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

Throughout 2025, the Trump administration has repeatedly simply refused to spend funds that Congress appropriated. This stubbornness was unprecedented in modern American governance; Congressional Democrats suggested that this put the country on the path to a constitutional crisis. The Republicans, who controlled both houses of Congress, did virtually nothing.

A relatively small watchdog agency housed within the legislature occasionally assured those who were paying attention that they hadn’t completely lost their minds: the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The Trump Department of Transportation’s decision to suspend Biden-era subsidies for electric vehicle charging infrastructure was illegal, he said. The administration also acted illegally when it withheld funds for Head Start, she said, and when it withheld funds for FEMA. The GAO concluded that it was illegal for the Trump administration to deny NIH grants; as is their decision to freeze federal money allocated to the Institute of Museum and Library Services to support libraries, archives and museums across the country. The agency conducted dozens of other investigations into alleged violations of the Impound Control Act during 2025.

We may soon have a very different GAO.

Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who heads the agency, is set to finish his 15-year term Dec. 29 and has announced he will retire. Dodaro’s retirement comes after more than five decades of service to the agency he has led for 17 years.

After Dodaro retires, Congress will establish a bipartisan committee to recommend a replacement for the president. President Donald Trump will then nominate a nominee subject to Senate confirmation.

But experts worry that the seemingly bipartisan process won’t be enough to force Trump to appoint someone who will live up to the agency’s nonpartisan mission, which includes investigating inappropriate, wasteful and fraudulent use of money allocated by Congress.

“It is very likely that Gene Dodaro will be replaced by a Trump stooge,” Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal fiscal policy at the Center for American Progress, told TPM.

“That’s the problem with authoritarianism. That’s why we should all be upset about things like foreclosures. That’s why these things are important. Because either the law applies to the executive branch or it doesn’t apply.”

Micheal Linden, senior policy fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and former associate executive director of the OMB

Kogan fears that if Dodaro is replaced by a Trump loyalist, the agency will stop doing “the important part of what it does, which is investigations, public oversight and accountability.”

“The GAO investigations are extremely important,” Georgetown law professor David Super told TPM. “In many ways, it provides a better, more independent version of what the inspectors general provided,” he said, referring to the watchdogs who sit within many executive agencies — and whom Trump fired en masse in 2025.

“Since Trump got rid of the inspectors general, we no longer have this independent site,” Super continued. “So it’s extremely important to have an independent GAO looking at things. And, certainly, Congress would have a harder time doing its job without the GAO.”

Since Trump took office in January, the GAO has issued several decisions finding impound violations by the Trump administration. Whoever succeeds Dodaro will take charge of ongoing investigations into the same issues.

The GAO’s decisions have led the once relatively low-profile legislative branch agency to be subject to an unprecedented level of oversight. The Trump White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and conservative lawmakers have publicly challenged the GAO’s objectivity, actively trying to undermine it as the agency attempts to do its job.

“In my opinion, a well-functioning OMB that serves the American people has a good working relationship with the GAO,” Micheal Linden, a senior policy fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and former OMB associate executive director, told TPM. “They’re not partners per se, because GAO’s job is to make sure the government is accountable and transparent…but they should be partners or have some sort of good working relationship.”

Under the leadership of Russell Vought, OMB refused to cooperate with GAO investigations, blocking the agency’s requests for information and calling them “voluminous, burdensome, and inappropriately invasive.”

“The worst thing for the GAO is to make it look like you have an agenda. That’s what worries me about the allegations that we’re against the current president’s agenda. That’s not the case,” Dodaro said in a recent interview. “Our job, and most of what we do, is to respond to the actions they’ve taken. These are not things we bring up out of nowhere.”

The White House even pushed through Congress in July a constitutionally contrary cancellation package. The maneuver saw the White House force Senate Republicans to agree to cuts to Department of Government Effectiveness funding across various agencies and programs, funding that many of the same lawmakers had already voted to approve but which the administration had illegally frozen.

“The Trump administration has actually done enormous amounts of money to destroy appropriations and budget execution,” Kogan told TPM. “And I think if Gene is indeed replaced by a stooge, that will be a major additional loss and will facilitate more fiscal anarchy in the Trump administration.”

Despite issuing multiple notices concluding that the administration illegally withheld money, the Dodaro-led agency has not taken steps to pursue the Trump administration for the violations it identified — despite some bipartisan support from congressional lawmakers.

“People are already filing lawsuits in many cases,” Dodaro said in explaining his decision, referring to individual lawsuits from groups that have not received the funds Congress allocated to them and their programs.

“We will see what we have to do,” he added. “But we have to be careful and make sure that when we do, we are in the strongest possible position to prevail.”

For some, Dodaro’s inaction in taking the Trump administration to court has left them wondering whether the change in leadership would be as consequential as they once thought.

“A year ago I would have thought it was a very big deal,” Super told TPM when asked about Dodaro’s upcoming retirement. “Now I’m not so convinced, because the existing GAO has done very little in this area.”

It would be a different story if the GAO had used “its authority under the Impound Control Act to prosecute impound charges” or “quickly identify impounds and report them in a manner that has proven useful in litigation,” Super added; but they have “kept a very low profile on these issues.”

But others, like Linden, say the GAO’s decision to stay away from legal action likely centers on the fact that the current level of lawlessness is unprecedented.

The GAO suing the administration “has never been a thing before, because in the past, if the GAO had said you impound, that would have been enough to get an administration to change its behavior,” Linden told TPM. “It’s clearly not enough now.”

“What the Trump administration is doing is blatantly illegal and it shatters decades of precedent and understanding of how these things are supposed to work,” Linden added. “The Trump administration has effectively already undermined the authority of the GAO, even with the current head, who is very good and very credible…how do you constrain or impose limits on an administration that ignores the current limits?

“That’s the problem with authoritarianism,” Linden continued. “That’s why we should all be upset about things like foreclosures. That’s why these things are important. Because either the law applies to the executive branch or it doesn’t apply.”