For ex, Social Security's IG has been silent on:

🧑‍💻DOGE access to SSA data
👶Suspending birth/death data from Maine, as political retaliation
💀Marking living immigrants dead in SSA data
☁️Moving everyone's sensitive data to an insecure cloud environment
🏛️Operational risks due to historical staff cuts

While it can take time to complete thorough & fair investigations, IGs can also do fast-track reviews when agencies face critical vulnerabilities or challenges — as the USAID IG did within less than three weeks of the Trump Administration’s assault on the agency.

But that's not happening.

Together, these actions have chilled oversight.

Few IGs have published investigations into allegations of illegal actions, self-dealing & mismanagement by the Trump Administration, despite extensive media reports & allegations of misconduct across many executive branch agencies.

The Admin has also thwarted the Government Accountability Office, Congress's watchdog.

After GAO found the Admin violated spending laws, the OMB director said GAO “shouldn’t exist.” OMB directed agencies not to “feel compelled to cooperate at all with GAO" and illegally hid budget data from them.

The Admin has also removed independent leadership at the Ofc of Special Counsel & Ofc of Government Ethics, deterring whistleblowing and checks on misconduct.

A Cabinet official holding 3 jobs was named acting head of both offices, which “functionally impaired" them, according to a federal judge.

The Trump Admin has also degraded IG capacity through staffing reductions & budget cuts.

For example, the SSA OIG lost 14% of its staff in the first six months of the Administration, the largest decline in that office’s history, as trained auditors and investigators were pushed out.

Last month, the Admin defunded the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), which supports IGs across the government.

This brought down CIGIE’s site, with 10s of thousands of IG reports on waste & fraud, & more than two dozen other IG sites w/whistleblower resources.

3 in 4 IG positions are now vacant. That's a big deal!

Their job is to investigate & report on:

💸Waste, fraud & abuse — including abuse of authority
⚖️Violations of the law, rules, or regs & other forms of misconduct
🏛️Mismanagement of agency operations
📣Allegations of whistleblower retaliation

In contrast, two weeks after the mass firing of IGs, Trump fired USAID’s Inspector General after his office released a report warning that the Admin “significantly impacted USAID’s capacity" for humanitarian assistance and left oversight of humanitarian aid “largely non-operational.”

There is compelling evidence that President Trump did not fire the IGs for cause, but instead in retaliation or to prevent unwanted investigations.

One of the few IGs Trump did *not* fire was at DHS--despite his being recommended for removal last year for abuse of power & misconduct.

In the Administration's first week, the President illegally removed, without cause, 15 of the 25 presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed inspectors general from their roles.

The mass firing of IGs was, according to a District Court judge, an “obvious” violation of the Inspector General Act.

Since Jan, the Trump Admin has evaded accountability through a series of unprecedented, irresponsible & often illegal steps — reversing long-standing bipartisan commitments to integrity & transparency.

This increases the risk of fraud & makes it hard to detect Administration wrongdoing.

My yoga teacher just recommended this!