{"id":775,"date":"2026-08-12T10:47:43","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T10:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marketrelocationreport.com\/?p=775"},"modified":"2026-08-12T10:47:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T10:47:43","slug":"project-2025-contributor-nominated-for-government-watchdog-position","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marketrelocationreport.com\/?p=775","title":{"rendered":"Project 2025 contributor nominated for government watchdog position"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump on Aug. 7 , a co-author of Project 2025, to serve as inspector general for the Interior Department.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cInspectors general must be able to investigate the administration that appointed them without fear or favor,\u201d said former Interior IG Mark Lee Greenblatt, who was removed in a mass firing of the watchdogs at the start of Trump\u2019s second term, in a statement. \u201cMr. Kirk\u2019s political background and close ties to this administration make it impossible for him to credibly meet that fundamental test.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Kirk is newly nominated to lead the Interior IG office, Greenblatt and Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, last week said that Kirk had been installed as a political appointee\u00a0within the Interior IG office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat same office is weighing serious ethics investigations into senior officials in this administration,\u201d Huffman said in a statement at the time. \u201cIt\u2019s no surprise the White House suddenly wants its own man inside the one place that Trump’s cronies still have reason to fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kirk co-wrote a chapter in the Heritage Foundation\u2019s conservative presidential transitional initiative about managing the civil service. And in 2025, The Washington Post <\/em>reported that former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard assigned Kirk, then one of her advisers, to a position within the IG for the intelligence community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Steve Katz \u2014 who served in several senior oversight roles on Capitol Hill and in the executive branch, including assisting the Clinton administration develop standards for selecting IG nominees \u2014\u00a0argued Kirk\u2019s nomination violates rules regarding IG selections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Specifically, he pointed to statute that IG appointments should be made \u201cwithout regard to political affiliation\u201d and developed by the Government Accountability Office that warn against \u201cthe threat that an auditor will, as a result of political, ideological, social or other convictions, take a position that is not objective.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose of having professional auditors \u2014 not political ones \u2014\u00a0is because Congress needs those [IG] reports to exercise its constitutional responsibilities for checks and balances,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

During Trump\u2019s first term, the president nominated Kirk to serve as chairman of the Merit Systems Protection Board, but he never received a vote on the Senate floor. Kirk also held a senior position at the Office of Personnel Management and was involved in an effort to crack down on agency diversity trainings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two Senate Democrats last week requested that the Interior IG investigate the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. dropped charges against several individuals accused of vandalizing the landmark. Instead, federal prosecutors now say that the damage to the pool\u2019s new lining was likely caused by faulty contractor work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most of the IGs who the Senate has confirmed since the start of Trump\u2019s second term worked in his first or second administration. Additionally, the Partnership for Public Service nonprofit recently reported that the Trump administration assigned political appointees to the IG offices at the Housing and Urban Development and Labor departments for the first time in recent history.<\/p>\n

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While the president recently nominated Dennis Kirk to serve as inspector general at the Interior Department, he\u2019s reportedly already working in that office as a political appointee. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oversight"],"yoast_head":"\nProject 2025 contributor nominated for government watchdog position - Market Relocation Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/marketrelocationreport.com\/?p=775\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Project 2025 contributor nominated for government watchdog position - 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