One Agency Has Been Calling Out Trump’s Illegal Impoundment. That May Soon Change.

Throughout 2025, the Trump administration has, time after time, simply refused to spend funds that Congress appropriated. The obstinacy was without precedent in modern American governance; congressional Democrats suggested it had put the country on track toward a constitutional crisis. Republicans, who controlled both chambers of Congress, largely did nothing. Piping up occasionally to affirm to those who were paying attention that they had not entirely lost their minds was a relatively small watchdog agency housed within the legislative branch: The Government Accountability Office (GAO). The Trump Department of Transportation suspending Biden-era grants for electric vehicle charging infrastructure was illegal , it said. The administration also acted illegally when it withheld funds for Head Start , it said, and when it withheld funds for FEMA . GAO concluded it was illegal for the Trump administration to withhold NIH grants ; so was their decision to freeze the federal cash allocated for the Institute of Museum and Library Services to support libraries, archives and museums throughout the country. The agency conducted dozens of other investigations into suspected violations of the Impoundment Control Act during 2025. We may soon get a very different GAO. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who heads the agency, is set to complete his 15-year term on Dec. 29, and has said he will retire. Dodaro’s retirement comes following more than five decades of service to the agency that he has been leading for 17 years. Following Dodaro’s retirement, Congress will establish a bipartisan panel to recommend a replacement to the president. President Donald Trump will then nominate a candidate subject to Senate confirmation. But experts worry that the ostensibly bipartisan process will not be enough to force Trump to appoint someone who will live up to the agency’s nonpartisan mission, which includes investigating improper, wasteful and fraudulent use of the money Congress allocates. “It is very likely that Gene Dodaro is replaced with a Trump lackey,” Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, told TPM. “That’s the problem with authoritarianism. It’s why we should all be upset about things like impoundments. This is why this stuff matters. Because either the law applies to the executive branch, or it doesn’t.” Micheal Linden, senior policy fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and former executive associate director for the OMB Kogan worries that if Dodaro is replaced by a Trump loyalist, the agency will stop doing the “important part of what they have been doing, which is investigations, public oversight and accountability.” “GAO investigations are extremely important,” Georgetown Law professor David Super told TPM. “In many respects, it provides a better and more independent version of what the inspectors general used to provide,” he said, referencing the watchdogs who sit within many executive branch agencies - and who Trump fired en masse in 2025. “Since Trump has gotten rid of the inspectors general, we don’t have that independent site,” Super continued. “So having an independent GAO looking at things is extremely important....

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