VIDEO: Grassley Celebrates National Whistleblower Appreciation Day

VIDEO: Grassley Celebrates National Whistleblower Appreciation Day

WASHINGTON - Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a co-founder and co-chair of the Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus, issued remarks praising whistleblowers as America's greatest fighters against fraud and waste. Grassley also introduced a resolution marking July 30, 2026, as "National Whistleblower Appreciation Day." On this day 248 years ago, Congress enacted the nation's first protections for whistleblowers.

Since Grassley strengthened the False Claims Act in 1986, it has recouped approximately $85 billion for taxpayers and saved countless more by deterring would-be fraudsters.

This week, Grassley introduced the CFTC Whistleblower Protection and Program Improvement Act of 2026 to enhance protections for whistleblowers and provide long-term stability to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission whistleblower program.

Video and a transcript of Grassley's remarks are below.

VIDEO

Happy National Whistleblowers' Day!

As you know, whistleblowers are essential - very essential - to exposing waste, fraud and abuse. Too often, these very courageous truth-tellers are treated like skunks at a picnic.

In Fiscal Year 2025, whistleblowers helped the federal government recover $5.3 billion under the False Claims Act.

Here in Congress, I've continued my efforts to stand up for these patriotic whistleblowers.

This year, the Senate passed my bipartisan legislation with Senator Peters to strengthen whistleblower protections for federal contractors.

I've also introduced some new legislation.

These include bills to protect duty speech whistleblowers, also to extend my anti-gag provisions to government corporation employees and also to protect AI-related whistleblowers.

Additionally, I wrote a letter to the Office of Personnel Management, urging them to update their proposed nondisclosure agreement form.

Those updates are needed to fully comply with whistleblower laws, and I'll need to follow that situation very closely. And, I know you will help me.

I've successfully pushed federal agencies to do right by whistleblowers.

So, thanks to my efforts, IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler were taken out of the shadows of retaliation and promoted by the Treasury Department.

I finally got the Department of Homeland Security to end the seven-year nightmare for three Customs and Border Protection whistleblowers.

I helped an ATF whistleblower who experienced severe retaliation to secure new employment and also get a financial settlement.

And, I helped at least 10 FBI officials settle with the government.

Those are just the publicly known examples. Behind the scenes, my office has quietly assisted many other whistleblowers.

Thanks to many dozens of whistleblower disclosures, I've been able to shed daylight on thousands of pages of government records and to do this for the benefit of the American people, to make sure injustices don't happen in the future.

Because, we all know, transparency brings accountability.

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