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Trump Eradicates Critical Oversight as he Fires More Inspectors General than All Other US Presidents Combined
President Trump has removed more inspectors general (IGs) than all other presidents combined, leaving a gaping hole for accountability and ethics concerns according to a new Public Citizen report titled Undoing Accountability.
In several cases, Trump’s removal of IGs has been closely tied to the issuance of OIG reports that have been critical of specific actions by the Trump administration, have close ties to his administration, or have a history of unethical or potentially illegal conduct. In September 2025, the Trump administration also attempted to completely shut-down the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), the nation’s federal IG coordinating council.
In most cases, Trump has replaced IGs he has fired with those whose independence is questionable, have had close ties to his administration or have a history of unethical or potentially illegal conduct. Public Citizen Researcher Douglas Pasternak, who authored the report, said inspectors general play a fundamental and independent role in holding government officials accountable to the public.
“President Trump has taken a wrecking ball to the inspector general community since he stepped into office last year, firing more IGs than all other previous presidents combined for no cause at all,” said Pasternak. “Trump’s efforts have also led to a dramatic decrease in the number of IG staff that help root out waste, fraud, and abuse, in some offices by as much as 30-percent. President Trump’s actions will encourage corruption, discourage aggressive oversight, and harm the American taxpayer. We should all be paying close attention, and demand that the IG community, which has always been independent and nonpartisan, not be turned into a political weapon of the White House.”
Read the full report here.
Public Citizen Co-President Lisa Gilbert and Researcher Douglas Pasternak are both available for interviews.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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New Leader of College GOP Group is ‘Avowed and Overt Supporter’ of White Nationalist Nick Fuentes
A recent poll of young right-wingers also showed that 54% of Republican men under 50 deny the Holocaust, while around a third of young Republicans self-identify as racist.
Mar 11, 2026
The new political leader of the College Republicans of America is an "avowed and overt supporter" of one of the nation's most infamous white nationalists, Nick Fuentes, according to a disturbing report compiled by the group Right Wing Watch.
The College Republicans of America (CRA) was created in 2023 amid an ugly split with the more mainstream College Republican National Committee (CRNC), which it has accused of becoming overly bureaucratic and poorly managed. It describes its mission to "replace the CRNC and to aid the GOP in cultivating the next generation of Republican activists, staffers, and leaders."
While CRA is newer and less directly embedded within the national Republican Party structure, it claims to be "America’s largest national College Republican organization,” with more than 300 active chapters at schools around the country—roughly four times that of competing campus GOP groups, according to the organization.
Last week, the group announced that it had chosen a new political director, Kai Schwemmer. As Kyle Mantyla, a senior fellow at Right Wing Watch parent group People For the American Way, explained:
Schwemmer is an overt 'groyper,' which is the term used by followers of Hitler-loving racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, homophobic, Christian nationalist, fascist, white nationalist, Nick Fuentes.
Schwemmer, who goes by the nickname "Kai Clips," has his own show on Fuentes' invitation-only streaming platform Cozy.TV, and was featured as a special guest at Fuentes' 2022 "America First Political Action Conference" in Orlando, which was held as a more explicitly white nationalist counter to the Turning Point USA conference.
That same year, Schwemmer described himself as someone "affiliated with America First," Fuentes's political movement. He also appeared in a 2022 pro-Fuentes documentary titled "The Most Canceled Man in America."
In a clip of that documentary, which Right Wing Watch posted to social media, Schwemmer explained that an episode of Fuentes' nightly program, titled "Demographics or Destiny," introduced him to the conservative movement and "woke me up on immigration."
Fuentes, who once described himself as "just like Hitler," has called for the mass deportation of nonwhite immigrants and has said he favors a "whites-only immigration policy" to sustain "white demographics."
Schwemmer said Fuentes' shows are "a little bit controversial" and "hyperbolic," but "obviously humorous." He added that Fuentes is "deeply politically engaging," as "behind every joke is some commentary."
Ben Lorber, an extremism researcher for Political Research Associates, explained in a social media post on Tuesday that "Schwemmer was in Fuentes' inner circle in 2021, and since then has strategically downplayed his support to avoid controversy."
He pointed out that Schwemmer still has a long history of questionable online activity, including posts and messages glorifying the Unabomber and boasting about his meeting with the antisemitic author E. Michael Jones. He has also shared jokes insulting Jewish people and mocking the Holocaust.
During the second presidency of Donald Trump, especially, the radicalization of young right-wingers has been brought to the forefront, as leaked group chats from college Republicans in several states—including New York, Kansas, Arizona, and Vermont have revealed members trafficking in overt racism, antisemitism, misogyny, and other forms of vile bigotry that often veered into calls for violence and genocide against minority groups.
Just last week, The Floridian reported that the secretary of the Miami-Dade County Republican Party was involved in a WhatsApp group chat nicknamed after what one member described as “Nazi heaven.”
Participants in the group, which included members of the head of the Florida International University Turning Point USA chapter and the then-recruitment chair of FIU's college Republicans, "used variations of the n-word more than 400 times, regularly described women as 'whores,' used slurs to talk about Jewish and gay people, and mused about Hitler’s politics," according to later reporting by The Miami Herald.
Recent polling of young right-wingers conducted by the conservative Manhattan Institute has suggested that these sorts of views are increasingly becoming common.
About 31% of Republicans under the age of 50 said they themselves express racist views, while 25% said they express antisemitic views. Just 4% of those over 50 said they expressed each of these views in the December 2025 survey.
More than a third of all Republicans who answered the survey, 37%, said they share Fuentes' view that the Holocaust was "greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe," with a majority of men under 50, 54%, expressing this view.
Schwemmer, who appeared as a guest of Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) at last month's State of the Union address has said he does not use the same sorts of extremist, often overtly genocidal, rhetoric that Fuentes does because he has "more authentic political aspirations" and does not want to create "angles of attack" for his opponents.
Schwemmer has not denounced the views espoused by Fuentes and says there is "absolutely a place and a value behind making those kinds of jokes, saying those kinds of words, trying to push the envelope socially and trying to remove the lens of political correctness from our lives."
"This seems to be Schwemmer's role in the movement," Mantyla said. "Putting a moderate face on America First's racist, antisemitic, and radically authoritarian agenda."
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Spain Withdraws Ambassador to Israel Over Unprovoked War on Iran and Gaza Assault
"Every country with a single ounce of decency should do the same," said one academic.
Mar 11, 2026
Doubling down on its commitment to saying, "No to war" as Israel and the US bombard Iran in a widening conflict of choice that has also included Israeli attacks on Lebanon, the Spanish government on Wednesday formally withdrew its ambassador to Israel, Ana María Sálomon Pérez.
“At the proposal of the minister for foreign affairs, the European Union, and cooperation, and following deliberation by the Council of Ministers at its meeting on March 10, 2026, I hereby order the termination of Ms. Ana María Sálomon Pérez’s appointment as ambassador of Spain to the state of Israel,” a communication from Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in the official state gazette read Wednesday morning.
The Foreign Ministry told Reuters that the Spanish Embassy in Tel Aviv will be led by a charge d'affaires.
"Every country with a single ounce of decency should do the same," said UK-based researcher Philip Proudfoot.
The decision to terminate the appointment of Sálomon Pérez comes more than a week after Sánchez denounced the United States' and Israel's assault on Iran as "unjustified, dangerous, and outside international law," and said the countries would be barred from using Spanish military bases to launch attacks on Iran.
Spain has also been outspoken in its condemnation of Israel's US-backed war on Gaza, which began in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
Last September, the prime minister announced an arms embargo on Israel, noting that its attacks on Gaza—which have now killed more than 75,000 Palestinians, according to peer-reviewed studies—has been described as a "genocide" by experts, including the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.
Sánchez also announced Spain would formally recognize Palestinian statehood in May 2024, angering Israel and prompting the country to recall its ambassador to Spain.
Last week, Sánchez gave a 10-minute address saying he was not intimidated by President Donald Trump's threat to impose a trade embargo on Spain in retaliation for its refusal to allow the US and Israel use its military bases. He reiterated that Spain's view on Iran is, "No to war."
"Spain stands with the founding principles of the European Union. It stands with the charter of the United Nations. It stands with international law and therefore with peace and peaceful coexistence between countries," said the prime minister.
In an interview with El Diario on Tuesday, Sánchez called on other European countries to "raise the rules-based international order and the defense of renewed multilateralism."
The war against Iran "has been a war unilaterally driven by two nations," he said. "We are consistent with the foreign policy we have maintained during these almost eight years of government. We will not resolve the situation of instability in the Middle East with such flagrant illegality."
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Trump's War of Choice in Iran Has Cost US Taxpayers Over $10 Billion in Just 10 Days
The estimated spending on the Iran war in just over a week amounts to over 1% of the 2026 US defense budget.
Mar 11, 2026
The cost of President Donald Trump's unprovoked and unconstitutional war with Iran has already cost US taxpayers billions of dollars, and will cost billions more if the conflict drags on.
Anadolu Ajansı on Monday published an estimate that the Iran war cost $10.35 billion over its first 10 days, or more than 1% of the entire 2026 US defense budget.
The US spent an estimated $779 million in the war's first 24 hours alone, and Anadolu noted that daily costs have gone up since then.
Specifically, Anadolu found that as "the campaign has expanded, operational spending has climbed into the billions, based on estimated flight hours, maintenance costs, and munitions expenditures derived from the US Department of Defense’s 2025 and 2026 budget requests."
In the days since Anadolu published its estimate, the estimated cost of the war has soared past $11 billion, according to a tracker that assumes the assault is costing the US $1 billion per day, based on preliminary figures from the Pentagon.
The Washington Post reported on Monday that the US Department of Defense estimated that it burned through $5.6 billion worth of munitions in the initial strikes on Iran, raising questions about whether the war has seriously eroded US military readiness.
Due to the conflict's rapidly escalating costs, the Trump administration is expected to ask US Congress for a $50 billion supplemental funding bill to keep the war going.
Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, and Damian Murphy, senior vice president of national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress, released a memo on Monday explaining why Congress should not agree to any White House requests for supplemental funding.
First, the memo notes that polling shows that the Iran war is unprecedentedly unpopular, being the first US war ever to have a net negative approval rating at the outset of the conflict.
"Lawmakers in Congress have the upper hand both morally and politically in opposing the war in Iran," the memo states. "The public does not want to be drawn into another forever war that threatens American lives, kills children, destabilizes the Middle East, and whose costs could easily balloon to hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars."
The memo then argues that the massive increase in defense spending contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was passed by Republicans in last year and signed into law by Trump, should be more than enough to cover the cost of replacing munitions.
"The 'Big Beautiful Bill' provided an additional $153 billion for defense just eight months ago," the memo explains, "on top of the annual defense budget of around $900 billion. The annual defense appropriations bill, also approved only a few months ago, grants the White House the legal authority and flexibility to move around billions of dollars within the Department of Defense to achieve their goals, known as transfer authority."
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