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https://wapo.st/3XAT6Ey

"President Donald Trump has used the federal shutdown to seize control of spending from Congress and mold much of the government to his liking. Now the lone agency with the power to push back on those moves might be running out of time to try it.

The agency’s leader, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, has about two months left in his term, and Trump will nominate his replacement, potentially scuttling some of the Government Accountability Office’s most forceful attempts at oversight — including by taking the White House to court if necessary.

The agency retained a law firm to evaluate whether the White House was breaking federal laws governing spending and to prepare for a potential legal challenge — though officials have not decided whether to pursue a case, according to two people familiar with Dodaro’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details from private conversations.


.... “If Trump nominates the next comptroller general — I don’t want to make a political thing out of it, but his track record about caring about oversight and independent evaluations is not terribly strong,” said Henry Wray, a former associate general counsel and ethics counselor for GAO. “GAO is really the only truly fully independent source of executive branch oversight in government.”