Removing inspectors general
The administration dismissed inspectors general without giving Congress the legally required notice and explanations. These were removals of officials assigned to scrutinize government operations, carried out without the statutory process that lets Congress examine the dismissals. The loss was not just a set of officeholders. It weakened a safeguard meant to keep scrutiny from depending entirely on the officials being scrutinized.
The pressure extended to the machinery supporting those watchdogs. OMB's funding actions disrupted the work of the inspectors general's coordinating council, CIGIE, and access to watchdog websites. Republican senators Chuck Grassley and Susan Collins objected to the withholding. The removals and funding disruptions worked at different levels: one displaced watchdogs; the other impaired shared capacity and public access to their work. The senators' objections show that this was not simply a dispute between the administration and its partisan opponents.
Leaving oversight offices without enough staff
At the Department of Homeland Security, staffing actions shuttered or severely weakened offices responsible for civil-rights complaints and immigration detention oversight. Litigation prompted reversals, but filings described continuing understaffing. Reversing a staffing decision did not by itself establish that those offices had recovered the capacity to do their work.
These DHS oversight disruptions affect the route by which complaints receive attention inside the government. Civil-rights and detention oversight require people who can examine complaints and scrutinize conditions. When the responsible offices lack staff, maintaining an office on paper is not the same as maintaining a working check. The litigation demonstrates a route to resistance; the reported staffing gaps explain why a formal reversal may leave practical problems unresolved.
Removing review before a corruption charge
DOJ also suspended a longstanding requirement for Public Integrity Section review of public-corruption cases. That requirement provided an internal check against unfounded or politically motivated prosecutions. Its removal changed the safeguards around charging decisions, not just the government's ability to uncover misconduct.
The suspension of mandatory review weakened a check on the government's use of charging power. Public Integrity Section review was an internal safeguard, separate from inspectors general and outside professional discipline. Its removal left prosecutors without that required review step before bringing public-corruption cases, increasing the risk of unfounded or politically motivated charges.
Trying to put the department ahead of outside discipline
A March 2026 DOJ proposed rule on state-bar complaints sought attorney-general review of ethics complaints against current and former department lawyers, requests to suspend parallel state-bar investigations and unspecified action if disciplinary authorities refused. DOJ said the proposal would prevent politically motivated discipline. State attorneys general objected that it threatened independent oversight and conflicted with federal ethics law.
This was a proposal, not an established immunity from discipline. Requests to pause investigations were not binding preemption of state authority. Its significance lies in the proposed shift toward review by the same department whose lawyers faced complaints. Together, these actions weakened or challenged separate checks on executive power: watchdog independence, operational capacity, charging review and outside professional discipline. Other abuses become harder to check when the people and processes assigned to examine them are removed, depleted or made more dependent on the institution under scrutiny.