship, was launched. It’s almost four decades since the Japanese whaling industry felt the need for a new whaling mothership, and this one’s specifications will allow whalers to butcher fin whales on it. Plus, the Kangei Maru has the range and construction to work in Antarctic waters. Coincidentally, on exactly the same day as the Kangei Maru’s launch, a scientific paper was published, presenting the results of surveys conducted in one area of the Southern Ocean. The results suggest that there are around 50,000 fin whales in just that one site.
If the only way to regulate whaling internationally is under some gentlefolks’ non-binding agreements, how did commercial whaling almost disappear?
Then, on June 11th, the council of the Japanese Fisheries Agency announced a quota of 59 fin whales within the Japanese EEZ. On the same day, the Icelandic Minister of Fisheries issued a permit for a hunt of 128 fin whales by Hvalur, the Icelandic whaling company.
Fin whales are known—if they’re known at all—as being the second-largest of the great whales. Only blue whales are larger. Less well known is that they were also the whales hunted in the greatest numbers during industrial commercial whaling through the 20th Century. About 900,000 fin whales were killed across all ocean basins, nearly as many as the sum of all blue (~380,000), humpback (~250,000) and sei whales (~300,000) combined. Given their abundance and individual size, fins were where the real money was in high seas whaling.
This history is lost.
Most fin whales lived in the Southern Ocean, but they’re found throughout the polar and temperate regions of the world. Unlike humpback or right whales, they don’t engage in clearly defined annual migrations from feeding to breeding areas. They’re mostly offshore, beyond the reach of whale-watching operations. And they’re nowhere near as acrobatic as humpbacks. Fins don’t create their own PR value, the way that more visible and demonstrative whales do.
Currently, fin whales worldwide are categorized in the IUCN’s Red List as Vulnerable, one step down from Endangered, based on a review from 2018. However, a more recent (2023) IUCN review of fin whales in European waters listed them as being of Least Concern there. For the few places where data are available, most fin whale populations are increasing. Apart from the recent work showing about 50,000 whales in one small(ish) area of the Antarctic, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) lists about 40,000 fins in one part of the central North Atlantic (for 2015, so the estimate is almost a decade old). The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides estimates of around 7,000 off the east coast of North America, and 8,000 in the waters of California and Oregon. Added together, that’s over 100,000 fin whales—and it excludes most of the Southern Ocean, where fins are likely to be most abundant, and where other observations indicate that their numbers are on the rebound.
So, what about the Japanese whalers hunting fin whales? How can this happen? There are two international bodies primarily responsible for managing whaling internationally. The International Whaling Commission (IWC), oversees setting quotas for whaling, and the ways in which whaling is managed. At present, the IWC has quotas for commercial whaling set at zero, a moratorium that’s been in place since the mid-1980s. The other organization is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) which regulates—as the name suggests—international trade in endangered species. Fin whales are listed under CITES Appendix I, meaning that they are judged to be threatened with extinction, so international trade in their products is prohibited. This is (more or less) based on the Red Listing of fin whales internationally as Vulnerable. Were that status to change, their CITES listing may well change in response.
Japan left the IWC at the end of 2018 and so is no longer bound by IWC regulations. There’s nothing stopping Japan from doing this under IWC rules. What about CITES? Japan has a reservation to the listing of fin whales, as do Iceland and Norway. So these nations are not bound by CITES provisions regarding fin whales, and are free to trade in their products. That’s why Hvalur hf., the Icelandic whaling company, has exported fin whale meat to Japan from the almost 1000 fin whales they’ve killed over the past 15 years.
So, if the only way to regulate whaling internationally is under some gentlefolks’ non-binding agreements, how did commercial whaling almost disappear? Whalers wiped out almost all populations of large whales, which played an important role. There wasn’t much left to hunt. But previously, the threat of US sanctions was also a factor. Under the Pelly Amendment of the US Fishermen's Protective Act, the Secretary of Commerce and/or the Secretary of the Interior, are required to let the President know if “nationals of a foreign country, directly or indirectly, are engaging in trade or taking which diminishes the effectiveness of any international program for endangered or threatened species.” This is supposedly an obligation, and it’s also meant to lead to a ban on importation of fisheries and wildlife products from that country. Needless to say, despite Japanese nationals obviously diminishing the effectiveness of the functioning of both the IWC and CITES, Japan has not been certified. Geopolitics trumps marine conservation.
There was rejoicing back in early 2019 when Japan appeared to be giving up on pelagic whaling. But Japan leaving the IWC was never “good news for whales,” as stated at the time by Patrick Ramage of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Japanese whalers now get to ignore IWC-based rules on how many whales can be killed, where they can be killed, and who observes that the killing takes place in the manner that is claimed—something that has always been a problem with whaling.
There is nothing to stop Japanese whalers returning to much larger-scale commercial whaling. They are on the cusp of their comprehensive victory over the conservation movement.
Correction: An earlier version of this piece misstated the date of the Japanese Fisheries Agency's June announcement.
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