Is Your Organization Prepared When the Next Congress Starts Asking Questions?
If your organization received significant federal funding in 2025 or 2026, start preparing now for the questions coming in 2027 and 2028.
Since January 2025, this administration has handed out federal contracts, awards, and grants with less oversight than any before it, of either party. Organizations moved fast and asked few questions. That era is ending, and the accounting is about to begin.
Democrats have said plainly they learned from the first term of this administration: no early push for impeachment. Instead, the incoming majority is focused on affordability, as it should be, and on assessing the damage done over the past two years. That means following the money. As a Democratic majority widens its inquiries, every organization that received significant federal funding in 2025 and 2026 becomes fair game.
In all likelihood, this administration and its closest allies will face scrutiny first, in early 2027. But it will not stop there.
Fast and loose has been the rule so far, but no lobbyist, advisor, or general counsel can excuse an organization for failing to confirm it met the terms of its funding and complied with federal law generally. The organization that hopes to whistle through the graveyard and escape congressional scrutiny is the one most likely to end up embarrassed, at risk of losing its funding, and facing legal, investor, and public backlash.
My advice is simple: start asking the tough questions internally, now. Ask them before someone in a committee hearing asks them for you.
Get Your House in Order
That starts with compliance. Confirm you met the terms of every dollar you accepted. Then look at your government relations bench. Do you know where those relationships stand? Do you know what is left to build? You need someone on your team who knows how to speak to committee members, their staff, and, in particular, those new members riding in on a wave fueled by anger and distrust.
The goal is a line of communication with the people with authority and interest, before Congress calls the organization in and lifts the curtain in public on how taxpayer money was spent. Your GR team should be ahead of any question from a committee or a member, working to ease any concern before it becomes part of a larger hearing.
Prepare Like It Is a Hearing
Oftentimes the strongest defender an organization has is the staff member your GR team briefed months earlier, the one with enough context to speak up for you when committee members start asking their own staff questions.
In my time on Capitol Hill and on campaigns, I prepared members for the toughest, most direct questions they would face. That is what your organization needs now: debate prep, hearing prep, and on-paper answers to the questions that are coming.
Leadership may call this premature, or call it handwringing over a problem that does not exist yet. They will thank you the first time an inquiry arrives and you are ready for it.
How We Can Help
If you are unsure where to start, what compliance actually requires, which relationships to build now, or how to respond when that first email hits your inbox, that is what Headwind Strategies does. We guide organizations through the compliance, the messaging, the outreach, and the response needed to stay out of the headlines and keep moving forward.
The window to prepare is open now. It will not stay open long.
Ryan Mann is the founder of Headwind Strategies LLC, a Sacramento-based government and public affairs advisory firm.