In January, 2025, the administration fired 17 Inspectors General , the independent “watchdogs’ who serve in an oversight capacity, investigating allegations of waste, fraud and abuse in government agencies. The agencies affected were the Departments of Defense, State, Transportation, Energy, Housing and Urban Development and Veterans Affairs.
This action, which is consistent with Trump’s efforts to remove “guardrails” that check executive branch power, was taken on Friday evening, January 24, 2025. Trump has made these kinds of high profile changes to the government on Friday evenings (called a “Friday night purge”), as it’s assumed actions will receive less attention from the press and the public.
Regardless, these firings were illegal, as he failed to provide the required 30-days notice to Congress and failed to provide “substantive rationale”, including detailed and case-specific reasons” for these firings (these employees were fired via email stating “changing priorities”). Trump had also issued an executive order that reclassified civil service employees, stripping them of their employment protections.
Trump has also fired several members of independent boards and commissions, including:
- Two Democratic members of the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB)
- Two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
- A member of the Federal Labor Relations Authority and the head of the Office of Special Counsel
- Three members of he Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
- Three members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
These actions, some of which are ongoing and facing legal challenges, represent a broad effort to assert greater presidential control over agencies traditionally designed to operate with a degree of independence from direct political influence. This, of course, removes the independent oversight provided by these boards and commissions, making it more difficult to detect graft and corruption in the government.