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.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.