President Donald Trump’s snap firing of more than a dozen inspectors general without advance notice is testing lawmakers in Congress, who in recent years went out of their way to try to insulate the watchdogs from the whims of the executive branch.
The firings, which were effective immediately on Friday, ranged from the Department of Defense to the Environmental Protection Agency to the Small Business Administration. And senators from both parties were clearly taken aback.
“The actions over the weekend are concerning,” Sen. Raphael Warnock said on Monday. “The whole point of an IG is to provide an independent voice to be a bulwark against corruption and abuse and waste. It’s ironic that the very folks talking about government waste would cripple our ability to track it.”
A 2022 bipartisan law requires the president to provide “substantive rationale” to Congress at least 30 days prior to removing an inspector general. The law was intended to strengthen previous legislation by closing some loopholes that had made it easier to fire inspectors at will.
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“It’s incredibly important that these agencies have independent watchdogs on the job, and I fear that he intends to replace them with loyalists to him that aren’t being independent watchdogs,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin told NOTUS.
Baldwin said she supports “a bipartisan effort” that would look into the reasons for the firings, adding that a bipartisan group of senators is working on a letter related to the matter. Several of the offices she mentioned were involved did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
How Congress responds to Trump may be a bellwether for other legislation that the Biden administration and congressional Democrats championed in the last four years to Trump-proof some aspects of the federal government.
Sen. Gary Peters, one of the Democrats who sponsored the 2022 inspectors general bill, said that Trump clearly “violated the law” and that his actions were “terrible.” He told reporters to “stay tuned” for challenges on the firings.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Saturday, Trump argued incorrectly to reporters that the firings were “a very common thing to do.”
It wasn’t just Democrats who were closely watching the fallout from the firings.
In a statement on Saturday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has long championed government whistleblowers, said, “There may be a good reason” for the firings, but he wanted to know more.
“I’d like further explanation from President Trump. Regardless, the 30 day detailed notice of removal that the law demands was not provided to Congress,” the statement said.
Other Republican senators NOTUS spoke to on Monday weren’t convinced that the inspectors general should have been fired.
“I think some people are probably visiting with him, asking him to consider all the ramifications,” Sen. Roger Wicker, who co-sponsored the law in 2022, told NOTUS. “I think there’ll be some further consideration about that action.”
Sen. Josh Hawley told reporters that he hadn’t looked into which inspectors general were fired, but he’s hopeful that Trump will name their replacements soon.
“The position of IG is quite important,” he said. “And I’ve worked with a lot of whistleblowers, [and] a lot of IGs. So let me see who he fired. Maybe they should have been fired.”
The inspectors general dismissals aren’t the first time Trump has taken such action, which prompted Congress to pass the law in 2022. He fired two in 2020, stating that he “no longer” had the “fullest confidence” in them to fulfill their roles, prompting a strongly worded letter from Grassley asking why the president had not notified Congress. Then came the 2022 law, which added language requiring that the president provide more substantive reasons for firing an inspector general and reiterating the 30-day window within which the president must alert Congress of the firing.
“I think it’s just a further reflection of his complete disregard for democratic norms and the rule of law,” Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet said. “What’s tragic about it is he knows that and doesn’t care.”
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Torrence Banks and Helen Huiskes are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.
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