Less that 10 days into his second administration, President Donald Trump has announced a wide variety of sweeping shake-ups of the federal government. The executive actions have come so quickly that it’s impossible to consider them all closely — clearly a deliberate strategy on the part of the president.
One move in particular, however, deserves special scrutiny — in part because it has triggered a bipartisan rebuke from the U.S. Senate. And that’s the firing of 18 inspectors general from departments all over the federal government.
IGs are the chief watchdogs within government agencies whose purpose is to ensure those agencies are following applicable law and spending resources efficiently. Specifically, they are meant to root out cases of waste, fraud and abuse — the three horsemen of government malpractice.
This makes them particularly important to any successful attempt to reform the federal bureaucracy. It also means that controlling the various offices of inspectors general gives a president significant leverage to force changes that align with his own priorities.
Therefore, they rightly have a distinctively independent status with the federal government: IGs need to be independent from the agencies they monitor, but also independent of other forces that would twist their work into a partisan or ideological crusade.
For this reason, and in response to seemingly arbitrary firings of IGs during the first Trump administration, on a bipartisan basis Congress amended the law controlling offices of the inspector general to require the president to notify Congress 30 days before firing an IG, including supplying evidence of poor performance or misconduct. This would include the legislative branch in the process, and force the executive to articulate a public reason for his actions.
One of the lead promoters of this reform was a Republican, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. On Tuesday, he joined with that committee’s ranking member, Dick Durbin of Illinois, in signing and releasing a letter to Mr. Trump demanding that he fulfill his obligation under the law. “IGs are critical to rooting out waste, fraud, abuse and misconduct within the Executive Branch bureaucracy, which you have publicly made clear you are also intent on doing,” the senators wrote.
IG offices perform their role best when they are independent. If Mr. Trump has evidence that the 18 fired were derelict in fulfilling their duties, he should present it. Otherwise, he should reinstate them.
It is possible that Mr. Trump’s action is meant, at least in part, to challenge the validity of the law that requires 30 days’ congressional notice, on the theory that it impinges on the executive’s constitutional authority over his own branch. It is possible that he will prevail at the Supreme Court, especially given the pro-executive-power inclinations of several members of the court, and that the case will significantly restrict Congress’s ability to monitor and to influence executive branch personnel decisions. This would further insulate the president from accountability for his or her management of the executive branch.
Even if the Supreme Court finds that the president has the authority to do this, he should not. Sacking inspectors general without a very good reason removes one of the most significant tools for intelligently reforming the federal bureaucracy, as well as removing officials whose importance Sens. Grassley and Durbin have made clear.
We urge Pennsylvania’s senators, Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Dave McCormick, to stand up for the independence of IG offices — and for the dignity of Congress, which passed this law and has the right and duty to raise hell if the president ignores it.
First Published: January 29, 2025, 10:30 a.m.