SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
inspectors general
Rebalancing Checks and Balances: How to Curb Executive Abuse
President Trump has conclusively demonstrated that the executive branch cannot be trusted to police itself in following the law. Congress must act to prevent future overreach.
Apr 25, 2025
In his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump has moved aggressively to expand the authority of the executive branch, thereby upending our traditional system of checks and balances among the three branches of government. Reforming this system while he still holds office will be impossible, but he will eventually move on, and Congress should be planning now for changes to the system of shared governance to limit outsize executive authority and prevent future autocratic abuses.
Although President Trump has pushed the envelope further than most could have imagined possible, his abuse of power is reminiscent of the Nixon administration. After the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon, Congress took steps, such as the Anti-Impoundment Act, to curb presidential excesses. Following the second Trump administration, an even more fundamental restructuring may be in order.
One thrust of Trump’s second term has been a concerted effort to sideline the legal referees charged with checking abuses. Nearly a score of inspectors generals charged with addressing fraud and abuse have been summarily dismissed without cause. The Office of Government Ethics has been decapitated. The head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel charged with enforcement of civil service laws, such as whistleblower protection, has been removed.
America did not intend to elect a dictator.
The net result is that violations of laws and ethics go unchecked because independent oversight has been neutralized. To prevent the recurrence of future lawless regimes, Congress should reinstitute some of the checks Mr. Trump has shredded but in a way that insulates them from unilateral executive reversal. Congress needs to strengthen the institutional guardrails against executive violations of ethical standards and for protection of federal employees from illegal actions and enforceable standards for scientific integrity.
One step would be a statute relocating inspectors general (IGs) within the legislative branch. IGs do not perform an inherently executive function as they lack authority to implement their recommendations. Congress should appoint fixed-term IGs and team them with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), another legislative body, to keep this strengthened watchdog function beyond executive obstruction.
In this restructuring, the independent IGs could also conduct scientific integrity reviews to resolve challenges to the accuracy of scientific and technical agency information. This would put control of scientific and technical data and analyses beyond the unilateral control of the very bureaucracies responsible for creating them and thereby prevent them from peddling disinformation. Moreover, uniform procedures would facilitate the use of expert scientists from other agencies, universities, and other institutions to serve as review panels.
Similarly, institutions charged with enforcing civil service protections, such as the Office of Special Counsel and the Office of Government Ethics, should be moved into the legislative branch, as well, to prevent them from executive nullification.
Most fundamentally, the executive should not be able to control the judges who decide on disputes the executive branch has with its employees, contractors, and others. Basic fairness requires that these referees be impartial and not under the direct control of one party in the disagreement.
These referee positions are also not inherently executive in nature. For example, under the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984, Congress designated its GAO to serve as an independent and impartial forum for the resolution of disputes concerning the awards of federal contracts. Similarly, investigations into and reviews of employment abuses and related disputes could be handled by statutorily relocated Offices of Special Counsel and Government Ethics.
Significantly, one of the more insidious recent Trump initiatives is asserting his authority to summarily remove administrative law judges (ALJs) who preside over hearings regarding administrative or legal disputes between federal agencies and affected parties. The prospect of removal at will undoubtedly pressures ALJs to alter their decisions to favor the executive agencies.
Mr. Trump is also attempting (once again) to sideline the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the civil service court which hears legal disputes about the illegal termination or treatment of federal employees. During his first term, President Trump shuttered MSPB by refusing to appoint any persons to fill MSPB vacancies. The three-member MSPB soon lost a quorum to decided cases and entered the Biden administration with a backlog of undecided appeals of more than 3,700 cases.
In his current term, Trump is trying the same approach, seeking to remove one of the two remaining MSPB members midway in her five-year term. As a result, the MSPB has once again been shuttered and may not reopen for years,
To enforce the basic rule of law, Congress should move the cadres of administrative law judges and the MSPB to the judicial branch so that the basic fairness of these decision-makers is safeguarded and they are shielded from further executive interference.
While President Trump may claim that he is implementing the will of the public, a recent Wall Street Journal poll found broad bipartisan support for limiting Trump’s unilateral executive authority. America did not intend to elect a dictator.
Yet, the principal takeaway from events of the past few months is that President Trump has conclusively demonstrated that the executive branch cannot be trusted to police itself in following the law. To prevent future presidents from assuming the same authoritarian posture as Trump, Congress must act decisively to fundamentally rebalance our system of checks and balances.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Let's Be Very Clear: The Real Fraud Is DOGE
The Musk-led effort is neither a money-saving nor fraud-finding operation—it's an ideologically driven assault by far-right libertarians who seek to destroy a functioning government for their own greedy ends.
Mar 03, 2025
Donald Trump and Elon Musk keep claiming that their scorched-earth approach to remaking the federal government is made necessary by the prevalence of fraud and waste. Musk’s DOGE attack-squad tabulates its progress on a Wall of Receipts that currently purports to have saved Uncle Sam $65 billion.
That number appears to have been plucked out of thin air. The savings for the 2,300 individual contracts listed on the site add up to only $9.6 billion, and even that amount is shaky. For example, the single biggest savings, $1.9 billion, is attached to a Treasury Department contract that is reported to have ended during the Biden Administration.
DOGE gives no details of any fraud it may have found in the contracts. That is not surprising, since it is impossible to have done a careful examination of that many contracts in such a short amount of time.
Large numbers of the contracts are linked to agencies the Trump Administration is in the process of dismantling. USAID accounts for 246 contracts with total purported savings of $4.2 billion. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has 404 listings with savings of $109 million. The Education Department, reported to be headed for the chopping block, has 119 contracts with supposed savings of $659 million.
What we see in DOGE is instead the illusion of an attack on corruption that serves as a smokescreen for the Trump Administration’s scheme to dismantle large portions of the federal government.
It seems clear DOGE targeted those contracts because of the agency involved, not any evidence of misconduct. Among the remaining 769 contracts, there are many that seem to be targeted for ideological reasons. They include numerous awards whose descriptions refer to now-taboo areas such as DEI or environmental justice.
There are more than 100 listings for subscriptions, especially for expensive services such as Politico, Bloomberg Law, and Lexis Nexis. Those may not always be worth the cost, but there is nothing corrupt about the need for an agency to have good access to information.
Then there are listings for contracts that have not gone into effect. The second biggest saving amount, $318 million, is attached to an Office of Personnel Management pre-award. How can there be fraud when there is no contractor yet?
DOGE’s list also contains numerous entries with obvious errors. These include instances in which there are two links pointing to different contract awards, making it unclear which one is meant to be included. For example, there is a $149 million savings connected both to a contractor called Advanced Automation Technologies Inc. (for three assistants) and to Airgas USA for refrigerated liquid gases.
By pointing to DOGE’s sloppy work, I do not mean to deny the existence of contract fraud. The problem is that Musk’s people, whether through ignorance or design, are looking in the wrong places. They seem to be ignoring the types of large contractors that have repeatedly been found to have cheated federal agencies.
The classic examples are the big weapons producers. As of now, DOGE lists only $8 million in savings from Defense Department contracts—and those are mainly from DEI awards and subscriptions. The same is true for the Department of Health and Human Services, even though healthcare is a major source of contractor fraud.
What gets forgotten in the claims about fraud coming from Trump and Musk is that the federal government already had a robust system for fighting contractor misconduct. Audits were done by agency inspectors general—who have now been fired by Trump—and prosecutions were launched by the Justice Department using the False Claims Act. Over the past decade, the DOJ has collected about $30 billion in fines and settlements.
That is serious fraud fighting. What we see in DOGE is instead the illusion of an attack on corruption that serves as a smokescreen for the Trump Administration’s scheme to dismantle large portions of the federal government. It remains to be seen how long they can keep up the charade.
This piece was originally published in the Dirt Diggers Digest newsletter.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'A Clear Violation': Eight Inspectors General Sue Trump Over Illegal Firings
"President Trump's attempt to eliminate a crucial and long-standing source of impartial, nonpartisan oversight of his administration is contrary to the rule of law."
Feb 12, 2025
Eight of at least 17 inspectors general recently fired by U.S. President Donald Trump jointly filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday in hopes of returning to their roles as watchdogs "ensuring the effective and efficient operation" of government agencies.
Inspectors general (IGs) do their jobs "by auditing and investigating their agencies' operations and personnel in order to detect and prevent waste, fraud, and abuse, and by making recommendations for improved agency operations," explains the complaint, filed in the District of Columbia.
"Over the years," the document notes, "IGs' nonpartisan work has saved American taxpayers billions of dollars; helped safeguard U.S. national security; stopped fraud (and helped to both recover the fruits of such fraud and put fraudsters in prison); helped to end mistreatment of some of the nation's most vulnerable citizens; and ensured that veterans, farmers, senior citizens, disaster victims, and other Americans receive the support and services to which they are entitled by law."
The complaint argues that "the purported firings violated unambiguous federal statutes—each enacted by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed into law by the president—to protect inspector generals from precisely this sort of interference with the discharge of their critical, non-partisan oversight duties."
The plaintiffs are:
- Phyllis K. Fong, Department of Agriculture;
- Robert P. Storch, Department of Defense;
- Sandra D. Bruce, Department of Education;
- Christi A. Grimm, Department of Health and Human Services;
- Larry D. Turner, Department of Labor;
- Cardell K. Richardson, Department of State; and
- Michael J. Missal, Department of Veterans Affairs; and
- Hannibal "Mike" Ware, Small Business Administration.
In addition to Trump, their complaint names as defendants the acting or Senate-confirmed leaders of each agency.
"President Trump is wrong to claim these actions were 'common' or 'standard.' To the contrary, since 1980, there has been a bipartisan consensus that it is improper for a new presidential administration to remove IGs en masse," the filing says. "President Trump's attempt to eliminate a crucial and long-standing source of impartial, nonpartisan oversight of his administration is contrary to the rule of law."
The fired federal workers are asking the district court to void their ousters, "so they remain the duly appointed IGs of their respective agencies, unless and until the president lawfully removes them" with a 30-day notice to Congress that details the reason for removal. In addition to getting their jobs back, they aim to block the named agency leaders, "or anyone working in concert with them, from impeding the lawful exercise of the duties of their offices."
Missal told multiple media outlets that their firings were "a clear violation of the law" and "the IGs are bringing this action for reinstatement so that they can go back to work fighting fraud, waste, and abuse on behalf of the American people."
The lawsuit came a day after nine civil society groups pressured the Senate to "act now to reaffirm its oversight role and demand full explanations from President Trump as to why each inspector general was removed, as mandated by law."
The IG firings are part of a broader effort by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, chair of the president's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to purge the federal workforce and slash spending.
As USA Todaynoted Wednesday:
The Justice Department and FBI told top officials who investigated Trump and the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, to resign or be fired.
Trump tried to fire the head of the Federal Elections Commission, but she refused to leave. Trump tried to fire the head of the Office of Government Ethics, but a federal judge temporarily reinstated Hampton Dellinger, who argued he was removed unlawfully, while the case is litigated.
Citing an unnamed source, the newspaper also reported that the White House on Tuesday night fired Paul K. Martin, inspector general at the U.S. Agency for International Development, after he "issued a
scathing report saying staff cuts and funding pauses at the agency put more than $489 million in food assistance around the world at risk of spoiling."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular