Rep. Glenn Ivey urges stronger congressional oversight and FOIA reforms to protect career federal employees

Rep. Glenn Ivey, speaking at a congressional hearing, said career federal employees and prosecutors have been forced out "based on lies" and urged lawmakers to strengthen oversight and transparency tools to protect the rule of law.

Ivey, who identified himself as representing part of Maryland that includes Prince George's County, said the removals have had concrete consequences for government work. He described an NIH researcher with a Ph.D. whose Alzheimer's clinical trial was halted, quoting the woman he encountered at a job fair: "I know you can't help me find a job cuz there aren't a lot of those types of jobs at at these kinds of job fairs. But what really hurt me the most was not that I lost my career ... but that we were doing such great things with this clinical trial, and I thought we were making real headway. And when you try and start it back up, it's not like flipping a light switch." Ivey said restarting such work requires time and resources lost by the personnel actions he criticized.

Drawing on his experience in the U.S. Attorney's Office, Ivey said prosecutors had been forced out for refusing to pursue cases he described as lacking sufficient evidence. He cited examples he said had been repeated, including two U.S. Attorneys in the Eastern District of Virginia and what he called the "Comey case" and the "Letitia James case," and warned that those patterns damage prosecutorial independence.

"If there isn't oversight of the laws that are in place, then it doesn't matter what reforms are added," Ivey said, pressing witnesses on how Congress can use available tools. He pointed to a committee report released the same day and urged "creative thought on how to use those tools" to reveal what is happening and hold an administration accountable.

Ivey also urged strengthening the Freedom of Information Act, citing nonprofit American Oversight's use of FOIA to "get out to the American people what's going on." He proposed accountability measures ranging from better-resourced agency inspectors general to a new commission or inspector-general-style entity to investigate illegal access to information and other misconduct.

He closed by thanking Democracy Forward, Ms. Comstock and Justice Connections for their work in this area and asked witnesses, including Ms. Boyd, for practical steps Congress can take to shore up safeguards.

The hearing record shows Ivey framing the problem as both personal harms to displaced career employees and a broader threat to the rule of law; he sought recommendations for legislative and oversight responses rather than proposing a single statutory fix.