At the conclusion of his first year in office, President Donald Trump fired 17 inspectors standard as he exercised the executive authority that the Constitution entrusts to him alone. His critics squawked consistently, and legal issues to the sackings are obvious, but the Trump presidency no doubt welcomes those difficulties. It may, because they are issues the president is likely to get, and for the sake of our nation, it is essential that he does.
Inspectors public, like so many other well-intentioned but poor suggestions, originated in the Carter presidency. By creating an inspector general in each of the 12 major organizations and tasked with catching federal fraud and abuse, the concept sounded great enough. The investigators basic would be chosen by the president following the president’s recommendations and the Senate’s approval, and they would be able to work independently from their agency faces while submitting legal violations to the attorney general.  ,
The second problem, however, is that the auditors public did not turn out to be really good at accomplishing their intended purpose. The so-called “watchdogs” of the federal government omitted everything from Operation Fast and Furious’s illegal arms sales to Mexican cartels to the National Security Agency’s illegal bulk domestic phone records collection program. Yet despite having too little to show for their efforts, the sounds-good idea of an inspector general proved irresistible, and over time, inspectors general proliferated throughout the federal government. In order to coordinate the IGs ( who were already over 70 at the time ) in 2008, Congress even established a new agency.  ,
The second issue is that Congress attempted to impose the inspectors ‘ “independence” of the inspectors general by separating them from the president himself in 2022, and that is where the Constitution draws the line. According to Congress, the president was required to give the president’s notice within 30 days of firing an inspector general and to include” the substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons,” in the notice. Trump did not do this, but it was because he was not required to do it.
Because the Constitution’s authority to require notice and a justification extends to the point where President Trump could not be legally required to do it, Congress cannot legally require it to do so.
Executive Power Belongs to the President
The Supreme Court recently revisited similar issues related to the president’s removal authority in , Seila Law v CFPB. That decision goes a long way toward holding that the president has the authority to fire anyone in the executive branch for any reason ( save the vice president, who is himself elected to a four-year term ), because” ]u ] nder our Constitution, the’ executive Power ‘  , — all of it— is’ vested in a President.'”
The President alone has the authority to exercise the entire “executive Power,” the Supreme Court has it clear. The president is in charge of every other executive branch member, and they are required to hold him accountable. Responsibility calls for the power to be removed. Without it, the president is unable to control how and who exercises his own executive power.
Of course,  , Seila Law , is not without its exceptions, but those exceptions do not protect inspectors general from the president’s removal power.  ,
Morrison Doesn’t Apply
In , Seila Law, the Supreme Court declined to revisit an important removal-power precedent called , Morrison v. Olson, which upheld good-cause tenure protection for an independent counsel. If the court did revisit , Morrison , today, it seems likely the case would come out the other way. But even if the , Morrison , holding remains an exception to , Seila Law,  , it is not an exception that encompasses inspectors general.
The , Morrison , exception applies to “inferior officer ]s ] under the Appointments Clause”, who have “limited jurisdiction and tenure” and “lack … policymaking or significant administrative authority”. None of the inspectors general that Trump fired adhere to any of these requirements.  ,
They are not inferior officers, as evidenced by Congress’s requirement that they be appointed by the president with the Senate’s advice and consent. That view is further supported by their “independent” nature. An inferior officer must always report to a superior officer, but the inspectors general are purposefully given the authority to go where the agency head would have them if they had otherwise been in charge.  ,
Additionally, the inspectors general have jurisdiction that is intentionally broad, covering everything that occurs at any significant cabinet agency an individual inspector general oversees. The special counsel in , Morrison , had a discrete mission, but the inspector general’s is not similar. The inspectors general have the freedom to conduct whatever investigation they want, whenever they like, and are not in charge of an agency’s decision regarding the direction their efforts are headed.
And lastly, the inspectors general explicitly engage in policymaking. These responsibilities are described in the statute that created them, as well as the duty to “provide policy direction” for audits and investigations and to “recommend policies” in other areas, such as preventing government fraud and abuse.
When he fired the 17 inspectors general, President Trump acted within the constitutional authority that was given to him. No matter how admirable its stated goal may appear, our Constitution does not permit Congress to create alcoves of unremovability among executive branch officials.  ,
That is a good thing. So-called “independent” agencies and officers, like these inspectors general, are not independent but unaccountable — they do not answer to voters. The Founders designed the structure of our Constitution to stop it because they knew that was a problem. When President Trump’s actions reach their final day in court, he and our Constitution will be redeemed because he has used that structure to exercise removal authority that is legitimately his.  ,
Theo Wold serves as the director of the Claremont Institute’s Administrative State Project. Wood is the former Idaho solicitor general. Wold previously held positions as the Department of Justice’s acting deputy assistant attorney general for domestic policy under President Donald Trump. served as clerks for Judge Janice Rogers Brown and Judge José Antonio Fusté for the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico.
