US President Donald Trump has nominated Project 2025 co-author Dennis Kirk to lead the Interior Department’s inspector general office, raising fresh concerns over the independence of the watchdog body now being asked to review the department’s troubled Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation.
Trump put forward Kirk’s nomination on Friday, according to the Washington Post, which reported that Kirk previously worked for then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard before being placed inside the intelligence community’s own inspector general’s office.
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Mark Lee Greenblatt, who was removed as Interior’s inspector general during Trump’s mass firing of federal watchdogs at the start of his second term, urged the Senate to reject Kirk’s nomination outright. “Inspectors general must be able to investigate the administration that appointed them without fear or favour,” Greenblatt said in a statement, adding that “Mr. Kirk’s political background and close ties to this administration make it impossible for him to credibly meet that fundamental test.”
In an earlier statement responding to reports that Kirk had already been installed inside the office in an acting capacity, Greenblatt argued that “placing a political operative inside an independent watchdog office creates a structural conflict that undermines public confidence in the office’s independence.”
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Representative Jared Huffman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, has been among the sharpest critics of the nomination. “This man helped write the Project 2025 playbook for seizing control of the federal workforce,” Huffman said in a statement, adding, “Now he sits inside the office charged with rooting out corruption at Interior, the department that manages our national parks, public lands, Tribal programs, and now under Trump, gold-slathered statues and a botched Reflecting Pool renovation.”
Huffman went further in a separate statement, calling Kirk “a fake and fraudulent watchdog” and warning that “each and every thing this political puppet does will be in service of Donald Trump.”
Dennis Kirk Trump Interior Nomination: Why Does This Nomination Matter For The Reflecting Pool Investigation Specifically?
The stakes surrounding Kirk’s appointment have been sharpened by an ongoing controversy over the Reflecting Pool renovation itself. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico had already asked Interior’s inspector general to investigate the department’s handling of the project after federal prosecutors in Washington dropped vandalism charges against several people accused of damaging the landmark, instead attributing the damage to faulty contractor work.
A conservation group, the Center for Western Priorities, has said Interior’s oversight arm has been hollowed out, noting the office is currently sitting on at least five separate investigation requests, including concerns over document shredding and the use of disappearing messages within the department.
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Kirk’s selection follows a series of controversies swirling around senior Interior officials, including questions over Associate Deputy Secretary Karen Budd-Falen’s financial ties to a Nevada lithium mine. It also mirrors a broader trend across the administration of installing political loyalists in traditionally nonpartisan oversight roles, following Trump’s earlier nomination of dark-money political operative Michael Chamberlain to lead the independent Office of Government Ethics.
A spokesperson for Interior’s inspector general’s office declined to comment when asked about the Reflecting Pool investigation request and Kirk’s appointment, according to Government Executive.
With Kirk’s nomination now before the Senate, his confirmation would place him in direct oversight of a department navigating simultaneous scrutiny over the Reflecting Pool renovation, senior officials’ potential conflicts of interest, and broader questions about record retention that watchdog groups say demand precisely the kind of independent scrutiny critics argue his appointment would compromise.
