E. Tammy Kim, Freelance Journalist Profile

Articles

A Weird Tax Season at the I.R.S.

1 week ago | newyorker.com | E. Tammy Kim

It’s Tax Day, again. Our columnist goes inside the short-staffed I.R.S. to investigate its employees’ struggles—and the precarious future of the agency. Plus:• Revisiting the epicenter of the COVID pandemic• Trump eyes a minerals deal with the Democratic Republic of the CongoE. Tammy KimKim writes about politics, labor, and the federal government.
The Plight of the Taxman

1 week ago | newyorker.com | E. Tammy Kim

The I.R.S. office in Philadelphia is situated in a grand, Art Deco-style federal building across from Thirtieth Street Station, along the Schuylkill River. Before President Donald Trump started his second term, the office employed around five thousand workers. Mike swiped through security, bought a coffee at the snack shop, and took the elevator up to his floor of padded cubicles.
“I Am Seeing My Community of Researchers Decimated”

2 weeks ago | newyorker.com | E. Tammy Kim

A few days into Donald Trump’s second term, Emily Williams, a public-health professor at the University of Washington, e-mailed a program officer at the National Institutes of Health, a division of the Health and Human Services Department. “I wanted to touch base with you in light of several recent Federal Executive Orders,” she wrote.
A Win for Democracy in South Korea

2 weeks ago | newyorker.com | E. Tammy Kim

South Korea’s Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of the country’s President, removing him from office. E. Tammy Kim, who covered Yoon Suk-yeol’s brief declaration of martial law, in December, and the protests that followed, reflects on the challenges to democracy in Korea and the United States. Also in today’s newsletter:• Susan B. Glasser on how Trump melted the global economyE. Tammy KimKim writes about politics, the federal government, and the Koreas.
The Fired Student-Debt Relievers

3 weeks ago | newyorker.com | E. Tammy Kim

On March 3rd, when Linda McMahon was sworn in to lead the Department of Education, she lauded its “momentous” and “historic final mission”: self-destruction. About a week later, she notified employees of a large-scale “reduction in force.” (President Donald Trump had instructed her to “do a great job and put yourself out of a job.”) Politico published an org chart that tracked the scope of the firings. Across seventeen pages, many divisions and subdivisions were shaded blood-red.
The Government’s Rock Librarian

1 month ago | newyorker.com | E. Tammy Kim

Last September, Mary and her partner moved from Oregon to Colorado by car. On the way, they camped in Idaho and took a detour through Yellowstone National Park. They passed bison grazing on the side of the road, saw Old Faithful shoot into the sky, and, when it snowed, took refuge in an R.V. and baked a frozen pizza. Mary’s love of nature, kindled in the back yard of her childhood home, had inspired her to become a scientist.
Killing the Military’s Consumer Watchdog

1 month ago | businessandamerica.com | E. Tammy Kim

In 2013, he got a job as an attorney-investigator at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency that monitors and investigates banks, payday lenders, debt collectors, and other businesses. The C.F.P.B. was established in 2010, under the Dodd-Frank Act, which sought to prevent the kinds of mortgage scams and unregulated investments that had led to the Great Recession. “My specialty was delinquent-loan services, people struggling to get mortgage modifications,” Scott said.
Killing the Military’s Consumer Watchdog

1 month ago | newyorker.com | E. Tammy Kim

Scott grew up in Baltimore, in the nineteen-eighties and nineties, “thinking that the government was an honorable place to work.” His grandfathers were Westinghouse engineers who conducted state-funded research. His parents were public-school music teachers. “Kids used to make fun of me for carrying a violin,” he told me. In college, he joined the R.O.T.C. and later entered the Air Force. He met his wife, a nuclear missileer, at their shared duty station in California.
Inside the DOGE Threat to Social Security

1 month ago | newyorker.com | E. Tammy Kim

When the claims representative, whom I’ll call Steven, sat down at his computer around 7:15 A.M. last week, he had already been awake for an hour and a half. The morning routine for him and his family is best described as “fend for yourself,” he said. That day, he waited for his older son to shower before taking his turn; neither he nor his wife had time for breakfast.
A Pakistani-American’s DOGE Nightmare

1 month ago | businessandamerica.com | E. Tammy Kim

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