WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has removed former U.S. Rep. Billy Long as IRS commissioner less than two months after his confirmation, a White House official said Friday.
It was not immediately clear why Long was dismissed. His quick exit makes him the shortest-tenured IRS commissioner confirmed by the Senate since the position was created in 1862.
Long said in a social media post that Trump had nominated him for an ambassadorship.
“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!” the former Missouri congressman wrote on X.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will serve as acting IRS commissioner, according to the White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Long’s ouster only compounds the turmoil at the nation’s tax collector, which has been beset by turnover since the beginning of Trump’s second term. The IRS shuffled through four acting leaders before Long was confirmed in June and has lost a quarter of its staff since the Department of Government Efficiency burrowed in in a self-stated mission to reduce waste, fraud and abuse.
In a message to IRS employees after he was confirmed, Long talked about his plans for his first few months in office, a milestone he did not reach.
"In my first 90 days I plan to ask you, my employee partners, to help me develop a new culture here,” Long wrote. “I’m big on culture, and I’m anxious to develop one that makes your lives and the taxpayers’ lives better.”
In many ways, he was an unusual pick for the role. While in Congress, where he served from 2011 to 2023, Long sponsored legislation to get rid of the IRS. A former auctioneer, Long had no background in tax administration.
The Senate confirmed Long on a 53-44 vote despite Democrats’ concerns about the Republican’s past work for a firm that pitched a fraud-ridden coronavirus pandemic-era tax break and about campaign contributions he received after Trump nominated him.
After leaving Congress to mount an unsuccessful 2022 bid for the U.S. Senate, Long worked with a firm that distributed the pandemic-era employee retention tax credit. That tax credit program was eventually shut down after then-IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel determined that it was fraudulent.
Democrats called for a criminal investigation into Long’s connections to other alleged tax credit loopholes. The lawmakers allege that firms connected to Long duped investors into spending millions of dollars to purchase fake tax credits.
The acting Ieaders who preceded Long in the role included one who resigned over a deal between the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security to share immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and another whose appointment led to a fight between former Trump adviser Elon Musk and Bessent.
Long's departure comes after the agency underwent a series of DOGE-related job cuts this year. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reports that the agency has been cut down from 103,000 workers in January to 77,000 workers in May 2025. Most of the reductions came from DOGE's deferred resignation program. The workforce reductions were part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal bureaucracy.
FILE - Rep. Billy Long, R-Mo., asks questions during hearing May 14, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP, File)
DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — Duke had just played with its best start-to-finish level of competitive fight in an opening month gone awry, only to end up with another loss to a top-flight opponent in No. 5 LSU.
Senior guard Ashlon Jackson was clinging to the idea that the struggles could pay off in the long term.
“We're in the mud right now,” Jackson said softly.
She might as well have been talking for the entire Atlantic Coast Conference in women's basketball.
The preseason ACC favorite Blue Devils are 3-6. The league has no top-10 teams in the AP Top 25 poll in a season for the first time in nearly a quarter-century. And it wrapped up a 13-3 loss in the ACC/SEC Challenge on Thursday night, including all three matchups involving its ranked teams in No. 11 North Carolina, No. 18 Notre Dame and No. 22 Louisville.
Of that trio, the Cardinals nearly upset No. 3 South Carolina, losing 79-77 at home.
“I know we have good players in our leagues, we have good teams,” Duke coach Kara Lawson said after Thursday night's 93-77 loss to LSU. “For (Duke), we haven't had the start that we've wanted. It's our job to change it.”
This isn't the position anyone expected for the ACC, which had a different team reach the Final Four in 2022, 2023 and 2024 while the Blue Devils reached last year's NCAA Elite Eight after winning their first ACC Tournament title since 2013. The league opened this year with five AP Top 25 teams, headlined by the North Carolina-based “Triangle” schools of Duke at No. 7, N.C. State at No. 9 and UNC at No. 11.
And the ACC had fielded at least one top-10 team in every AP Top 25 poll dating to December 2001, a run of 453 consecutive polls.
Yet that streak streak ended by mid-November, leaving the Tar Heels — who lost 79-64 at No. 2 Texas on Thursday night — as the league's highest-ranked team for three straight weeks from outside the top 10.
The Blue Devils opened with a loss to Baylor in Paris, followed shortly after by a loss to West Virginia in which the Mountaineers finished with just five players due to numerous ejections to knock the Blue Devils out of the AP poll. The Wolfpack, who lost Wednesday in overtime at No. 9 Oklahoma, fell out this week in a season that included a home loss to unranked Rhode Island.
“I feel like we're a better team than people think, I feel like our league's better,” UNC coach Courtney Banghart said before the Texas game. "You could say, 'Well there's a couple of results that don't show that.' ... I always say: `Let's see when it's all said and done, who's advanced (in the NCAAs), how many teams did you send to each round, and what that looks like.'
“As someone who has lived in the ACC now with these coaches and players, we'll be just fine. The league will be just fine.”
Maybe so. But the trajectory of the annual SEC tussle is heading in the wrong direction: from the teams splitting 14 games in 2023 to the SEC winning 10-6 last year and now this year.
“13-3 SEC? I'm glad we're one of the 13,” LSU coach Kim Mulkey said about the Duke win, adding later: “We didn't have to have an ACC Challenge to figure out how tough our league is.”
The Blue Devils' plight in Durham has stood out in particular among the ACC's opening-month hiccups.
They entered having lost three straight games, the past two coming in blowouts to No. 3 South Carolina and No. 4 UCLA. And they faced the unenviable test of slowing LSU's offense, which had scored 100+ points in each of its first eight games to set an NCAA record.
Duke started the game on a 14-1 run as LSU sputtered, only to see the Tigers began to kick into gear once they stopped committing turnovers. A 31-point second quarter helped push LSU into control, with LSU shooting 59.7% for the game, leading by 21 points and vocally celebrating through the final minutes on the Blue Devils' Cameron Indoor Stadium homecourt.
Now Duke heads to Virginia Tech on Sunday to open league play, a first step toward getting its season back on course.
“I think we can grow into a really good team," Lawson said. "That's what we're focused on doing. I haven't watched the other ACC teams to be able to tell you, but I would venture to say that a lot of them can grow into really good teams, too.”
Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP News mobile app). AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball
Louisville forward Anaya Hardy (9) attempts to block a shot-attempt by South Carolina center Madina Okot (11) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Louisville, Ky., Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley)
