Trump nominates Project 2025 author to be Interior Department watchdog

Dennis Kirk wrote a chapter of Project 2025 and worked in the Trump White House, so naturally the story is written as if that automatically disqualifies him from doing his job. That's the whole complaint here, really. Not that Kirk has done anything wrong, not that he's shown any inclination to bury an investigation, just that he once put his name on a policy document conservatives wrote and liberals decided to treat like a Bond villain's manifesto.

Inspectors general are supposed to be independent, and that's a fair thing to care about. But independence isn't the same as having no opinions or no resume. Every administration picks IGs who share its general worldview and have worked in government before. If having served in a Republican White House and contributed to a conservative policy project makes someone unfit to watch over an agency, then only people with no political history and no relevant experience would qualify, which is its own kind of absurd standard.

What would actually tell us something is how Kirk does the job once he's in it. Does he pursue waste and mismanagement at Interior regardless of who it embarrasses? Does he protect whistleblowers? That's the test that matters, not the fact that he helped write a chapter in a book that's become shorthand for "things we're supposed to be afraid of." Judge the man's record at the office, not his résumé from before he got there.