Congress
Fears are growing that Trump could push out dozens of government watchdogs
Two in-house investigators at U.S. intelligence agencies recently quit their jobs. There’s growing fear in Washington that they could be the start of an exodus — or a purge — of government watchdogs.
A wave of departures by inspectors general would give President-elect Donald Trump the opportunity to nominate or appoint people of his choice to the watchdog posts — leaving dozens of federal departments, agencies and offices subject to oversight by people who would owe their positions to Trump.
In the wake of Trump’s election, CIA Inspector General Robin Ashton and Intelligence Community Inspector General Thomas Monheim revealed they plan to leave government in the coming weeks. Neither cited Trump’s victory as a basis for the decision, but the timing of the announcements troubled some longtime advocates for IGs.
“I’m very disappointed that the two IGs have resigned,” said former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich. “My view is that when things get tough, IGs should not resign, but instead redouble their efforts to do their jobs. Doing a tough job in difficult circumstances is what they bargained for. I think preemptively resigning makes things too easy for the incoming administration to avoid oversight. To prematurely run for the exits, in my view, that is not the way to handle the responsibility.”
Trump frequently clashed in his first term with some IGs, who are responsible for investigating alleged misconduct by the government, and his team briefly floated a plan to call on all of them to resign, though Trump never did. This time around, Trump allies have urged the president-elect to clean house and remove from their positions all watchdogs appointed by other presidents, though it’s unclear if Trump will do so.
“I really hope that people that have a backbone don’t resign,” said Kathryn Newcomer, a professor of public policy at George Washington University and co-author of a book on IGs. “That’s very worrisome.”
Spokespeople for Ashton and Monheim did not respond directly to questions about whether Trump’s return played any role in their decisions to resign, which were first reported by the Project on Government Oversight. Both departing officials have spent decades in the federal government. But critics say the outgoing IGs should’ve announced their departures sooner and given the Biden administration the chance to nominate and confirm replacements.
Trump allies have called to replace all IGs
More than 70 inspectors general serve in posts at agencies across the federal government, tasked with ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse, and investigating alleged misconduct. They generate thousands of reports each year and claim to have identified hundreds of billions of dollars in potential savings.
Inspectors general “drive efficiency and effectiveness,” said Diana Shaw, a former acting IG at the State Department. “If you don’t have IGs, nobody is minding the store.”
Some Trump allies have urged the president-elect to install his own appointees in the watchdog posts — about half of which are subject to Senate confirmation. About 10 of the posts are currently filled by officials installed or confirmed during Trump’s first term. Another 10 are vacant.
People involved in drafting the conservative Heritage Foundation blueprint Project 2025 have advocated for wholesale replacement of inspectors general and suggested they could be viewed as part of the “deep state” Trump has crusaded against.
“In a new administration, would you rather have some fresh eyes on programs or Miss IG Debbie DC, who’s been around for half a decade, and is up to the same old stuff,” Heritage Oversight Project Director Mike Howell said in a training video obtained by ProPublica and Documented. “Fresh eyes, fresh administration, makes for better oversight, and, you know, better political management of the bureaucracy.”
But other conservative activists oppose a major overhaul of the IG ranks, arguing that many key revelations about waste and corruption in government have come from IG reports and that treating the jobs as typical political posts would undercut the credibility of their work.
“It seems more likely that there may be a demand for IG resignations or outright firings this time around, but if … going forward all IGs are merely political appointees, then what’s the purpose of having IGs? It’s a fig leaf at that point with no real independence,” said Jason Foster, founder of the whistleblower group Empower Oversight. “The value of IG objectivity would be destroyed, and their offices would just be a duplicate bureaucracy that should probably be replaced by better and more effective legislative branch-controlled oversight agencies.”
A spokesperson for the Trump transition team did not respond to questions about his plans for the inspectors general and whether he agrees with those calling for a broad purge.
While Trump’s election has led to concern among many federal government workers, particularly over his plans to dismantle civil service protections, the worries in the IG workforce are particularly acute.
“Everyone is just a nervous wreck,” said a staffer in one IG office, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Trump’s tense first-term relations with IGs
Trump has had an uneasy history with inspectors general from the outset of his first term. Days before Trump took office in 2017, a transition team staffer reached out to several IGs and said they could continue in their jobs temporarily while a search for replacements was underway. Talk of a wholesale replacement of IGs — which would buck longstanding precedent — caused some alarm on Capitol Hill, and Trump’s team quickly backed down, describing the action as an error by a junior aide.
“I’ve spoken with the general counsel at the White House on this topic,” House Oversight Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said at a February 2017 hearing with several inspectors general. “I think it is safe to say that that was a mistake. They wish it hadn’t happened. It is not their approach. It’s not their intention.”
During a span of six weeks in 2020, Trump ousted five inspectors general. He sacked Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s chief watchdog, after Atkinson referred to Congress a whistleblower complaint about Trump’s efforts to link Ukraine aid to an announcement of an investigation into the Biden family. Trump also removed an IG overseeing pandemic relief programs and another at the State Department.
“It was like an earthquake through the IG community,” Bromwich recalled. “People said, ‘Oh my God, why are we being focused on all of a sudden?’”
Trump and his allies have also signaled that he intends to be more insistent in his second term that his appointees and even rank-and-file government workers show loyalty to him and his administration.
Many in the IG community have their eyes on whether Trump moves to push out Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. He was nominated by President Barack Obama and served through the first Trump term and through Joe Biden’s presidency. Several of Horowitz’s reports have provided fodder for Trump’s complaints about sloppy surveillance practices, leaks to the media and signs of anti-Trump sentiment among some at the FBI.
But Trump and his allies have griped that Horowitz stopped short of concluding that political bias affected Trump-related investigations. The president-elect and GOP lawmakers have also faulted the DOJ IG for taking too long — sometimes years — to complete sensitive investigations.
The Grassley factor
One member of Congress has been viewed for decades as the patron saint of inspectors general on Capitol Hill: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). His voice could be critical to whether Trump winds up taking or ignoring some conservatives’ advice to wholesale oust IGs. In addition, several former aides to Grassley, such as former Judiciary Committee counsel and conservative firebrand Mike Davis, hold positions of influence in Trump’s orbit.
Grassley has repeatedly clashed with presidents of both parties when he has perceived them to be intruding on IGs’ independence. And he has called for case-by-case explanations when an inspector general is removed, something that might be difficult for Trump to offer in a government-wide purge. Legislation co-sponsored by Grassley and passed in 2022 requires the president to inform Congress of the “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons” before firing or removing an IG. The law also prevents Trump or any president from naming as an acting IG someone who isn’t already working as or for such a watchdog.
Asked Wednesday whether Trump should pursue a broad ouster of IGs, Grassley replied bluntly: “No. He should not.”
“I guess it’s the case of whether he believes in congressional oversight, because I work closely with all the inspector generals and I think I’ve got a good reputation for defending them. And I intend to defend them,” the Iowa Republican added.
When Trump lashed out at IGs during his first term, Grassley publicly urged him to ease up, arguing that they were actually advancing his agenda of accountability for the sprawling federal government.
“I encourage Pres Trump 2view IGs as helpers 2hold bureaucracy accountable+draining swamp,” Grassley wrote on X in 2020.
However, last week, Grassley sent every inspector general in the federal government ademand for information about sexual harassment settlements involving employees of the watchdog offices. The move seemed to raise the possibility he could be gathering data that Trump’s team could use to target specific IG offices.
A spokesperson for Grassley did not respond to a request for comment, but advocates for the IGs expressed hope that the long-serving senator will temper whatever plans Trump may have to upend the watchdog operations — some of which were first set up in the late 1970s.
“I know from personal experience that Sen. Grassley has been a strong proponent of IGs for forever,” Bromwich said. “I would think that he’s going to be consistent with the beliefs that he has advanced throughout his career, rather than bowing to the whims of Donald Trump and some of his people, he will fight to keep the IGs independent. … That will be telling, whether Senator Grassley exercises that influence.”
The bipartisan leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee are making changes to their big college sports overhaul in a bid to garner support from the nation’s two most powerful athletic conferences as they look to build Republican support ahead of a potential vote on the Senate floor.
Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the ranking member, made several concessions to the Big Ten and Southeastern Conferences in the latest draft of their Protect College Sports Act. They include protections against certain legal challenges and a new $20 million pool of funds that schools can use for retaining athletes, according to three people close to the negotiations.
It’s unclear whether the changes will be good enough to win over the two conferences. A senior Commerce Committee staffer asked the conferences to schedule a call with their general counsels and staff “ASAP” to discuss the text and gave them a 9 a.m. Wednesday deadline to decide whether they support the latest version of the bill, according to an email reviewed by Blue Light News.
Two lobbyists directly engaged on the bill said Tuesday that weeks of negotiations had not meaningfully addressed a litany of concerns the SEC and the Big Ten had with earlier versions of the bill.
The conferences demanded, for instance, that a provision allowing universities to jointly negotiate their media rights make clear that schools cannot be coerced into participating. The updated text includes a provision shielding schools who do not participate in media pooling from potential litigation, according to a copy of the draft obtained by Blue Light News.
The bill, however, leaves out another key demand of the conferences: a provision clarifying that postseason tournaments and contests would be excluded from media pooling.
It also retains a prohibition on conferences with over $700 million in revenue participating in mergers and acquisitions, which would impact both power conferences along with the Atlantic Coast Conference. That threshold was brought down from an earlier $1 billion limit, but the SEC and the Big Ten had hoped to see it stripped from the bill altogether.
The new text also includes a newly added section titled the “Ignite HBCUs Sports and Media Act.”
That section, which is still in flux, deals with “extraneous topics of broadband,” per the email sent to the conferences on Tuesday. The $20 million athlete retention pool also remains subject to change “as we discuss how to align the proper incentive for spending on women’s NIL,” according to the email.
Cruz remains determined to get the bill onto the floor before the Senate heads out of town for a scheduled recess next week. But time is running short, and he and Cantwell still need to win over wary senators on both sides of the aisle.
White House officials and House GOP leaders are increasingly frustrated with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, after they say he undermined a major veterans measure championed by Republicans, according to five people with direct knowledge of the matter.
The bill, which would expand benefits for tens of thousands of veterans, was abruptly pulled off the House floor earlier this month after a group of Republicans privately warned they would tank it. They were concerned they would end up being blamed for cutting benefits because of the way the bill proposed paying for the increase — and said that Collins’ VA hadn’t done enough to alleviate their worries.
“A self-inflicted loss at the hands of the VA secretary,” said one White House official after the vote.
The floor meltdown cost Republicans a legislative win just before the House departed for its summer recess — and scuttled a positive campaign issue ahead of the November elections. Johnson will now have to burn precious floor time in September if he wants to make another attempt.
And it’s just the latest move by Collins that has stoked backlash on Capitol Hill and inside the White House, after he irritated lawmakers by failing to give them advance warning about several high-profile changes, including staffing cuts and management reforms at the department.
Speaker Mike Johnson was so unhappy with the VA’s handling of the situation ahead of the veterans bill vote that he called the White House to press for a clarification from the VA about how it would change its rules to pay for the benefits expansion, according to three of the people, who, like others, were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive legislative dynamics.
Top Republicans involved said that the VA under Collins helped fuel opposition to the bill by issuing conflicting guidance about its own plans for veterans benefits. The VA ultimately issued a new statement to POLITICO just hours before the scheduled vote in an attempt to quell resistance. But it wasn’t enough.
Inside private meetings with GOP leaders ahead of the failed vote, key House Republicans said they had spoken with Collins about their concerns and he had at least in part agreed with them, according to three other people involved in the conversations.
Administration officials pushed back on the friction. White House assistant press secretary Olivia Wales said in a statement that Collins “is doing a great job and works tirelessly to deliver for our heroic veterans.”
VA press secretary Quinn Slaven said that officials have clearly outlined support for the measure in a statement of administration policy and in public statements. “Under the leadership of President [Donald] Trump, Secretary Collins is proud to work every day to make VA benefits better, faster and easier to use than ever before,” he said in a statement.
Senior House Republicans have relayed concerns to the White House about how both Collins and Don Bergin, the VA’s assistant secretary for congressional and legislative affairs, handled the matter.
Democrats and some veterans groups have strongly opposed the measure. Money for the expansion of aid for disabled veterans would be funded by cuts in future disability claims for tinnitus and sleep apnea cases, a rule change that has been planned since the Biden administration.
But officials from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans have attacked the plan as a dangerous precedent. Supporters, including House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair Mike Bost (R-Ill.), have argued the savings will be returned to the U.S. Treasury if not used for other programs.
In the lead-up to the vote, VA officials had suggested that they may not go ahead with the changes, jeopardizing about $13 billion over the next decade that was slated to pay for the measure. Just hours before the House vote was pulled, department officials clarified that the sleep apnea and tinnitus revisions will move ahead in coming months regardless of the bill’s fate.
But several GOP members still expressed concerns about the uncertainty surrounding the bill. And after a blowup between the speaker, his allies and the GOP holdouts in his ceremonial office just off the House floor, Johnson had to pull the bill from the floor.
The normally even-keeled Johnson, deeply frustrated after the failed vote, said he and Republican supporters of the measure were battling “misinformation” swirling about the legislation.
Senior Republicans were especially upset that Collins appeared to be working against them even after the VA had a seat at the table to craft the legislation.
House Republicans who spoke with Collins about the legislation said he never directly told them to vote against the bill, but he discussed their and his concerns about the legislation in a way they felt okay remaining opposed to it, according to the three other people involved in the conversations.
But anything less than 100 percent endorsement from Collins was seen as a major blow to the bill — which GOP leadership and White House officials struggled to get to the floor and whip for weeks.
It was just the latest move from Collins, a former chair of the House Judiciary Committee who helped defend Trump through his first impeachment, that has rankled Capitol Hill leaders and officials inside the White House.
His reorganization of the VA, including an initial mass layoff proposal for 80,000 more firings across a roughly 480,000-person department drew fierce opposition from bipartisan lawmakers on Capitol Hill earlier this year, including from the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who said he was blindsided by the move.
“We don’t need to be reading memos in the paper about 20 percent cut at the VA,” Graham said at the time.
Senate Veterans’ Affairs Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) also said at that time that while the massive department is “in need of reform,” efforts to downsize “must be done in a more responsible manner,” Moran, who had been in close contact with VA, Collins and White House staff about personnel issues for weeks, added that lawmakers “need information” and that the numbers need to be “justifiable.”
Collins has also triggered the anger of Republican appropriators on Capitol Hill — he agreed to testify before House appropriators in May only after lawmakers voted to withhold funding for the agency if he didn’t. A VA spokesperson at the time denied GOP lawmakers had to pressure Collins to appear.
Collins’ handling of the veterans’ bill has also shaken his relationship with some White House officials — who are tracking how many days a week Collins is in Washington versus his home state of Georgia, according to two of the people involved in the conversations.
A crucial committee vote on Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general could be postponed, Sen. John Cornyn said Tuesday, amid a struggle over changing a settlement agreement Blanche brokered between President Donald Trump and the IRS.
Cornyn (R-Texas) said a delay in the planned Senate Judiciary Committee vote Thursday is “being discussed but hopefully … won’t be necessary” as he pushes for ironclad modifications to the IRS settlement that created a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and immunized Trump from tax audits.
“If there’s not enough votes to confirm him, then Senator Grassley might decide to postpone it. But I don’t think that’s the No. 1 goal right now,” Cornyn said, referring to Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
Cornyn said he had discussed the idea of postponement with other senators but not directly with Grassley. A spokesperson for Grassley did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who has also been undecided on Blanche’s nomination, have significant leverage. Due to blanket Democratic opposition, it would take only one Republican “no” to effectively kill Blanche’s nomination.
Cornyn and his staff have been talking to the Justice Department about modifying the settlement, and the senator insists he wants the changes in writing.
“They know what they need to do,” Cornyn said Tuesday about DOJ. “They just don’t want to do it.”
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