The IRS wasn't ready for tax season, either

The IRS will hire 10,000 new workers over the next year; Russia might use cluster munitions and Syrian soldiers in the war in Ukraine. 

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes.

The IRS prepares to tackle a massive backlog

Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

• The Internal Revenue Service announced Thursday that it would hire 10,000 employees to help clear a backlog of more than 20 million requests and forms from previous years. About 5,000 of those new workers are supposed to be hired in the coming months, and the remaining half over the next year. [The Hill / Tobias Burns]
• The pandemic exacerbated major delays in processing over the past two years; on top of years of shrinking budgets and staff shortages, the agency was tasked with distributing stimulus funds to Americans over the past two years as well. In addition to the hiring surge, the agency will receive $12.6 billion in new funding through the omnibus bill Congress passed this week. [NYT / Alan Rappeport]
• The agency outlined a new plan to tackle the backlog, including hiring contractors and creating a 700-person “surge team” to process tax returns, which the agency said will “close millions of cases each month.” There will also be new automated tools to deal with user errors on returns and other user issues. [Treasury Department]
• The IRS employee base has remained the same size since 1970, despite the fact that the tax code has become more complicated over the decades and the US population has boomed. Despite the cash injection and hiring surge, overcoming the current backlog will continue to be a serious hurdle. [AP / Fatima Hussein]
• The changes might not affect much for the current filing season, though, since there is still a training curve for new IRS employees. “If you hire somebody tomorrow, maybe by summer they’ll be up and operational,” National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins said Thursday. [CNBC / Kate Dore]

Russia recruits Syrian soldiers and uses cluster bombs

• The United Nations’ human rights office says there are credible reports of cluster munitions being used in population centers in Ukraine by Russian forces. Russia is not party to a 2008 convention banning the use of cluster munitions, which disperse other, smaller explosives on detonation. [Reuters]
• Russia has previously denied the allegations, which if true could be considered a war crime. While cluster munitions do have legitimate uses in combat, using them in densely populated urban areas can have lasting calamitous effects. [WSJ / Ana Rivas, Roque Ruiz, and Taylor Umlauf]
• Syria’s military is recruiting troops to go fight for Russia, promising a salary of up to $3,000 per month. Up to 16,000 recruits from the Middle East will reportedly head to Donbas to boost the Russian military campaign there. [Guardian / Martin Chulov]
• On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the surge, and recruitment efforts have already started, according to Syrian activists. The Russian military has played a key role in supporting Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and perpetuating a devastating, decade-long war in the country. [AP / Zeina Karam]

The BJP, the right-wing Hindu nationalist party of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, held control of Uttar Pradesh — the nation’s most populous state — in Thursday’s state elections. [NYT / Karan Deep Singh and Mujib Mashal]

• The Biden administration on Friday took further steps to isolate Russia’s economy, suspending normal trade relations and banning the import of products like seafood, vodka, and diamonds from Russia. [Reuters / Steve Holland and Susan Heavey]
• ISIS has confirmed the death of former leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi in a US raid last month, and named his successor — Abu Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. [Guardian]
• Two young Yemeni American women have been released from Houthi captivity, in a US-Saudi joint operation that occurred earlier this year. [Al Jazeera]

What’s a three-letter word for a long distance?

Solve today's new Vox crossword puzzle, and stay tuned for more puzzles coming out Monday through Saturday.

“The Hindutva appeal that the BJP has been creating for the last seven years, this is really now come to stay.”

[Political analyst Arati Jerath, remarking on the BJP's victory in Uttar Pradesh Thursday]

Dylan Matthews and Jerusalem Demsas are joined by Nick Buttrick (@NickButtrick), a psychologist at Princeton, to talk about interstate mobility in the US (or the lack thereof). They talk about why it is so hard to move; why some of those reasons, Jerusalem argues, are arbitrary; and what an immobile population means for American culture. [Spotify]

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