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. And, certainly, Congress would have a harder time doing its job without GAO.”
Since Trump took office in January, GAO has issued several decisions finding impoundment violations by the Trump administration. Whoever succeeds Dodaro will take on the ongoing probes around the same issues.
The GAO decisions led to the once relatively low-profile legislative branch agency to come under an unprecedented level of scrutiny. The Trump White House’ Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and conservative lawmakers have been publicly challenging GAO’s objectivity, actively trying to undermine it as the agency tries to do its job.
“In my view, a well functioning OMB that is serving the American people has a good working relationship with GAO,” Micheal Linden, senior policy fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and former executive associate director for the OMB, 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 sort of have a good working relationship.”
Under the leadership of Russell Vought, OMB has refused to cooperate in GAO investigations, stonewalling the agency’s requests for information and calling them “voluminous, burdensome, and inappropriately invasive.”
“The worst thing for GAO is to look like you have an agenda. That’s what concerns me about allegations like we’re against the current president’s agenda. We’re not,” Dodaro said in a recent interview. “Our job, and most of what we’re doing, is in response to actions they’ve taken. It’s not things we’re bringing up out of nowhere.”
The White House even pushed a constitutionally backwards rescissions package through Congress in July. The maneuver saw the White House strongarm Senate Republicans into accepting Department of Government Efficiency funding cuts to various agencies and programs, funding that many of the same lawmakers had previously voted to approve but that the administration had lawlessly frozen.
“The Trump administration has really done massive amounts to destroy appropriations and budget execution,” Kogan told TPM. “And I think if Gene is, in fact, replaced by a lackey, that will be a major additional loss and will facilitate more budgetary lawlessness in the Trump administration.”
Despite issuing several opinions concluding the administration illegally withheld money, the agency under Dodaro has not taken action to sue the Trump administration for the violations it identified — despite some bipartisan support from congressional lawmakers.
“People are already suing in many cases,” Dodaro said to explain away his decision, referring to individual lawsuits from groups who have not been receiving the funds Congress appropriated for them and their programs.
“We’ll see what we need to do,” he added. “But we need to be prudent and make sure that — when we do it — we’re in the strongest possible position to prevail.”
For some, Dodaro’s inaction around taking the Trump administration to court has left them questioning if the shift 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 so very little in this area.”
It would be a different story if the GAO had been using “its power under the Impoundment Control Act to sue over impoundments” or “quickly identifying impoundments and calling them out in a way that was proving useful in litigation,” Super added; but they have “kept a very low profile on these issues.”
But others like Linden say GAO’s decision to stay away from legal action is likely centered around the fact that the current level of lawlessness is so unprecedented.
GAO suing the administration “has never been a thing before because in the past if GAO had said you’re impounding then that would have been enough to get an administration to change its behavior,” Linden told TPM. “That’s clearly not enough now.”
“What the Trump administration is doing is blatantly illegal and it’s breaking decades of precedent and understanding of how these things are supposed to operate,” 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 put limits on an administration that is ignoring the current limits?”
“That’s the problem with authoritarianism,” Linden continued. “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.”
