Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

20. Department of Veterans Affairs · Major · Needs Congress

Sunset the VA Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection

Not started

653 20. Department of Veterans Affairs

“Work with Congress to sunset the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection (OAWP). OAWP was well intentioned when formed, but it is redundant with the activities of supervisors as well as equal employment opportunity, Office of the Inspector General, Office of Special Counsel, and other policies, programs, and procedures for holding employees accountable.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    OAWP is a creature of statute (38 U.S.C. 323, added by the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017) and only Congress can sunset it. No bill of the 119th Congress proposes to, and nothing in the Federal Register, the White House presidential actions or the budget requests proposes to close or defund the office. The administration has moved the other way: after withdrawing one nomination for the post in May 2025, the President sent up a second nominee, Michael Tierney, to be Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs (Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection), on whom the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs held hearings on 2026-06-03 — filling the office rather than closing it. Both nomination records are congress.gov pages that refuse automated fetches, so they are leads and this Status carries no Evidence.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Negative searches, 2026-08-27:

  • Corpus bills.ndjson / public-laws.ndjson, titles matching Accountability and Whistleblower and whistleblower — twenty whistleblower bills in the 119th Congress, none about VA’s OAWP and none proposing to sunset it.
  • Federal Register API full text, conditions[term]="Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection", publication date on or after 2025-01-20 — one hit, a NARA records-schedule notice (2026-01-15, 2026-00684), which is a routine disposition schedule, not an abolition.
  • Corpus fr-*.ndjson, grep -i 'accountability and whistleblower' — one substantive document, and it is not about the office: OPM’s final rule of 2025-07-25, “Appeal Procedures for Recoupment of Awards, Bonuses, or Relocation Expenses …” (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/07/25/2025-14006/appeal-procedures-for-recoupment-of-awards-bonuses-or-relocation-expenses-awarded-or-approved-for), implements the 2017 Act’s recoupment-appeal provisions. It shows the 2017 statute being built out rather than wound down, but it does not mention OAWP itself, so it is a lead here.
  • Corpus nominations.ndjson: PN26-29 (Cheryl Mason, OAWP) withdrawn 2025-05-06; PN901-09 (Michael Tierney, OAWP) hearings held 2026-06-03. The congress.gov nomination pages refuse automated fetches and neither confirmation went to a roll call, so these are leads, not Evidence.
  • The FY2026 discretionary request and the FY2027 President’s Budget were searched for “OAWP” and “Accountability and Whistleblower”: no hits in either, so no proposal to defund the office.
Action
abolish
Object
Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection (OAWP)
ID
1808