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Trump purges IG corps in Friday night massacre

The Washington Post reports tonight on Donald Trump's latest effort to make sure the government has nobody left who acts impartially—even in positions where being impartial is the whole point:

The White House late Friday fired the independent inspectors general of at least 12 major federal agencies in a purge that could clear the way for President Donald Trump to install loyalists in the crucial role of identifying fraud, waste and abuse in the government.

....Some of the government’s largest agencies were involved, including the Departments of Defense, State, Transportation, Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, and Energy. Most of those dismissed were Trump appointees from his first term, which stunned the group.

“It’s a widespread massacre,” said one of the fired inspectors general. “Whoever Trump puts in now will be viewed as loyalists, and that undermines the entire system.”

Inspectors general have wide ranging powers to investigate agencies for waste, fraud, and abuse. Trump's Friday night massacre makes their job under the new regime clear: investigate away, but not on anything that might embarrass Trump.

The New York Times says the number of fired IGs is now up to 17. Who knows how many more we'll discover before we've contacted all of them?

UPDATE: I suppose I should have mentioned that this is all illegal. Of course it was. It's how Trump rolls.

The law requires Trump to notify Congress 30 days before firing an IG. So he can do it, but he has to give notice. However, this only matters if Congress decides to care. What are the odds?

69 thoughts on “Trump purges IG corps in Friday night massacre

  1. Altoid

    Maybe the new IGs' jobs will be to investigate *past* WFA, ie during the Biden administration, and in particular to single out specific civil servants and persecute them? A position sometimes described as "commissars," in other words.

  2. Murc

    Who the hell decided to give the President this kind of unilateral power?

    For serious. The President is a functionary. The office exists largely to do the will of Congress, and has very few powers that don't ultimately flow from it. Even their position as Commander-in-Chief is dependent on Congress, as they require Congress to furnish them with armed forces TO command.

    Congress has always delegated a fair amount of power to the Executive Branch, because they don't have the time to run everything themselves, but it seems to me that they have delegated way, way too much power to the Presidency. Agency rulemaking is one thing; that requires a long period of time, under rules created and maintained by Congress, in an open and transparent manner. But stuff like "the President has unilateral and complete control over tariff policy because some guys in the 20s and then some guys in the 70s decided it was too hard to do it themselves, lets toss it to the White House?" Stuff like "oh yeah, Congress created Inspector General positions to keep watch over THEIR agencies that are implementing THEIR laws and THEIR policies, but the President can just staff it with whoever the hell, whenever the hell?"

    This is an absurd way of doing things. I guess it kinda-sorta worked when it was understood even incompetent, malicious Presidents would hew to certain limits, but we're clearly beyond that now.

    1. kenalovell

      Oh Murc, haven't you watched the national hysteria over President Trump's election win and inauguration? He's almost a dictator. The parallels with Germany 1934 are uncanny. He's immune from prosecution, Congress does whatever he tells it to, and judges like Aileen Cannon and James Ho can't wait to do his bidding. He's surrounded by a bunch of extremist aides determined to destroy longstanding norms and institutions.

      The only guardrails still standing - the only guardrails - are a Supreme Court with two nervous "centrist" justices and undemocratic Senate rules that Trump could end any time he felt like it.

      1. Marlowe

        Absolutely. And the people (I mean the non-MAGAts who ostensibly oppose Drumpf) who deny this drive me up a wall. Moreover ... wait a second, what's that smell? Is that smoke coming from the Capitol?

        1. SwamiRedux

          No, that' s not the smell of smoke. It's the smell of excrement from the quivering Congress members slithering around in their spineless bodies in mortal fear of the great Emperor.

      1. kkseattle

        A CEO answers to a board of directors.

        Trump has never been a CEO. He’s never answered to anyone. That’s why so many of his chaotic business schemes collapsed and why no one ever prevented him from engaging in scam after scam.

        No sane corporation in America would have allowed him to run their crappiest, least consequential division.

        His power is due solely to the hundreds of millions he inherited from his racist, fraudulent father.

    2. jte21

      "Who the hell decided to give the President this kind of unilateral power?"

      The Supreme Court. Oh, and the supine members of his own party in Congress who refuse to do anything about it. That was always a fatal loophole in the Constitution: what happens if one party gets control of all three branches of government and everyone agrees to let the executive become a dictatorship? I'm sure they assumed the American people would never tolerate such a scenario, but here we are.

      1. KenSchulz

        I think it was also assumed that each branch would jealousy guard its own prerogatives and powers; that loyalty to the institutions, the Constitution and one’s constituents would override loyalty to party (if indeed some Founders even envisioned the rapid rise of political parties).

  3. D_Ohrk_E1

    Didn't you say that talk claiming he would dismantle liberal democracy was hyperbole?

    But what really irritates me is the elected Democrat who warned about the convicted felon Trump's threats to liberal democracy only to flip on a dime following the election to treat his presence in the White House as normal, going to his inauguration, shaking his hand, etc. Your actions contribute to the diminishing of cred of the Democratic Party. Go listen to Charlamagne tha God.

    It's time for all of the elected Baby Boomers to retire, except Bernie and Warren of course. Y'all have become too tolerant of the intolerable.

    1. cmayo

      +1, although I do think it's important to demonstrate that one believes in the peaceful transfer of power (they could be out there making statements though...).

      Also, anybody taking bets on whether Muskrat's meme "department" is going to take over the IG duties?

    2. akapneogy

      But what really irritates me ......

      I think the elected Democrat was making a distinction between the process and personalities. If he didn't do that he would drag himself down to Trump's level.

    3. jdubs

      This.

      The country mostly overlooked a direct, armed assault on the US democratic government. They will continue to overlook these indirect assaults. The dismantling will continue and you will continue to be lectured to stop overreacting.

      It's just the IG offices fer gawdssakes, relax!

    4. Joseph Harbin

      Democrats in office have no power to legislate. Their votes have no impact on what Congress does. They have no authority to investigate the Executive or hold Trump accountable.

      But they are not entirely powerless. As elected officials, their words matter. It's their duty at this time to raise their voices and rally the public in opposition to what's happening. Silence is complicity. They need to be vocal and persistent.

      Sanders (not a boomer) and Warren have a role to play but their reach is limited. This needs to be an all-hands-on-deck effort. It will take courage but people need to hear the truth.

      And don't make this about boomers. This is not about generations. It's about a fascist movement that has taken over our government. The rest of us need to unite.

    5. KenSchulz

      Biden is an institutionalist; there’s an argument to be made for that — that the institutions have held for over two centuries, and that an ignorant incompetent like TFM won’t prevail against them. I’m no longer sure of this; even if democracy is saved here, MAGA is doing considerable damage. “Gegen die Dummheit kämpfen selbst die Götter vergebens”. Nevertheless the opposition needs to show up in response to every excess. The center-left and left must be prepared for a long struggle; the right has been at this for decades.

  4. akapneogy

    In addition to the purging of IGs, I understand that a motion to grant Trump a third term has been introduced in the House. The natives are getting restless.

    1. Anandakos

      How can the House "grant" Trump a third term? Yes, I do believe that if Republicans won the House election in 2028, elected Trump speaker, and they put up a pair of sacrificial lambs who would both resign immediately, Trump could serve another term. But that is, as they say, a VERY narrow "path to power".

      First, it assumes that there would be two people of sufficient stature to inveigle "moderates" to vote for them who would then both agree to step down. Either one might get a Caesar complex after having been voted in and just say "Thanks a bunch, Former-President Trump!" And of course, it requires Republicans to win the House in that election.

      That's a whole lot of assumptions to make.

      But violating the crystal clear language of the Twenty-Second Amendment forbidding anyone from being elected to the Presidency twice makes any "resolution" or mere "law" passed by Congress and signed by His Majesty null and void. There are enough "swing states" which elect Democratic statewide officers pretty consistently (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsulvania and North Carolina) that their Secretaries of State could ally with the SecStates of the reliable Blue states in refusing to put him on the ballot to block Trump from getting 270 EV's.

      So Beaver away, Repugnants. There are plenty enough Blue states that a repeal of the Twenty-Second Amendment is DOA, so the only way back for the Pumpkin is that the two people who would have to resign would both probably have to be his children.

      1. FrankM

        So you imagine they're eager to violate the "crystal clear language" of the 14th Amendment, but they'll respect the 22nd? It's still four years away, so it's not a high priority, yet. But by 2027 the movement will be in full swing. I can't imagine why anyone would think DJT would just leave office at the end of this term.

              1. lawnorder

                The MAGAts just aren't as enthusiastic about Vance as about Trump, which means Vance would have considerably less influence on Republican Congresspeople, many of whom are not as crazy as their leader but are afraid of being primaried. In short, I don't think Vance could do nearly as much damage.

        1. Anandakos

          The Fourteenth is not "crystal clear" in the way you think it is.

          I assume you are referring to Section Three which would bar Trump from any Federal office had he been convicted of "insurrection or rebellion against the same" [referring to "The Constitution of the United States"].

          He has not so been convicted. Yes, he was indicted for crimes which might be construed as "insurrection", but note that he was not indicted for that self-same crime.

          In any case, he ran out the clock and, with a surprising degree of foresight placed a thoroughly incompetent toady as the Federal Judge overseeing his hometown, both of which are indeed miscarriages of justice.

          But they are also "inconvenient realities" which render your argument null and void.

          Would you prefer a country in which a zealous Republican prosecutor in an extremely partisan locality could get ham-sandwich indictments against prominent national Democratic politicians, thereby barring them from national office?

          Believe me, the Republicans would do it if they could.

          1. Solarpup

            The 14th Amendment says nothing about being "convicted" of insurrection, it says "engaged" in insurrection. Constitutional scholars have argued that it is as self-enforcing as having to "be" 35 to be President. Part of that argument is that the text allows Congress, by a 2/3 vote, to remove the impediment, but says nothing about Congress having to enforce the impediment.

            The Supreme Court essentially neutered the Amendment, and has virtually guaranteed that it will never be applied to a Presidential candidate, regardless of the circumstances.

          2. KenSchulz

            The 14th actually does not require indictment or conviction; it merely bars from office anyone who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the U.S., without stating an authority for determining this. Neither does Article II state who shall determine that a candidate meets the age, citizenship and residency requirements. The Supreme Court, in Trump v. Anderson ruled that only Congress has the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment through legislation.
            Curiously, in other cases, SCOTUS upheld state actions barring or removing Presidential candidates from ballots (Jill Stein in Nevada, RFK, Jr. in New York) for violations of state requirements not contained in the U.S. Constitution.

          3. FrankM

            You assume incorrectly. I was actually referring to Section 1.

            Also, now that I reread it, someone should try to enforce Section 2 on states with voter suppression laws.

            1. KenSchulz

              Yes, after writing my own response to Anandakos, I re-read your comment and realized you were likely referring to birthright citizenship.

      2. lawnorder

        The motion in the House is a motion to amend the 22nd amendment. Somebody introduces one of them every time a president is reelected. I remember it for Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama (not Nixon, and I was very young when Eisenhower's term ended so I don't remember if it was tried for him.) So far, none has passed the House, much less the Senate and three-quarters of state legislatures.

  5. rick_jones

    Most of those dismissed were Trump appointees from his first term, which stunned the group.

    So Biden considered them sufficiently impartial to not seek to replace them?

      1. Josef

        It is. And it proves just how corrupt Trump is. Heard on the radio Trump complaining how bad the economy is despite nearly everyone else saying how good it is. Same lies from 2016. The guy is a pathological liar.

        1. kkseattle

          He’s also shrieking hysterically about how poorly Mexico and Canada treat us — when he was the (apparently incompetent) president who bragged endlessly about the revamped NAFTA agreement that he negotiated.

          The interior of Trump’s skull is a roiling stew of mental illness.

    1. Jasper_in_Boston

      Does he need Congress's permission, or is there merely a duty to give them thirty days' notice? Because if it's the latter, all that will happen is the firings will be delayed by a month. Big whup.

      1. KenSchulz

        Sure, the outcome will be the same, but every loss in court by TFM helps the Resistance. Of course the Cult will just see it as more persecution of the Great Leader, but they are a lost cause.

        1. Jasper_in_Boston

          I hope there's a legal fund for these folks. I can't imagine many of them are in a position to sue the administration to delay a pink slip by 30 days.

    2. jdubs

      Making an enemy of an administration that values pain and suffering is dangerous if you are the only one standing up and pushing back. Easy to ask others to do, harder to be the one that makes the decision to put themselves in harms way.

  6. Pingback: Dave's linkblog

  7. Austin

    Lawlessness. The voters voted for this, whether they knew it or not… or couldn’t be bothered to vote at all. The voters deserve to get everything they voted for or acquiesced to by not voting. Good and hard, until they learn Republicans are not on their side. (Unfortunately, a critical mass of voters may not learn this before Republicans manage to end democracy.)

    1. Josef

      Trump is completly unleashed. Or should I say unhinged. It needs to be said that for not knowing what project 2025 is, he seems to be following it.

    2. Salamander

      Well, you might think. But you've also got to realize that the Republican Party has sewed up the infotainment (formerly known as "news") media for well over 50 years. Bad things will happen ... but they were caused by JOE BIDEN! Or some other DEMOCRATS!

      Who will contradict the voices of the Post, the Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, and for the faithful, Fox? Or perhaps more importantly, X and Facebook?

      People will get it "good and hard", all right. But they'll blame the wrong guys. And this technique has worked for Republicans for 50 plus years.

  8. Josef

    When you elect a vain, narcasistic pathological liar to the POTUS, you'll get this behavior and far worse. The Dems and independents need to step up. I'd say Republicans too, but there's no such thing. Not anymore. It's the party of Trump.

  9. SwamiRedux

    But, but, he has a mandate from the American people, as evidenced by the largest victory ever! The people voted for this!

    Right?

  10. rick_jones

    As Jasper asks, this thirty days notice - does Congress actually have authority to block the firings or just that they have to be told? And does Congress (Senate?) approve the replacements?

  11. J. Frank Parnell

    Tim Miller of the Bulwark came up with the most appropriate if disgusting metaphor when he described Trump’s plethora of executive orders as “political bukakke”.

    1. emjayay

      I have no idea how someone like Tim (and his Bulwark buddies too) could ever have been Republicans. Tim is gay, smart, informed, funny, and real. He's getting on CNN panels etc. now.

      The Bulwark YT videos/podcasts are generally really good.

  12. Art Eclectic

    When we get out of this, and we will, the Dems need to follow this exact playbook and ram through national health care and reproductive freedom.

    1. Coby Beck

      Herein lies (one of) the fundamental problem(s) that has allowed politics in the US to get to where it is today. The Democratic Party establishment does not want national healthcare or reductions in Pentagon budgets or taxes on Wall Street or a truly effective social safety net or a living minimum wage etc etc.

        1. Coby Beck

          When the people never get what they want from their leaders they become nihilistic or apathetic. But the biggest factor explaining how someone like DT gets to the pinacle of power is poor education and corporate class propaganda

          Also: not my president.

      1. Art Eclectic

        Then it's time for the Democrat Establishment to go. The party needs to stand for something other than investors (including themselves) picking the pockets of the people.

  13. Traveller

    Well, there is Pushback: (hopefully with litigation of over a year and up to the USSC) {let me see if I can embed some Bluesky}

    https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wdfzyjds7iiymn3lpzzrnam6/post/3lgll7cz33s2h?ref_src=embed&ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fballoon-juice.com%252F

    Traveller

    Let me try this...this 2nd link is very, very good. Please carefully note 3rd Paragraph!!!!

    https://static.politico.com/b3/3e/5baf92224503a3cfa8edb460a1c2/cigie-letter-to-white-house-1-24-2025.pdf

Comments are closed.