Donald Trump has nominated Dennis Kirk to run the Interior Department’s inspector general office, putting a Project 2025 author in the post that would oversee any investigation tied to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation. The choice lands at a moment when that office is already carrying at least five congressional investigation requests.
The nomination matters now because the Reflecting Pool project has become a live political and oversight issue. Trump personally oversaw the $16 million refurbishment, the water later turned slimy green and the pool lining split, and Trump blamed vandalism. His handpicked D.C. prosecutor could not make charges stick and passed the matter to Doug Burgum’s Interior Department, which was in charge of the work. If the watchdog office handles any review, Kirk would be sitting in the seat that decides how aggressively Interior is examined.
Kirk is not a neutral outsider to the administration. He helped write Project 2025 as an associate director, contributing a training video and an essay about the consequences of progressive ideology in the federal workforce. He also held senior roles in the Office of Personnel Management during Trump’s first term, later saw Joe Biden withdraw his nomination to the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, and was an adviser to Tulsi Gabbard earlier in Trump’s second term. At the same time, according to The Washington Post, he was working in the office of the intelligence community’s inspector general while advising Gabbard.
That background is what has drawn the sharpest criticism. Jared Huffman called Kirk a fake and fraudulent watchdog, and said each and every thing this political puppet does will be in service of Donald Trump. He added that Kirk helped write the Project 2025 playbook for seizing control of the federal workforce and now sits inside the office charged with rooting out corruption at Interior. Aaron Weiss was blunter still, saying Interior’s watchdog was fired, left vacant for eighteen months, and is now hosting one of the architects of Project 2025.
Mark Lee Greenblatt, the former Interior Department inspector general who was fired last year, said the chilling effect on whistleblowers is real. That warning matters because the office Kirk is being asked to lead is not just symbolic; it is the place where complaints, ethics questions and congressional requests are supposed to be weighed without political direction. At least five such requests are already pending, including one tied to reporting that Interior staffers would routinely shred official documents and use disappearing Signal messages.
Whether Kirk is confirmed is the question left hanging by the nomination itself. If he does take the job, he would arrive not as a detached cop on the beat but as a Project 2025 author stepping into one of the most sensitive oversight posts at Interior, with the Reflecting Pool matter and other open requests already waiting on the desk.
