President Trump summarily dismissed 17 agency inspectors general Friday night in a move that caught official Washington by surprise.

The inspectors general were dismissed via emails from the White House Presidential Personnel Office, with no notice sent to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who have pledged bipartisan support for the watchdogs, in advance of the firings, the person said. The emails gave no substantive explanation for the dismissals, with at least one citing “changing priorities” for the move, the person added.

A senior White House official confirmed to POLITICO that “some” inspectors general had been fired.

The known firings include the IGs of the departments of State, Agriculture, Interior, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Labor, and Defense, as well as the Small Business Administration, the US Energy Corporation, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The inspectors general are allegedly independent of the administration and are supposed to root out fraud, waste, abuse, and lawbreaking. The reality is much more checkered. 

I can only assume other agency’s Inspector Generals are as benign and toothless as the DOD’s. 👇👇 This is the most accurate and honest description of it you’ll find. https://t.co/8hiIu1NCXJ pic.twitter.com/9KQaoUyjK9

— Shoe (@samosaur) January 25, 2025

‼️‼️TRUMP FIRES 17 INSPECTORS GENERALS in a late-night purge punctuating the end of his first five days in office. @RealDonaldTrump dismissed 17 federal agency watchdogs. I've covered these IGs for years -- and trust me when I say, even though they are charged with ferreting out… pic.twitter.com/ILwBW2NRxY

— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) January 25, 2025

Without playing politics, you don't achieve the political profile necessary to get a presidential appointment. That political incentive means that an IG is a double-edged sword because their purported independence provides an incentive to curry favor with all parties. Michael Atkinson was the intelligence community inspector general who alerted Congress to the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s first impeachment. That action now looks more like part of a calculated political hit than a call to duty.

What makes the list so curious is that Sean O'Donnell, the EPA IG appointed by Trump's first term, was fired while the DOJ IG, Michael Horowitz, who never lifted a finger to reel in Merrick Garland's massive abuses of power, was retained.

But Friday’s dismissals befuddled and stunned the watchdog community, as many of those let go had done hard-hitting investigations of Biden administration operations.

"Befuddled and stunned" is the default position for most of them, but that's a different post.

For example, Michael Missal, the inspector general at the Veterans Affairs Department, oversaw multiple investigations of how the Biden administration handled the agency’s troubled effort to build a massive electronic health records system for veterans’ medical information. Among other conclusions, the reports showed that veterans had been put at risk as their prescriptions were lost in the system. The project has been paused for months.

Mark Greenblatt, a Trump appointee at the Interior Department who was fired Friday, released a lengthy investigation in 2021 concluding that when the U.S. Park Police led law enforcement officers into a crowd of mostly peaceful protesters outside Lafayette Square during the first Trump administration, they did so as part of a plan made days earlier to build a fence around the park to protect officers — not to facilitate the visit minutes later by the president to a nearby church.

...

Among those apparently spared Friday was Joseph V. Cuffari Jr., the embattled inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security. A Trump appointee, Cuffari was found in October by an independent panel of watchdogs to have misled the Senate during his nomination process and committed other misconduct during his five years in office.

Of course, people are unhappy.

The dismissals threatened to upend the traditional independence of the internal watchdogs, and critics of Mr. Trump reacted with alarm.

“Inspectors general are charged with rooting out government waste, fraud, abuse and preventing misconduct,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a statement. “President Trump is dismantling checks on his power and paving the way for widespread corruption.”

I would say it is surprising that Warren seems totally unacquainted with how the US government works, and that "checks and balances" are functions of the three branches of government, and the Executive isn't required to provide a check upon itself, but I'm not.

This has set up an interesting side skirmish. This mass dismissal apparently violates the law, creating the federal IG system.

NEW: Inspectors general say Trump's removals may be illegal since they fail to comply with the 2022 law requiring 30 days notice to Congress.

WH will likely argue this is unconstitutional, but this will be a fight.

w/ @meganmesserly @joshgersteinhttps://t.co/j83y9d9tXC pic.twitter.com/XUJgJ9c0A4

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 25, 2025

The coming fight has also potentially pitted Trump against Chuck Grassley.

Grassley told POLITICO in November that Trump shouldn’t pursue a broad ouster of inspectors general.

“I guess it’s the case of whether he believes in congressional oversight, because I work closely with all the inspector generals and I think I’ve got a good reputation for defending them. And I intend to defend them,” he said.

I'm sure this is heading to court, and it is a good bet that the Supreme Court will eventually decide that Congress can't put that kind of leash on the president's ability to fire a presidential appointee. 

This move is curious. If it isn't simply an impulsive act, the Trump White House may be using this court case to audition arguments that can be used on another Congressional "permission" case, like a challenge to the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

[Editor's Note: This article was edited for clarity after publication.]