The Investigative Journal’s weekly survey of watchdog reports, data drops, and oversight findings worth your attention. This week’s docket is heavy on dollars — improper payments topping $186 billion, a $78 billion VA acquisition portfolio under scrutiny, and a hidden room of FBI records that took years to surface.
1. GAO: Improper Federal Payments Hit $186 Billion in FY2025
The Government Accountability Office reported that fifteen federal agencies estimated approximately $186 billion in improper payments across 64 programs in fiscal year 2025 — a $24 billion increase over the prior year. According to GAO-26-108694, overpayments accounted for roughly 82 percent of the total, or about $153 billion. Five program areas — Medicare, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Program — accounted for 73 percent of the estimate.
The figure understates the problem. GAO notes the $186 billion does not include programs agencies have themselves flagged as susceptible to significant improper payments, including the Department of Health and Human Services’ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Inspectors general found that half of the 24 agencies generating 99 percent of the improper-payment total did not fully comply with the Payment Integrity Information Act in fiscal year 2024.
GAO is a nonpartisan legislative-branch agency. The findings appear in GAO’s flagship annual payment-integrity report and are corroborated by independent reporting in Government Executive and Federal News Network. The dataset is downloadable in spreadsheet form via GAO’s Fraud & Improper Payments portal.
2. GAO: VA Acquisition Reorganization “Should Reflect Leading Practices”
In a report released May 6, GAO-26-108474 examined the Department of Veterans Affairs’ acquisition portfolio — one of the largest in the federal government — which obligated more than $78 billion in fiscal year 2025. Records suggest VA reduced its contracting staff by approximately 15 percent between April and November 2025, even as the department reorganized its acquisition function.
GAO warns that the reorganization risks missing its mark unless VA addresses longstanding weaknesses in strategy, workforce planning, supply-chain management, and oversight. The companion report, GAO-26-107792, focuses on VA’s spending to purchase and maintain high-tech medical equipment such as MRI machines, finding opportunities to improve maintenance-services acquisition.
For veterans, the practical question is whether reorganization tightens or loosens the link between the dollars VA obligates and the care those dollars actually deliver. GAO’s recommendations land at a moment when contracting capacity has been thinned and equipment-maintenance backlogs have grown.
3. GAO: Federal Contract Obligations Top $793 Billion in FY2025
A government-wide contracting dashboard posted by GAO on May 5 shows the federal government committed approximately $793 billion on contracts in fiscal year 2025 — a $17.8 billion increase over fiscal year 2024. The interactive dashboard breaks obligations by agency, product/service code, contract type, and small-business set-aside status. Data is sourced from the Federal Procurement Data System.
The growth trajectory matters because contract spending is where appropriated dollars meet private vendors, and where most procurement-integrity risk concentrates. The dashboard is one of the more useful open datasets federal oversight has produced this year and warrants standing attention from procurement reporters.
4. GAO: DOE Spent-Fuel Plan for Naval Reactors Stuck in Limbo
Released May 7, GAO-26-107969 examined the Department of Energy’s Advanced Test Reactor in Idaho, which produces the testing data used to qualify fuel for the U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered fleet. GAO found DOE has not approved a long-term plan for managing spent fuel from the reactor, creating a bottleneck for fuel-qualification work that supports submarine and carrier propulsion.
A companion finding in GAO-26-108056 describes how DOE’s Office of Naval Reactors collaborated with the department’s environmental cleanup office to manage contamination — an arrangement GAO credits with saving time and money. Together, the reports surface a tension that has dogged the Navy’s nuclear enterprise for years: testing capacity and waste-disposition decisions are coupled, and a delay in one cascades into the other.
5. ProPublica: Federal Probe Into Puerto Rico Drugs-for-Votes Scheme Quashed
On May 8, ProPublica reported that federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico were instructed by supervisors to exclude voting-related charges from a forthcoming indictment against members of the prison gang known as Los Tiburones. According to ProPublica’s reporting, gang leaders allegedly sold drugs to inmates in exchange for absentee votes cast for now-Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón, a Republican and Trump ally.
The reporting indicates the instruction came in the days following the 2024 election, as prosecutors prepared the indictment. Federal and local lawmakers in Puerto Rico, along with civil-rights organizations, have called for investigations. The findings are described as allegations; no charges related to the alleged vote-buying scheme have been filed, and the underlying matter remains in early stages.
ProPublica is a nonprofit investigative newsroom funded by foundation grants and individual donors; it leans left-of-center in topic selection but is methodologically rigorous and well sourced. The Puerto Rico series joins the Pulitzer Prize–winning Connecticut towing investigation as part of the outlet’s recent accountability portfolio.
6. Judicial Watch: FBI Discloses 1.9 Million Pages in “Hidden Room”
Judicial Watch — a conservative legal-watchdog group that uses FOIA litigation as its primary investigative tool — reports that the FBI has now acknowledged approximately 1.9 million pages of records responsive to a long-running FOIA lawsuit, with the documents reportedly stored in what former Deputy Director Dan Bongino described as a “hidden room” at FBI headquarters. A federal court ordered the bureau to disclose, by a May 11 filing, how many high-level internal FBI communications and directives exist concerning the handling of those records.
The development is significant for two reasons. First, the volume of newly surfaced records — if the FBI’s count holds up — implies a substantial backlog of responsive material that was not processed within statutory FOIA timelines. Second, the court’s order to document internal communications creates an audit trail of how the records were handled, which is itself a discrete oversight question.
Judicial Watch is funded primarily by individual conservative donors; readers should weigh its framing accordingly. The procedural facts — the existence of the records cache and the court order — are documented on the federal docket and reported independently.
7. POGO Takes Over the Center for Public Integrity’s Archives
On May 5, the Project On Government Oversight announced it would serve as the new home for the archives and intellectual property of the Center for Public Integrity, which is winding down operations after more than three decades. The asset transfer ensures CPI’s investigative body of work — including the Panama Papers and ICIJ-precursor reporting CPI seeded — remains publicly accessible.
POGO describes itself as a nonpartisan oversight organization; its funding draws from a mix of foundations across the ideological spectrum. The CPI absorption consolidates a meaningful share of post-1990 accountability journalism under a single steward and reduces the risk that decades of investigative source material disappear behind a paywall or dark-archive.
8. Congressional Research Service: Reports Worth a Closer Read
CRS does not investigate; it synthesizes for Congress. But its products are frequently the first authoritative read on emerging policy questions. Notable items from the past two weeks, accessible via crsreports.congress.gov, include a May 8 explainer on Community Development Block Grants for Disaster Recovery, a May 8 primer on congressional nominations to the U.S. service academies, and an early-May analysis of the Department of Justice’s April 23 order rescheduling certain medical-marijuana products to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act.
The rescheduling report, in particular, walks through Section 280E tax implications and federal research barriers — both areas where CRS framing is likely to shape committee-level policy debate over the summer.
What Warrants Deeper TIJ Investigation
Three threads from this week’s docket are candidates for follow-up reporting. First, the $186 billion improper-payments figure is presented as a top-line number, but the agency-by-agency PIIA compliance gap — half of the largest reporters failing at least one criterion — is the more actionable story. A program-level breakdown of which agencies are out of compliance, and on which criteria, is a tractable data project using GAO’s underlying tables and OMB submissions.
The second is VA acquisition. A 15 percent staff reduction in contracting personnel during an active reorganization is the kind of operational fact that tends to surface in oversight reports months before it surfaces as a service-delivery failure for veterans. Data shows VA obligated more than $78 billion in contracts in FY2025; tracing where the workforce reductions hit hardest — and what categories of acquisition slipped — is worth a sustained reporting effort.
The third is the FBI records cache. Filings indicate roughly 1.9 million pages are now in scope; the court order on internal-communications disclosure should produce a discrete document set by mid-May. TIJ will track the May 11 filing and report what the chain-of-custody documents say about how the records were stored, processed, and previously withheld.
This roundup draws from GAO, CRS, federal Offices of Inspector General, ProPublica, POGO, and Judicial Watch. Organizations are noted with their political orientation and funding base for transparency. Every factual claim is sourced to a public record or original reporting; allegations are noted as such. The Investigative Journal welcomes corrections at editor@tij.news.
Compiled by Eduardo Bacci, Editor
The Investigative Journal — tij.news