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Trump Administration “Watchdog Wipeout” Carries Out Project 2025 Plan to Remove Independent Inspectors General, Likely Costing Taxpayers Millions

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Implementing directives from Project 2025 and defying Congress and the law, late Friday night the Trump Administration fired at least 14 Inspectors General (IGs)—government watchdogs whose job it is to root out fraud, waste, and government corruption.

According to news reports, IGs in some of the government’s largest agencies were fired by email: the departments of Defense, State, Transportation, Labor, Health and Human Service, Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Energy, Commerce and Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency, Small Business Administration, and Social Security Administration.

As revealed in a Public Citizen analysis, two Project 2025 leaders in “Presidential Administration Academy” video trainings said last year that the incoming president should replace the independent IGs working to oversee federal operations and detect and prevent fraud, waste, abuse, and misconduct throughout 74 federal programs.  The Project 2025 leaders said that the president should install his “own IGs” so that he has “control of the people that work within the government.”

The report’s author and Public Citizen Democracy Advocate Jon Golinger called the Trump Administration’s actions last night, which follow the Project 2025 playbook, “a watchdog wipeout cooked up by corporate lobbyists that knocks down the walls that keep corruption from running rampant.”

“Replacing nonpartisan, independent Inspectors General with loyal political cronies opens the door to more government fraud, waste, and abuse costing taxpayers millions,” said Golinger. “The whole point of Inspectors General is to have objective government watchdogs who are there to independently identify problems and propose solutions without regard to political pressure. Wiping out independent IGs just makes the government less efficient and effective.”

In response to previous threats to the independence of Inspectors General, Congress passed a suite of bipartisan reforms in late 2022 in the “Securing Inspector General Independence Act of 2022,” which strengthened presidential notification requirements to Congress when removing an Inspector General.  According to news reports, Congress had no notice of last night’s IG firings.  Last week, a bipartisan Senate Inspector General Caucus was formed to protect independent IGs.

Lisa Gilbert, Co-President of Public Citizen, said that summarily dismissing Inspectors General whose job it is to stop the waste of taxpayer dollars and improve government efficiency flies in the face of the premise of President Trump and Elon Musk’s “DOGE” plan. 

“This rips the mask off DOGE and exposes it as a disguise to drive a pro-corporate, anti-regulatory agenda and an ideologically driven social service cuts program,” said Gilbert.  “Inspectors General were a bipartisan reform created in the wake of Watergate to stop rampant government corruption. Instead, under cover of darkness, the Trump Administration is sneakily rolling back reforms adopted to save taxpayer money and protect the public.”