Hempowicz is director of public policy and Wasser is a policy attorney at the Project On Government Oversight, a nonpartisan group that investigates corruption, misconduct and conflicts of interest in the federal government.
This is the last in a series advocating for parts of legislation soon to be proposed in the House, dubbed the Protecting Our Democracy Act, designed to improve democracy's checks and balances by curbing presidential power.
Last year, while a global pandemic and the accompanying economic uncertainty ravaged the country, political corruption was ranked the second most important issue among voters. This wasn't an anomaly — the American public has ranked "political corruption" and "corrupt government officials" as one of their leading fears for the past five years.
It's clear we must strengthen the integrity of our government institutions so the public gains confidence that corrupt actors will be exposed and held accountable.
Greater protections for whistleblowers and independent government watchdogs will go a long way toward rooting out this corruption the public is so concerned about.
Whistleblowers support the system of checks and balances in our government by speaking up and reporting waste, fraud, illegalities or abuses of power that might otherwise go unnoticed and unaddressed. But they do so at great personal and professional risk.
In many instances, whistleblowers themselves become the subject of retaliatory internal or criminal investigations, monopolizing the truth-teller's resources. These investigations, as well as other forms of retaliation, have a chilling effect, preventing others from coming forward to expose wrongdoing and lending credence to fears that corrupt government officials are allowed to operate with impunity. Because of this, better protections are necessary to ensure whistleblowers are able to make their disclosures and combat corruption and abuse of power within our government.
Currently, federal whistleblowers are in a no-win situation. Most cannot access federal courts to enforce their protections. And the agency that's supposed to help protect them, the Merit Systems Protection Board, has not had any of its seats filled for more than two years — creating a backlog of more than 3,000 cases.
Further, the culture surrounding whistleblowers has created an almost reflexive response to shoot the messenger (through whistleblower retaliation) for reporting the wrongdoing rather than addressing the actual, systemic issues in the government that the whistleblower is disclosing.
To this end, the Protecting Our Democracy Act would strengthen whistleblower protections in many ways. Most importantly, it would allow whistleblowers to enforce their protections in a court in front of a jury of their peers — instead of the MSPB, a quasi-judicial agency within the executive branch.
The bill also would limit opportunities for government officials to disclose a whistleblower's identity. It would make it illegal to retaliate against whistleblowers by opening meritless investigations into their conduct. It would require administrative judges and employees who work with whistleblowers to undergo special training. And it would create a secure mechanism for intelligence community whistleblowers to provide information directly to Congress.
Strengthening whistleblower protections by enacting this legislation can help restore the check on corruption that is desperately needed within the federal government.
Inspectors general, the independent government watchdogs that investigate federal agencies and report their findings to Congress, also need stronger protections now more than ever.
The nature of their jobs is to provide independent oversight without political interference or retaliation, a fundamental difference from other political appointees nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. However, under current law, a president can remove IGs for any reason — as evidenced by the removals and replacements that Donald Trump carried out in response to oversight of his administration.
While the law prohibits agency heads from interfering in an IG investigation, this limitless removal authority allows any president or agency head to improperly block any effort that an IG undertakes to conduct independent oversight, by simply removing the watchdog rather than interfering in a politically sensitive inquiry. To conduct robust, apolitical oversight, IGs need independence both from the agency they are overseeing and from the president.
Congress responded to the rash of seemingly politically motivated firings of IGs during Trump's final year in office with the introduction of a handful of bills to protect them from removal as retaliation. One such proposal, which is now part of the Protecting Our Democracy Act, would require the president to have "good cause" for removal. The administration would have to provide Congress proof of the cause, require inspector general offices to report to Congress on any investigations underway at the time of a removal (to ensure those could move forward independently), and enhance congressional reporting requirements around IG vacancies. These fixes would bolster the independence of inspectors general and ensure they remain free from retaliation while providing the American taxpayers with independent oversight.
Stronger protections for whistleblowers and inspectors general would advance the bipartisan ideal that a functioning democracy relies on robust checks and balances. Whistleblowers should be able to make disclosures free from retaliation, just as IGs should be able to perform their jobs with integrity without facing political interference. These reforms would ensure that accountability and transparency remain the driving force in restoring key elements of our democracy.
Ben Droz
Ben Droz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.