# Inspectors General **Inspectors General (IGs)** are the internal watchdogs of the federal government — statutorily independent offices embedded inside each major agency that audit programs, investigate waste, fraud, and abuse, and report their findings to both the agency head and Congress. Created governmentwide by the **Inspector General Act of 1978** (a post-Watergate reform), there are roughly 74 federal IGs covering virtually every department and large agency. Their defining feature is **dual reporting and independence**: an IG works inside an agency but answers to Congress, and cannot be ordered to stop an investigation. The community is coordinated by **CIGIE** — the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. They are, with the [[Government Accountability Office]], the core of the federal government's internal-accountability machinery. For the KB, the IG system is the **single clearest casualty of the second-term capture project** — the place where the dismantling of oversight is most concrete and most documented. ## The 2025 IG purge On the night of **January 24, 2025**, days into the second term, Trump fired at least **17 inspectors general** (some counts say 18) in a single overnight action — including the IGs of the Departments of Defense, State, Housing and Urban Development, [[Veterans Affairs]], Energy, and Transportation. They were notified by email citing "changing priorities." The head of CIGIE, **Hannibal "Mike" Ware**, was among those removed. The firings were widely judged **unlawful on their face**: the 2022 Securing Inspector General Independence Act requires the president to give Congress **30 days' advance notice and a substantive, case-specific rationale** before removing an IG — neither of which happened. On **September 24, 2025**, federal judge **Ana C. Reyes** ruled that the administration had indeed unlawfully fired the 17 IGs — but **declined to reinstate them**, leaving the violation declared but unremedied. The purge continued: by 2026 at least **21 IGs** had been fired or forced out, including the Export-Import Bank IG (Parisa Salehi) in October 2025, again without the required notice or rationale. ## Why it matters IGs are the mechanism by which the executive branch is held accountable from the inside — the bodies that would document the abuses, illegal spending, and retaliation that the rest of this map describes. Removing them, and replacing them with loyalists or leaving the offices vacant, **blinds the oversight system precisely as the actions that need oversight accelerate**. It is the accountability-layer counterpart to [[Schedule F]] (which removes career staff) and the [[Unitary Executive Theory]] removal-power project: the same logic that says the president may fire any executive officer at will applies, in its most consequential form, to the watchdogs. ## Related accountability bodies - [[Government Accountability Office]] — the congressional (external) auditor, the IG community's sibling - [[Office of Special Counsel]] — protects the whistleblowers who feed IG investigations - [[Merit Systems Protection Board]] — adjudicates the retaliation cases ## See Also - [[Inspector General Oversight Tree]] — ASCII structural map of the IG layer: appointment types, powers, CIGIE, special IGs, and the 2025–26 removal track - [[Government Accountability Office]] - [[Office of Special Counsel]] - [[Merit Systems Protection Board]] - [[Unitary Executive Theory]] - [[Schedule F]] - [[Administrative State]] - [[Federal Agencies]]