Coming out of a hard-fought election, pundits predicted that President Obama would return to office with a new bout of confidence, followed by success in the political arena. In recent weeks, however, President Obama’s second term has been everything but forgiving. The President has dealt with an avalanche of controversies, ranging from the discovery that the Internal Revenue Service had been unfairly scrutinizing applications for tax exemption from right-wing groups to the seizure of journalists’ phone records by the Justice Department. This unexpected turn of events has marked the start of President Obama’s second term with more tumult than expected.

At the heart of these scandals was the discovery that an IRS group based in Cincinnati, Ohio ,was scrutinizing applications for tax exemptions from groups that were part of the right-wing Tea Party. The scandal, which is currently under investigation by the Justice Department for breaches of criminal and civil rights, was committed by IRS Group 7822, whose manager directed the group to be more aware of the increasing number of Tea Party groups applying for tax exemptions that might be involved in upcoming elections. According to a report published in The New York Times on May 18, IRS agents working for Group 7822 were responsible for applications for tax exemption coming from charities, hospitals, and the like. Although politics were rarely a topic of discussion amongst Group 7822, the agents searched for words alluding to patriotism and/or the constitution extensively as a criteria for organizations that might not be eligible for tax exemption. In a press conference shortly after the allegations were made against the IRS, President Obama made his outrage clear. Upon the discovery of Group 7822’s activity during President Obama’s first term, Republican adversaries were quick to lay blame on the President. In an effort to combat the negative publicity surrounding the Obama administration, Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to the President, appeared on numerous Sunday news programs. On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Mr. Pfeiffer combatted assertions from the host Bob Schieffer that the Obama Administration was not taking the issues seriously, remarking that “there was inexcusable conduct that needs to be fixed.” On almost all of the television programs, Mr. Pfeiffer criticized the Republicans for politicizing the issue given the IRS’s largely independent bureaucratic operations and the fact that this served as yet another distraction from day-to-day business for the people of America. In the wake of the scandal, Acting IRS chief Steven Miller was forced to step down, though not before being seen before a Congressional hearing in which he apologized for the mistakes made by the IRS while denying any criminal activity or wrongdoing on his part.

Atop the scandal surrounding the IRS, a lesser-known but equally concerning scandal arose surrounding a Justice Department terror probe which involved the seizure of telephone records belonging to a number of journalists. On May 13, news agencies around the United States reported that the Justice Department seized phone records from Associated Press employees. Rather than subpoena the telephone records, the Justice Department seized the records, informing news agencies that records had been taken afterward. Most shocking is the fact that the Justice Department did not stop at office telephone records, but also seized cellular and home telephone records. Although the Justice Department did not elaborate on reasons for the seizure, the Associated Press related the timeframe to an information leak from the Central Intelligence Agency regarding a Yemen-based terror plot. The Associated Press called the seizure a “serious interference with A.P.’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.” Despite the anger that the seizure invoked, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. cited the events leading up to the seizure as amongst “the top two or three most serious leaks that I’ve ever seen,” and claimed that the leak put the American people at risk. Nonetheless, Gary Pruitt, the head of the A.P., rebutted that the scope and manner in which the investigation was conducted went far beyond the government’s right to conduct investigations regarding such leaks.

Combined, these two scandals serve as only another speed bump in President Obama’s return to office for the second term of his presidency. After coming back to office with what pundits predicted would be a new wave of confidence and success, the tide has turned on President Obama such that partisan gridlock and controversies regarding government’s power seem to have returned the Obama Administration to the status quo prior to the election. Although the 2013 election seems to have just ended, the current state of affairs promise to make the 2014 midterm elections difficult for the Obama Administration and the Democratic party.