Open government advocates and Democratic leaders in Congress are angry the Trump administration seems to be walking away from crucial transparency language in the economic stabilization package.
Aside from the funds to make voting safer and more convenient this fall, the democracy reform movement was pleased most by a provision in the law creating an independent watchdog to oversee a $500 billion fund to bail out companies crippled by the coronavirus pandemic.
But after signing the $2 trillion package last week, President Trump signaled he would decide what this inspector general could share with the public and Congress. And when Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sought Sunday to dispel concerns about government accountability in administering the biggest domestic economic relief package in American history, he refused to pledge that the IG would be permitted to testify on Capitol Hill.
"I'm going to leave that to the lawyers, OK, and to Congress to figure out," Mnuchin said on Fox News. "We're going to have full transparency in reporting what we're doing to the American public."
Creation of the IG was a safeguard that Democrats insisted upon as a condition of supporting the corporate bailout fund at the heart of the rescue package.
The law allows the president and Treasury secretary to approve loans, loan guarantees and other aid to American companies, but with a watchdog nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate to oversee and audit the disbursements. Under the law, this IG has the power to demand information from the Treasury Department and other federal agencies — and is supposed to tell Congress "without delay" if any part of the executive branch is uncooperative.
Two hours after signing the bill Friday, Trump issued a separate statement that he "will not treat" that language as permitting the inspector general to report to Congress without "presidential supervision."
That declaration only buttressed the argument by Democrats and open government advocacy groups, who pressed for tough language in the measure precisely because the president has such a strong history of rebuffing efforts at congressional oversight, especially when it comes to executive branch officials seeking to reveal perceived misbehavior. (Trump's impeachment, after all, got started with a whistleblower complaint about the withholding of military aid from Ukraine for an inappropriately political reason.)
"We don't accept that. We don't accept that. We will have our oversight," Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday. "It's just the same, business as usual for the president."
On Monday the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight called the administration's moves "a slap in the face" that "signals that the administration is more committed to advancing executive branch power grabs than they are to ensuring the emergency funds go where they are needed most."
The signing statement also challenged, on constitutional separation of powers grounds, the law's requirement that Congress be consulted about the membership of a panel to be formed in the executive branch to oversee the government's pandemic response.
While such statements have no legal force, they provide a formal record of a president's understanding of a new law's meaning and serve as guidance to the rest of his administration in carrying out the statute.
Congress has no power to reverse these views through legislation, so it's unclear how lawmakers can assure the oversight they thought they'd engineered gets done. Extracting a promise from Trump's proposed IG nominee may be their best hope.
The "signing statement threatens to undermine the authority and independence of this new IG," Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general, said on Twitter. "The Senate should extract a commitment from the nominee that Congress will be promptly notified of any Presidential / Administration interference or obstruction."
Democrats blocked the initial Senate Republican stimulus bill because of its lack of oversight language, only agreeing to the bailout fund once the IG provision was included.
Under the law, Congress is also authorized to create its own panel to oversee the use of the stimulus money and expose waste fraud and abuse, and Pelosi says that committee will be created soon and told to operate "in real time to make sure we know where those funds are."
POGO had called that language "a major victory" after getting it into the bill with the help of two senators, Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson and Michigan Democrat Gary Peters.
"Whenever the government is trying to spend this much money, we should have good transparency and good accountability to the extent that we can," Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan think tank, told The Washington Post.
"We are fully comfortable that whatever we do, we want full transparency and we're very careful about supporting American workers and the American economy," Mnuchin had said on Fox.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.