In a late-night Friday move, President Donald Trump fired at least 17 independent watchdogs — known as inspectors general — at multiple federal agencies, sources familiar with the move told ABC News.

The conversations about ousting these government watchdogs began during Trump’s transition back to the White House.

While inspectors general can be fired by the president — it can only happen after communicating with Congress 30 days in advance and in 2022 Congress strengthened the law requiring administrations to give a detailed reasoning for the firing of an IG.

There isn’t yet have a complete list of all the IG’s impacted, but at least one high-profile watchdog — Justice Department IG Michael Horowitz — did not receive notice that he was fired as of yesterday evening.

Horowitz is an Obama appointee and has issued reports that have been critical of both the Trump and Biden administrations.

The current law also mandates that any acting IG’s must come from within the IG community, though it’s unclear whether the Trump White House believes they need to follow that aspect of the law.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told ABC News earlier this week that the president must tell Congress before removal.

“First of all to remind that our Inspector General can’t be removed from office until the president, and that’s any president, not just Trump. So this is a message to all these presidents you’ve got to tell Congress a month ahead of time the reasons for removing them,” Grassley said.

He added, “And the other thing is that inspector generals are expected to be independent of political pressure, independent of the head of the agency, and to make sure that the law is enforced and money spent appropriately, and there shouldn’t be any political pressure against any of his work.”

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst also launched a bipartisan IG caucus just ten days ago.