Senators From Both Parties Want Trump to Explain His Inspectors General Purge

The president’s purge happened even though Congress had passed legislation in 2022 to insulate the government watchdogs.

Trump talks to reporters while signing executive orders.

Evan Vucci/AP

President Donald Trump’s snap firing of more than a dozen inspectors general without advance notice is testing lawmakers in Congress, who in recent years went out of their way to try to insulate the watchdogs from the whims of the executive branch.

The firings, which were effective immediately on Friday, ranged from the Department of Defense to the Environmental Protection Agency to the Small Business Administration. And senators from both parties were clearly taken aback.

“The actions over the weekend are concerning,” Sen. Raphael Warnock said on Monday. “The whole point of an IG is to provide an independent voice to be a bulwark against corruption and abuse and waste. It’s ironic that the very folks talking about government waste would cripple our ability to track it.”