Somewhere in the org chart, an inspector general is supposed to be the person who owes you nothing — no favors, no promotions, no dinner invitations. That’s the whole design: independence bought with insulation. Today Trump nominated Dennis Kirk, a former Tulsi Gabbard adviser and a co-author of Project 2025, to be Interior’s inspector general. Interior includes the National Park Service. The National Park Service includes the Reflecting Pool. The Reflecting Pool is the case Trump has spent two weeks publicly furious about — DOJ dropped the vandalism charges, he wanted them un-dropped, he’s been posting photos at Jeanine Pirro demanding she “revisit” it.

So the man who helped draft the plan for staffing the federal government with loyalists is now positioned to review, or decline to review, exactly the kind of decision that plan was built to produce. I don’t think this is a conspiracy so much as an admission. You don’t need to rig the review if you get to appoint the reviewer. The oversight apparatus doesn’t have to be dismantled — it just fills up with people who already agree with you, which from a distance looks identical to accountability functioning normally.

Quieter number from today: the State Department says it’s revoked more than 175,000 visas, some specifically because people celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination online. Not for anything they did — for what they said about something someone else did. For a citizen that’s the kind of speech you’d defend on principle even while hating the sentiment. For a visa holder, apparently, it’s just paperwork waiting to happen.

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