The Investigative Journal’s weekly compilation of findings from federal auditors and accountability nonprofits across the political spectrum. This week’s roundup is anchored by the Government Accountability Office’s revelation that improper federal payments reached $186 billion in fiscal year 2025 — the highest figure on record outside the pandemic surge.
1. GAO: Improper Federal Payments Hit $186 Billion in FY2025
The Government Accountability Office (nonpartisan; reports directly to Congress) released report GAO-26-108694 on April 27, finding that 15 federal agencies estimated approximately $186 billion in improper payments across 64 programs in fiscal year 2025 — an increase of $24 billion over the prior fiscal year. According to the GAO’s analysis, roughly 82 percent of the total ($153 billion) consisted of overpayments. Medicare and Medicaid alone accounted for $94 billion of the figure, with Medicare contributing $57 billion and Medicaid another $37 billion.
The GAO emphasized that these numbers likely understate the true exposure. Several programs that agencies have already determined are susceptible to significant improper payments — including the Department of Health and Human Services’ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program — were not included in the totals. Records suggest cumulative federal improper payments since 2003 now exceed $3 trillion.
As of the report’s publication, nine of ten matters that GAO recommended for congressional action in March 2022 remain open. Auditors specifically called on lawmakers to expand statutory authorities for the Department of Treasury’s Do Not Pay system and to require improved payment integrity reporting from large entitlement programs. Read the report: GAO-26-108694 | Press release.
2. HHS OIG: Medicare Virtual Check-In Payments Need Stronger Safeguards
The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (statutorily independent; nonpartisan) issued a report on April 28 finding that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services made approximately $1.96 million in potentially improper payments for 173,287 virtual check-in services that were billed within seven days after — or 24 hours before — an evaluation and management visit using the same diagnosis code for the same enrollee. Under existing Medicare rules, those duplicative encounters generally are not separately payable.
The audit, which examined CMS payments made during fiscal years 2020 through 2023, recommended strengthened front-end claim edits and post-payment review of communication-technology-based services. CMS expanded these telehealth-adjacent codes during the pandemic to broaden access, but OIG auditors concluded that the agency’s program safeguards have not kept pace with utilization growth.
A separate HHS-OIG release the same week reviewed Medicare payments for positive airway pressure devices, with auditors concluding that most claims were compliant but flagging documentation lapses among a subset of suppliers. Read the report: HHS-OIG virtual check-in audit.
3. POGO: Pentagon Conflicts and Inspector General Capacity
The Project On Government Oversight (left-leaning; funded by the Hewlett, Packard, and Open Society foundations among others) used its April 4 Weekly Spotlight, “From Your Pockets to Their Profits,” to track what it described as a sustained pattern of degraded oversight. POGO documented turnover and vacancies in the inspector general system since the start of the second Trump administration, arguing that the loss of institutional auditors has weakened internal early-warning capacity inside major departments.
The same edition raised questions about reported pre-conflict equity positioning in major defense contractors by individuals close to senior Pentagon leadership, ahead of the spring escalation in Iran. POGO did not allege wrongdoing, but filings indicate the trades occurred in a window during which non-public assessments of military readiness were circulating inside the building. The organization called for clearer pre-clearance procedures for political appointees with broker-managed accounts.
POGO previewed the April 29 House Armed Services Committee hearing at which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine testified on the FY2027 budget, urging members to press on procurement transparency and end-of-year obligation patterns. Read it: POGO Weekly Spotlight, April 4, 2026.
4. OpenTheBooks: Pentagon’s $93.4B “Use-It-or-Lose-It” September
OpenTheBooks (right-leaning transparency nonprofit; founded by Adam Andrzejewski; substantial donor anonymity) updated its Unbridled Pentagon spending dataset this month, reinforcing March findings that the Defense Department obligated approximately $93.4 billion in grants and contracts in September 2025 — the largest single-month total recorded by any federal agency since at least 2008. In the final five working days of the fiscal year alone, DoD obligated $50.1 billion.
The granular line items the organization extracted from USAspending and FPDS records include $2 million on Alaskan king crab, $6.9 million on lobster tail, $1 million on salmon, and more than $225 million on furniture during the September close-out window. Records suggest the spending pattern is structural: the so-called “use-it-or-lose-it” regime under which unobligated balances revert and threaten future appropriations creates strong incentives to clear obligations before September 30.
OpenTheBooks sent an open letter to Secretary Hegseth on April 21 urging that fiscal-year-end spending sprees be ended this year and proposing a public dashboard of fourth-quarter Pentagon obligations. With the FY2026 defense topline projected to exceed $1 trillion for the first time, the organization argues that procurement transparency is a precondition for any meaningful audit. Read it: Letter to Secretary Hegseth | Unbridled report.
5. Judicial Watch: 372,000 Inactive Voters Removed From Colorado Rolls
Judicial Watch (right-leaning legal accountability nonprofit; founded 1994; pursues records litigation under FOIA and state public-records law) announced this month that Colorado has removed approximately 372,000 inactive voter registrations from its rolls following a Judicial Watch lawsuit and settlement alleging non-compliance with the National Voter Registration Act’s list-maintenance provisions. The settlement requires the state to continue baseline list-maintenance reporting on a defined schedule.
The organization separately announced the FOIA-forced production of 27 heavily redacted pages from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in connection with one of its long-running document suits. As is standard with FOIA productions, the underlying material is partially withheld pending continuing litigation, and Judicial Watch has indicated it will challenge specific exemptions.
Election-integrity researchers across the spectrum have noted that “inactive” status is not the same as ineligibility — many of those removed will simply re-register if they vote — but the size of the maintenance backlog raises legitimate questions about how often state rolls are reconciled with U.S. Postal Service change-of-address and Social Security death records. Read it: Judicial Watch announcement.
6. ProPublica / FRONTLINE: Cases Against Anti-ICE Protesters Collapse
ProPublica (nonpartisan; left-leaning by reader perception; foundation-funded) and FRONTLINE released a joint investigation, Caught in the Crackdown, on April 14 examining federal arrests during the Trump administration’s accelerated immigration enforcement operations. Reporters identified more than 300 individuals arrested during ICE and CBP operations and charged with offenses such as assaulting or interfering with federal officers. Court records reviewed by the team show that a substantial share of those prosecutions were declined, dismissed, or collapsed at preliminary stages — often, the reporters found, after body-worn or bystander video contradicted statements in the arresting officers’ affidavits.
The investigation does not allege that all arrests were unfounded; rather, it documents a pattern in which charging documents and prosecutorial outcomes diverged sharply once video evidence surfaced. The reporting team has published the underlying case-by-case dataset and methodology, allowing other newsrooms to validate or extend the findings.
A companion ProPublica piece this month also led six U.S. senators to send a letter accusing Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche of an unaddressed crypto-asset conflict, citing ProPublica’s earlier reporting. Read it: Caught in the Crackdown | FRONTLINE companion.
7. Capital Research Center: DOGE Files Map Federal Grants to Advocacy Groups
Capital Research Center (right-leaning; describes itself as “America’s investigative think tank for the conservative movement”; donors include the Bradley and Searle foundations) advanced its ongoing DOGE Files series this month, mapping federal grant flows to advocacy nonprofits identified by the organization as ideologically aligned. The series cross-references USAspending records against IRS Form 990 filings to surface direct and pass-through awards.
One installment examined federal grants to the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups associated with diversity, equity and inclusion programming, although CRC’s reporting acknowledged that the dollar amounts in the SPLC example were modest. CRC has continued to publish weekly under its InfluenceWatch Friday banner, with the April 24 edition cataloging additional pass-through grants identified through Treasury and HHS award data.
Separately — and not part of the CRC project — the U.S. Department of Justice in April announced criminal charges against the SPLC alleging that donor funds were used to pay individuals embedded in extremist organizations as informants without disclosure. The case is pending; allegations are not findings, and SPLC has indicated it will contest the charges. Read it: About the DOGE Files | InfluenceWatch Friday, April 24, 2026.
8. CRS: Iran Nuclear Program and the FY2026 R&D Topline
The Congressional Research Service (nonpartisan; serves as the in-house research arm of Congress) issued two notable products this month. The first, an updated brief on Iran’s Nuclear Program and UN Sanctions Reimposition (April 6), reviewed snapback procedures, IAEA inspection access, and congressional notification requirements following this year’s sanctions reimposition. The second, Federal Research and Development (R&D) Funding: FY2026, dated April 17, tracked projected agency-by-agency R&D obligations against the President’s request and prior-year enacted levels.
CRS products are not policy recommendations; they are reference documents that members of both parties draw on when drafting legislation. The Iran brief in particular is likely to be cited heavily as Congress considers FY2027 sanctions authorities and any negotiated framework. Read them: Iran Nuclear Program and UN Sanctions Reimposition | Federal R&D Funding FY2026.
What Warrants Deeper TIJ Investigation
Three findings from this week’s roundup deserve sustained reporting rather than a single news cycle. First, the $186 billion improper-payments figure is now within range of full agency budgets — and the GAO’s own caveat that the number is undercounted means the true exposure is plausibly higher. TIJ will examine which agencies’ methodologies systematically exclude high-risk programs from the totals, and which congressional committees have jurisdiction to compel inclusion.
Second, the September 2025 Pentagon obligation surge documented by OpenTheBooks raises a structural question that POGO’s reporting reinforces: when end-of-year obligations exceed the entire monthly average by a factor of three to four, the resulting contracts receive markedly less competitive scrutiny. TIJ will pull contract-level data from FPDS for the September 25–30 window and identify recipients who received multiple sole-source awards in that five-day period.
Third, the divergence between arrest narratives and prosecutorial outcomes in the ProPublica/FRONTLINE dataset is a question with implications well beyond any single administration. Records suggest that even where individual arrests were lawful, the charge-to-conviction differential signals systemic friction between field-officer documentation and U.S. Attorney’s Office screening — friction that is recurring, measurable, and worth monitoring quarter over quarter.
The Investigative Journal will continue to follow these threads. Tips, document leaks, and dataset corrections may be sent to our editor through the secure contact form on tij.news.