– 19 entries
Trump Administration No-Bid and Irregular Contracts
Multiple federal agencies have repeatedly awarded contracts outside normal competitive process — sole-source awards, bypassed bidding, and deals steered to administration-linked parties — spanning the Coast Guard, National Park Service, Pentagon, and DHS. The episode collects the administration's pattern of procurement irregularities across agencies.
Across multiple agencies the Trump administration has repeatedly awarded federal contracts outside normal competitive process — no-bid awards, bidding bypasses, above-market buys, and contracts steered to administration-linked parties. Recorded instances span the U.S. Coast Guard (three sole-source, single-offer contracts worth a combined $3.3 billion for the 11-ship Arctic Security Cutter program, awarded to Bollinger Shipyards and Rauma Marine Constructions in December 2025 and to Davie Defense in February 2026), the National Park Service and Interior (a $6.9M no-bid Reflecting Pool contract, a contract extension to dodge bidding on a planned Triumphal Arch, a redesign of D.C.'s East Potomac golf links), the Pentagon (a $24M no-bid humanoid-robot contract to a firm where Eric Trump is chief strategy adviser), and DHS/ICE (a $25M no-bid iris-scanner contract and an Inspector General audit of detention-warehouse buys made well above market value). This is a running episode that collects the administration's pattern of procurement irregularities; it should accrue new contract entries as they arrive.
2026 Events (17)
ProPublica investigation reveals Army paid General Dynamics $533 million under no-bid contract for Texas plant that produced zero usable shells
A ProPublica investigation published August 12, 2026 found that the U.S. Army paid General Dynamics $533 million under no-bid "undefinitized contracting action" awards for a Mesquite, Texas artillery-shell plant that never produced a single usable 155mm shell in the roughly two years since it opened in May 2024. Congress had suspended competitive-bidding safeguards for Ukraine-related weapons production in December 2022, and despite the plant's total production failure the Army imposed no penalties, continued making progress payments, and General Dynamics went on to receive $2.5 billion in new contract awards.
HHS awarded a $150 million sole-source contract to a firm founded by Trump EPA/Interior appointees for migrant children's legal defense
On August 4, 2026, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement filed a Federal Register notice announcing intent to award a one-year, $150 million single-source cooperative agreement to Burke Law Group, a 26-employee Houston firm with no immigration-law practice area, to represent roughly 24,000 unaccompanied immigrant children in immigration court. The firm's founder, Marcella Burke, is a former Trump EPA and Interior Department appointee; co-founding partner Jeffrey Hall left the firm in late 2025 after Senate confirmation to lead an EPA enforcement office. The award follows the August 1, 2026 lapse of a longstanding, unpaid contract with a network of roughly 100 nonprofit legal-aid organizations that had represented the children for over two decades.
ICE extended Amentum's no-bid $776M contract to keep Camp East Montana open through 2027
On July 22, 2026, ICE published a notice extending without competitive bidding the contract of Amentum Services Inc. to keep operating Camp East Montana, the nation's largest immigration detention facility at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, through September 30, 2027, at a potential added cost of $776 million; the Associated Press first reported the extension on July 27, 2026. The extension came despite a July 15, 2026 Human Rights Watch/ACLU report documenting beatings, medical neglect, and at least one death in custody at the facility, and calls from congressional Democrats and advocacy groups to close it.
Washington Post investigation revealed Trump awarded $500M no-bid White House ballroom contract, bypassing competitive bidding
A Washington Post investigation published June 30, 2026 revealed that the Trump White House awarded a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million to Clark Construction for a new East Wing ballroom, routing the deal through the Executive Residence — a White House entity exempt from federal competitive bidding requirements. Trump personally selected the contractor and negotiated project costs, including a $2.3 million reduction in concrete pricing. White House Office of Administration Director Joshua Fisher justified bypassing competitive bids by claiming that disclosing the project's procurement needs would "compromise the national security."
GAO finds ICE wasted up to $11.5M and endangered detainees in rushed Camp East Montana launch
On June 9, 2026, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report (GAO-26-108886) finding that ICE rushed the opening of Camp East Montana, the nation's largest immigration detention facility and a tent camp at the Army's Fort Bliss base in El Paso, wasting up to $11.5 million during its first two weeks in August 2025 while the camp sat empty. The watchdog found ICE awarded a roughly $1.3 billion operating contract to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a firm with no detention experience, and documented unsafe conditions including a contract guard's loss of a loaded firearm that was never recovered and the contractor's failure to provide required use-of-force and death reports. ICE terminated the Acquisition Logistics contract in March after three detainee deaths, a measles outbreak, and mounting human-rights allegations.
DHS awards $25M no-bid contract to BI2 for 1,500+ iris scanners to identify immigrants
On May 22, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security awarded BI2 Technologies a $25.1 million no-bid contract for more than 1,500 iris-scanning devices and continuous access to BI2's biometric database of more than five million booking records — roughly five times the value and nearly eight times the device count of DHS's prior September 2025 contract with the Massachusetts firm. The procurement did not require the system to clear FedRAMP, the federal cloud-security review for systems handling sensitive data, and the award documents described no independent audit, no congressional notification, and no outside review of how scans would be retained, shared, or matched. ICE plans to deploy the devices to Enforcement and Removal Operations agents for field use by late June.
DHS Inspector General opens audit of ICE warehouse-detention buys made about 13% above market value across multiple states
On May 14, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General announced an audit of whether U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acquired warehouse properties — being converted into detention facilities under a multibillion-dollar program launched by then-Secretary Kristi Noem and adviser Corey Lewandowski — "in a cost-effective manner." Real-estate data tracker CoStar found DHS paid an average of about 13% above market value for warehouses across multiple states; aggregate spending on the warehouse program has been reported at about $1 billion across eight states. The OIG also opened a separate investigation of Mr. Lewandowski's role as a special government employee.
Interior Secretary Burgum unveils a Tom Fazio redesign of D.C.'s East Potomac Golf Links
On May 14, 2026, U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum publicly unveiled, via his official @SecretaryBurgum account, a Tom Fazio design for the federally led renovation of East Potomac Golf Links, a century-old District of Columbia municipal course. Fazio Golf Design is the firm of architect Tom Fazio, who designed President Donald Trump's Trump National Golf Club Bedminster and has worked on multiple other Trump courses; Trump and Burgum will jointly oversee the East Potomac redesign. The arrangement follows the December 2025 termination by the Trump administration of the National Links Trust's 50-year lease covering East Potomac, Langston, and Rock Creek and a May 2026 National Park Service deal placing the East Potomac renovation under an NPS-led group of public and private partners rather than the NLT.
U.S. Air Force agreed to buy interceptor drones from Powerus, a startup backed by Trump's sons
On April 30, 2026, Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Air Force agreed to buy an undisclosed number of interceptor drones from Powerus, a West Palm Beach-based drone startup backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. through their Aureus Greenway Holdings investment vehicle. The deal extended the Pentagon's contracting ties to companies linked to the Trump family at a moment when Democratic lawmakers had already warned the Defense Department had no protocols to prevent conflicts of interest with the president's sons. Sen. Elizabeth Warren had formally pressed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for answers on the issue in January and March 2026, receiving responses that failed to address potential favoritism.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection awarded Barnard Construction a $1.6 billion no-bid border-wall contract citing urgency
On April 24, 2026, U.S. Customs and Border Protection awarded Barnard Construction Company — a Montana firm chaired by Trump donor Tim Barnard — a $1.6 billion contract to build roughly 112.5 miles of secondary border wall in the El Paso Sector, without competitive bidding. Federal records list "urgency" as the justification for bypassing competition and show that cost and pricing data were waived. The award was part of a broader pattern in which CBP steered most new Texas and New Mexico wall contract value to two of eleven pre-approved vendors.
Pentagon awards $24M humanoid-robot contract to Foundation Future Industries, where Eric Trump is chief strategy adviser
The U.S. Department of Defense awarded approximately $24 million in research contracts (across the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force) to Foundation Future Industries, a San Francisco robotics startup whose chief strategy adviser is Eric Trump, son of sitting President Donald Trump. On April 23, 2026, Eric Trump appeared on Fox Business's "Mornings with Maria" alongside Foundation CEO Sankaet Pathak to publicly tout the deal, and Democracy Now! reported on his promotion of it the following day. The contracts fund testing of the company's "Phantom" humanoid robots for military applications, with two Phantom MK-1 units sent to Ukraine in February 2026 for logistics and reconnaissance testing.
Park Service extends White House AECOM contract to bypass bidding on Trump's Triumphal Arch
On April 22, 2026, National Park Service acting director Jessica Bowron asked the White House whether NPS could extend an existing AECOM Services contract for White House grounds engineering to cover environmental-assessment work for President Trump's proposed 250-foot Triumphal Arch — a site on Park Service land across the Potomac River, more than a mile from the White House complex. Heather Martin, an Executive Office of the President official, approved the request within an hour. Internal emails obtained by The Washington Post and published May 14, 2026 show the arrangement would bypass federal competitive-bidding requirements; the Park Service estimated the arch work at $600,000, and contracting experts said the administration's Economy Act citation stretches a statute meant for agencies that lack procurement capability.
National Park Service gave Trump donor's firm a second no-bid contract months after its Tijuana River pilot failed
On April 3, 2026, the National Park Service awarded Greenwater Services — a water-treatment company owned through a trust led by Trump donor John J. Cafaro — a $1.7 million no-bid contract to install an ozone "nanobubble" filtration system at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, citing the same urgency exemption it used the same day to award a separate no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings. It was Greenwater's second no-bid federal contract: about a year earlier, the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission had hired the company to pilot the same technology in the sewage-contaminated Tijuana River, a project independent scientists and a longtime river-restoration official say failed and worsened conditions, despite the company's and government's public claims of success.
National Park Service awards $6.9M no-bid Reflecting Pool contract to a Trump-chosen firm
On April 3, 2026, the National Park Service awarded a $6.9 million no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings — a Virginia firm that had never previously held a federal contract — to resurface the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and paint its basin blue. President Donald Trump said he personally selected the firm, citing its work on his private swimming pools, and the administration invoked a competitive-bidding exemption reserved for urgent situations without claiming the injury that exemption requires, citing instead Trump's wish to finish before the July 4 celebration of the nation's 250th anniversary. Government documents reported by The New York Times indicate the cost has already more than tripled the roughly $2 million Trump publicly promised and could exceed $12 million.
Trump administration steered no-bid federal contracts worth up to $118M to Jan. 6 rally planner's firm Event Strategies
A March 18, 2026 New York Times report, later detailed in a July 2, 2026 House Natural Resources Committee Democratic staff oversight report, found that Event Strategies Inc.—an events firm formerly led by January 6 rally planner Justin Caporale—received an indefinite-delivery federal master contract worth up to $100 million plus more than $18 million in State Department contracts tied to the America250/Freedom250 anniversary events, all awarded outside competitive bidding. The State Department contracts, described blandly as "event planning" and "event support," listed the U.S. Chief of Protocol's office under Ambassador Monica Crowley as the funding office. Since the start of 2025 the firm had received 18 federal contracts connected to the semiquincentennial.
Coast Guard sole-sourced $957 million Arctic icebreaker contract to Davie Defense without competitive bidding
On February 10, 2026, the U.S. Coast Guard awarded a sole-source, single-offer contract worth $957 million to Davie Defense Inc. for five Arctic Security Cutters, citing a public-interest exception rather than competing the work. The award completed an 11-ship, roughly $3.3 billion program that followed President Trump's personal push for a larger icebreaker fleet than the Coast Guard had itself requested; the program's first two contracts, awarded to Bollinger Shipyards and Rauma Marine Constructions on December 26, 2025, are recorded separately.
National Park Service awarded ballroom contractor Clark Construction a no-bid $17.4M Lafayette Park fountain contract
In January 2026, the National Park Service awarded Clark Construction Group — the contractor also building President Trump's East Wing White House ballroom — a sole-source, no-bid contract to repair two Lafayette Park fountains, invoking an urgency exemption normally reserved for emergencies. The award grew from a 2022 government estimate of $3.3 million to $17.4 million, with contracting specialists identifying irregularities including double-counted inflation costs.
2025 Events (2)
Coast Guard sole-sourced $2.39 billion in Arctic icebreaker contracts to Bollinger and Rauma without competitive bidding
On December 26, 2025, the U.S. Coast Guard awarded sole-source, single-offer contracts worth a combined $2.39 billion to Bollinger Shipyards and Rauma Marine Constructions for six Arctic Security Cutters, citing a public-interest exception rather than competing the work. The awards were the first two of an 11-ship, roughly $3.3 billion program that followed President Trump's personal push for a larger icebreaker fleet than the Coast Guard had itself requested; the program's third contract, awarded to Davie Defense on February 10, 2026, is recorded separately.
Coast Guard awards $172M no-bid contract for two Gulfstream G700 jets for DHS Secretary Noem and leadership
On October 17, 2025, the U.S. Coast Guard approved a $172 million no-bid contract — with a total estimated cost of $200 million — to purchase two Gulfstream G700 private jets for use by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and other DHS leadership, even as a government shutdown had halted other federal services. DHS had previously sought funding for a single aircraft at a projected cost of $50 million; the no-bid contract for two jets at four times that estimate drew immediate criticism from House Appropriations Democrats, who alleged the purchase was made to benefit Noem personally.