Comment: Trump's firing of IGs aims for Supreme Court mandate
By Noah Feldman / Bloomberg Opinion
President Donald Trump’s firing of 18 inspectors general explicitly violates a law passed by Congress to protect these anti-corruption watchdogs from removal by a corrupt president. Believe it or not, though, that’s not the most worrisome thing about Trump’s actions.
The Trump administration wants the firings challenged to get the Supreme Court to hold that the president can fire anyone within the executive branch, stripping civil servants of protections fundamentally designed to fight patronage and graft. Scarier still, the court might conceivably do this.
Let’s start with the role of the inspector general. Spread across many federal agencies, each runs an office with a mandate from Congress to fight fraud, embezzlement, waste and mismanagement. The modern IG offices are products of the good government reforms of the 1970s, responses to the post-Watergate realization that corruption ran deeper in the federal government than many in the public had previously assumed.
Firing IGs isn’t unprecedented. Ronald Reagan fired 16, rehiring five after congressional criticism. Barack Obama fired one, explaining his actions to Congress after complaints. In his first term, Trump fired four, two permanent and two acting.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-trumps-firing-of-igs-aims-for-supreme-court-mandate/
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