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.”
Tom Cotton made his name in Washington as an outspoken critic of a Democratic president’s deal to check Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Now, with a president of his own party angling toward a similarly structured agreement, the Arkansas Republican is so far using a softer voice.
Cotton, the No. 3 Senate Republican and Intelligence Committee chair, is not alone among GOP defense hawks in finding himself in an awkward position more than a decade after lambasting President Barack Obama’s Iran deal.
But the combination of his prior ferocity toward the Iranian regime and his current leadership responsibilities have put him into an especially tight spot as President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance sell their 14-point “memorandum of understanding” to skeptical Republicans.
Cotton moved toward critiquing that framework in a Fox News interview Thursday, crediting Trump for “making Iran weaker than it’s been in decades” while airing concerns that “certain aspects of this deal are a step in the wrong direction.”
“We need to make sure that we don’t squander the leverage that we’ve built” against Iran, he said.
That is a far cry from the rhetoric Cotton deployed as a freshman senator in 2015, when Obama was moving in concert with other global powers to force Iran to curb its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and other economic favors.
Cotton led a brash effort to undermine the deal — most notably by organizing a public letter signed by 46 other GOP senators to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, then the supreme leader of Iran, warning that “anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement” that could be nixed by a future administration.
The letter enraged the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, but it was prescient.
After he was elected in 2016, Trump withdrew from the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, setting the stage for his second-term military campaign against Iran that he is now seeking to end by trading curbs on Iran’s nuclear program for sanctions relief and other economic favors.
If that was the only jam Cotton was facing from Trump this week, it would be plenty. But the discomfiting Iran situation has been compounded by the president’s recent moves to upend Cotton’s careful negotiations aimed at extending a key surveillance program for three years.
After Trump blew up that deal by appointing a political ally to a top intelligence position, Cotton moved quickly to fast-track a permanent replacement through his committee and rekindle the surveillance deal — only to watch Trump blow things up once again.
Majority Leader John Thune, like most Senate Republicans, had nothing but praise this week for the “great job” Cotton was doing amid the tumult over the expired spy law and the director of national intelligence drama.
“He’s a really strong chair on the committee. And he had it all teed up and ready to go,” Thune said in an interview. “Now it’s just … back to the drawing board.”
But Cotton’s moves amid the back-and-forth — particularly his decision to publicly announce a hearing would move forward Wednesday for DNI nominee Jay Clayton even after Trump publicly declared he was “cancelling” it — attracted attention on the right.
Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon voiced blistering criticism of Cotton, calling him “out of control” and suggesting he “should be turfed out” of his safe seat over trying to proceed with the hearing. Cotton is up for reelection and expected to win easily.
Cotton backtracked, postponing the hearing while noting that it was “regrettable” that Trump directed Clayton not to appear. The White House didn’t respond to questions about Cotton.
Thune defended Cotton, saying he was “operating within his rights and prerogatives” as chair in insisting, however briefly, that the hearing would go on.
Unlike most GOP senators, Cotton is unusually tight-lipped around the Capitol, enforcing a blanket “no comment” policy in the hallways this week as reporters tried several times to ask him about everything from the surveillance program to Clayton to Iran. His office did not respond to an interview request.
Cotton has plenty of supporters within the Senate Republican conference, where he is well-liked and won a contested race for the No. 3 leadership spot. And his quick rise through the party has generated speculation that he could one day become Senate GOP leader or run for president.
It’s not lost on Republicans that even the straight-talking 49-year-old, who was under consideration for a Trump Cabinet position, has found himself crosswise with the administration. That speaks to the larger issues the Senate GOP is facing as the president’s rash decisions complicate their carefully laid plans, they say.
“Senator Cotton is surely, surely a big fan and supporter of the president,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said. But, she added, “he’s got a committee to run.”
Cotton is also hardly alone among his GOP colleagues in voicing concerns about the memorandum of understanding signed by Iran and the United States.
Though there are now more senators with MAGA-aligned “America First” foreign policy instincts than a decade ago, Cotton is part of a still-prominent pack of national security hawks that include the likes of Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who recruited Cotton to run in 2014.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who chairs the Armed Services Committee, went even further than Cotton in a Thursday statement that said the agreement is “completely out of step with the president’s goals.” And Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of Cotton’s committee, predicted that the agreement would only be an “intermission” in Iran’s decadeslong conflict with the United States and Israel.
“They get $300 billion — it’s not going to be for constructive or useful purposes,” Cornyn said, a reference to a “reconstruction fund” included in the agreement.
Cotton aired concerns about multiple financial concessions included in the Trump-signed memorandum, including a new allowance for Iran to conduct oil sales that he estimated would provide as much as $6 billion a month
“That money … we know is not going to build new hospitals or day cares,” Cotton said Thursday on KTHV, a Little Rock TV station. “It’s going to go to replenish their drone stockpiles, their missiles, to support terrorists.”
NEW YORK — With just five days to go until the primary election in New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a stark warning to members of Congress who believe “incumbency is a substitute for action”: Watch out.
“People often ask me what I think of the state of the Democratic Party,” Mamdani said to the crowd at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn as he boosted his endorsed congressional candidates. “This slate here today is our answer. The Democratic Party must change.”
The democratic socialist framed Tuesday’s election as much more than what that means for New York, though. In recounting how people also ask him about the 2028 presidential election, he put it bluntly: “It starts now. It starts on Tuesday.”
“For far too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline instead of delivering material change for working people,” Mamdani said. “That old way of thinking will lose on Tuesday. And frankly, it will lose in South Carolina and New Hampshire. It will fall short of 270 electoral votes, because the party of the past will not be what leads us into the future.”
Mamdani, joined by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, urged his supporters to show up for his endorsed candidates “the way you showed up for me.” They include former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who’s challenging two-term Rep. Dan Goldman; state Assemblymember Claire Valdez, who’s vying for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat; and community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, who’s trying to unseat five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Mamdani’s endorsed slate of legislative candidates were at the rally, too.
The rally featured standard stump speeches from the candidates, highlighting the need to support working class New Yorkers and immigrants. Speakers called out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel group that has loomed over many of these primaries — despite no evident spending from its independent expenditure arm. Sanders also emphasized his call to ban super PACs, which have reshaped primaries across the city.
Taking place just hours after the massive ticker-tape parade celebrating the Knicks’ historic championship, there were also Knicks references galore.
“I hate to break it to you, but OG Anunoby is not here to save the day,” said Mamdani, who was wearing a Knicks jersey under his suit. “The only hands we can count on are ours.”
Sanders, who is wildly popular in New York, previously endorsed Valdez and Lander. Both Valdez and Avila Chevalier are members of the Democratic Socialists of America and are backed by the city chapter in their bids. Sanders had not officially endorsed Avila Chevalier prior to the rally.
“Why are progressives and socialist candidates winning elections all across this country?” Sanders asked. “The answer in my view is not complicated. The working class of America understands that our current economic system is rigged, that it is designed to benefit the wealthy and the powerful.”
Polling has shown Lander with a lead over Goldman, and a tight race for Velázquez’s seat. Public polling is scarce in the Espaillat race, but recent internal surveys suggest Avila Chevalier is posing a real challenge to the incumbent. Mamdani endorsed her just weeks ago, much later than Lander and Valdez, but his engagement in the race has significantly elevated its profile.
“Six months ago, they told us this race was over before it started,” Avila Chevalier said at the rally. “They told us Adriano was untouchable, that he was an institution, that you don’t run against someone like him and win. That this district was his, and that we should wait our turn. And they said it with such confidence, like the outcome had already been written. Look around. Look at what we’ve built.”
Mamdani’s decision to get involved in congressional races is stress-testing how the new mayor navigates relations with powerful, well-respected party figures — many of whom he’s on the opposite side of.
Mamdani’s endorsement is expected to be a significant asset for his picks; he had dominant performances across these districts in last year’s mayoral primary. And that shine doesn’t seem to have dulled. Recent polling has shown that Mamdani has high approval ratings.
Goldman did not support Mamdani during last year’s mayoral primary or the general election, as Lander has often pointed out. Espaillat backed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary, but supported Mamdani in the general election. Valdez’s opponents, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and city Council Member Julie Won, both supported Mamdani in the primary.
The mayor has been active on the trail for his congressional candidates of choice in the closing stretch of the campaign. And he touted them all in an advertisement that ran during the first game of the Knicks’ finals run.
Still, Lander has tried to keep some distance. When asked at a recent press conference why he would appear in that ad with Avila Chevalier, who attended a pro-Palestinian rally the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in 2023 — the same rally Lander said he left the DSA over — he said it was an “opportunity to show New Yorkers that politics can be a team sport.” He also clarified that he has not endorsed candidates in any other congressional primaries.
Avila Chevalier told reporters that she went to that rally to “stand against” Israel engaging in “a response that is often disproportionate and creates a greater loss of life.” She added that she has “condemned Hamas” and does “not believe that celebrating the loss of anybody’s life is OK.”
Kings Theatre isn’t located in any of the districts these congressional hopefuls are trying to represent — though it neighbors the seats that Lander and Valdez have their eyes on.
It’s especially far from Espaillat’s district, which includes parts of upper Manhattan and the Bronx.
While handing out campaign literature to people walking out of the subway in Hamilton Heights, Blue Light News asked Espaillat if he had thoughts about Avila Chevalier appearing at the rally.
“I’m rallying right here in my district with my constituents — not in Brooklyn,” he replied.
Jason Beeferman contributed to this report.
Retirement groups are calling on Congress to investigate Meta over a wave of social media scams targeting older Americans.
In a letter sent Thursday to House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) and ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the groups alleged Meta has been slow to take down fraudulent ads, leaving seniors vulnerable to financial loss. The letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, was signed by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Postal Workers Union Retirees and the American Federation of Teachers, among others.
“Fraudulent Medicare ads have proliferated on Meta platforms and too many seniors are getting scammed while Meta profits,” said Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans. “We are calling on Congress to investigate how these scams are allowed to spread, what Meta knew about them, and why stronger protections are not in place. Seniors should not be left vulnerable while scammers and tech companies cash in.”
The letter’s demands follow a report published last month by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit advocacy group, which alleged that Meta has profited by leaving up fraudulent ads, many of which target Medicare recipients.
“Scammers are determined criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “We aggressively fight scams on and off our platforms because they’re not good for us or the people and businesses that rely on our services and for years we’ve been one of law enforcement’s strongest partners in the fight against this type of online crime — identifying criminals, disrupting their crimes and helping bring them to justice.”
Stone pointed to several examples of Meta’s efforts to combat scams on its platform, including a recent collaboration with U.S. and Thai law enforcement to disrupt online scams.
It’s not the first time Meta has faced scrutiny over the scams: Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) urged the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities Exchange Commission to open an investigation into the company in November after Reuters reported that Meta in internal documents projected 10 percent of its 2024 revenue would come from fraudulent ads. And in February, a group of bipartisan lawmakers pressed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over its plans to prevent and combat fraud on its platforms.
Reps. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) and Lou Correa (D-Calif.) also introduced bipartisan legislation earlier this year to combat predatory scam ads.
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