{"id":9633,"date":"2026-01-23T08:16:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T13:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9633"},"modified":"2026-01-23T08:16:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T13:16:50","slug":"the-case-for-cyber-pressure-against-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9633","title":{"rendered":"The Case for Cyber Pressure Against Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"

The expiration of the comptroller general\u2019s term is an opportunity for Congress to reassert itself, or retreat further.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Government Accountability Office entrance. (https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/kevharb\/5314268567; CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/2.0\/).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When drafting the Constitution<\/a>, the framers chose to place control over Americans\u2019 tax dollars with Congress. But from Elon Musk\u2019s chainsaw leadership<\/a> at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought\u2019s unlaw<\/a>ful assertions of power<\/a> to direct agency spending choices, the Trump administration has attempted to displace congressional control through appropriations presidentialism<\/a>. Appropriations presidentialism is the \u201cattempt to change how federal spending works by asserting unilateral, centralized authority to condition, delay, cancel, or otherwise disrupt federal obligations and expenditures without regard to longstanding legal understandings and norms.\u201d In the resulting legal and political fights, the investigations and findings of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office<\/a> (GAO) have been an important bulwark for Congress\u2019s power of the purse. Now, though, GAO may itself become the next battlefield in the fight for the separation of powers.<\/p>\n

Those not steeped in government acronyms may not be familiar with GAO. As Eloise Pasachoff, Craig Schulman, and Angelene Superable document in a recent report<\/a>, GAO is a nonpartisan agency that has long played an important role in protecting the constitutional order by shining a light on complex-but-consequential spending disputes. For example, GAO pointed out legal issues around Obama-era Affordable Care Act payments<\/a> and Biden-era student loan forgiveness<\/a>. <\/p>\n

GAO\u2019s importance in protecting the separation of powers has been proved once again through recent battles over Congress\u2019s power of the purse. First DOGE\u2019s and now OMB\u2019s<\/a> embrace of appropriations presidentialism has led to many dramatic decisions that have kicked off various political and legal controversies. Throughout these controversies, GAO\u2019s opinions have helped Congress, courts, and the American people understand the legality (or illegality) of administration moves, on issues such as the global funding freeze<\/a>, impoundments<\/a>, reductions in force<\/a>, \u201cpocket rescissions<\/a>,\u201d and OMB\u2019s refusal to follow the law on apportionment transparency<\/a>. I have argued elsewhere<\/a> that GAO should be doing even more by using its power to sue over impoundments. (A recent Supreme Court emergency docket ruling suggests<\/a> that in certain cases only GAO has the authority to do so.) Still, GAO has been an important and useful tool in protecting the constitutional order amid the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to dismantle it. <\/p>\n

GAO may itself be the locus of the next major spending fight. On Dec. 29, 2025,<\/a> GAO Comptroller General Eugene Dodaro\u2019s 15-year term expired<\/a>, sending Dodaro into the \u201cwitness protection program\u201d (as he put it in a recent Politico interview<\/a>). What happens next will depend largely on the U.S. Senate and President Trump. The range of outcomes is wide, from continuation of GAO\u2019s independent role to the agency\u2019s elimination to its co-optation as a tool of executive power.<\/p>\n

To start, I do not mean to suggest that I see all of the paths mapped out below as consistent with law or tradition. Rather, on the path laid out by statute, the replacement of the comptroller general should be a relatively uncontroversial, bipartisan exercise. But a theme of 2025 has been the Trump administration\u2019s willingness to chart new paths that break tradition and, in many cases<\/a>, potentially the law. <\/p>\n

Start with the GAO succession path set out by statute. Section 703<\/a> of 31 U.S.C.\u2014the law governing the comptroller general\u2019s succession\u2014provides a process under which (a) the position becomes vacant as soon as Dodaro\u2019s term expires, (b) an acting comptroller general appointed by Dodaro on his way out from among the GAO\u2019s senior employees takes over (Dodaro has appointed Orice Williams Brown<\/a> to this role), and (c) a bipartisan congressional commission recommends a slate of at least three candidates, from whom Trump nominates one who becomes the next comptroller general if confirmed by the Senate. <\/p>\n

So if this process goes as laid out in the statute, the GAO will be run by an acting comptroller general for anything from a few months to a few years while Congress develops bipartisan recommendations. President Trump picks a successor to nominate from the slate recommended by the bipartisan congressional commission, and then the Senate confirms that nominee. <\/p>\n

A bipartisan appointment for the GAO comptroller general could be a win for everyone\u2014Trump demonstrates respect for the Constitution and course corrects from Musk\u2019s and Vought\u2019s excesses without directly impacting his policy priorities, incumbents secure a major bipartisan accomplishment, and the American people get more stability and accountability in a world that feels unstable.<\/p>\n

But it is also possible that those in the Trump administration who prefer to play hardball<\/a> to increase executive power will win Trump\u2019s ear, as they have so often been able to do in the past year. Rather than the traditional, bipartisan path described above, the Trump administration might ignore any bipartisan slate of candidates and attempt to force through a loyalist candidate hand-selected by the president without regard to Congress\u2019s bipartisan recommendations. <\/p>\n

If the president nominates a loyalist of his own choosing rather than a candidate with bipartisan support, Republicans in the Senate could choose to confirm the president\u2019s pick, further consolidating the executive branch\u2019s power. Alternatively, if the Senate refused to confirm the president\u2019s pick and Trump refused to nominate another candidate, then the office of comptroller general could remain officially leaderless for years. If this were to happen, the GAO would be operated by the acting comptroller general until the stalemate between the president and Congress came to an end. <\/p>\n

This has happened before. During President Clinton\u2019s second term, James Hinchman\u2014selected by Charles Bowsher as his term expired\u2014served for 25 months<\/a> as acting comptroller general. Dodaro himself also served as acting comptroller general for 19 months after the conclusion of David Walker\u2019s term in the last year of the George W. Bush administration. <\/p>\n

In short, if the president chooses to play hardball but Republicans in the Senate do not play along, one might assume that the GAO would simply be operated for months or even years\u2014however long the stalemate went on\u2014by the acting comptroller general. That\u2019s certainly possible, but it\u2019s not inevitable. Consider five facts: (1) The first Trump administration repeatedly attempted to obstruct<\/a> GAO investigations by refusing to comply with the office\u2019s requests; (2) the second Trump administration has repeatedly sought to undermine or dismantle<\/a> independent agencies; (3) Vought has described GAO as a \u201cquasi-legislative agency\u201d that \u201cshould not exist<\/a>\u201d; (4) conservative public interest organization America First Legal\u2014the founder and president<\/a> of which is senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller\u2014is currently suing GAO<\/a>, arguing it is an executive agency; and (5) the Trump administration\u2019s previous attempts at an executive branch takeover of the Library of Congress faltered only because of Republican pushback<\/a> in Congress.<\/p>\n

If the administration decides to play hardball, it will use Dodaro\u2019s departure to reject the constitutional authority of any acting comptroller general\u2014either immediately after Dodaro\u2019s term ends or after a span of weeks or months in the resulting nomination negotiations. The administration might also instruct agencies to disregard GAO\u2019s investigative requests, similar to its instruction to agencies to ignore GAO legal opinions<\/a> during the first Trump administration. To be clear, I do not mean to suggest that there would be persuasive constitutional defenses for such a break with tradition (I can speculate about aggressive theories targeting the constitutional outer bounds<\/a> on the tenure of acting appointees), but the merit of any such theory might not matter if the administration acted on it and no one had standing to challenge it in court. In other words, this path could become a blockbuster legal fight over whether Congress\u2019s watchdog will continue to exist.<\/p>\n

Perhaps counterintuitively, these two paths are related. The Trump administration\u2019s demonstrated willingness to play hardball gives it an edge in negotiations. Senators, therefore, might be tempted to accept a less-than-adequate nominee from the president in order to avoid a dramatic legal challenge and preserve the GAO as an independent force. <\/p>\n

So what can concerned members of Congress rooting for the preservation of separation of powers and bipartisanship do? Rather than wait for the president to play or threaten a hardball strategy, then react if he does with surprise and alarm, members of Congress can begin developing their own creative countermeasures. Members of Congress could develop bipartisan support for proposals<\/a> to bring the comptroller general nomination fully within the legislative branch. Moreover, even without bipartisanship or leadership support, individual members could respond to the Trump administration\u2019s ongoing attack on the GAO by quickly and unilaterally launching their own initiatives. One possibility would be one or more quasi-private Government Accountability Units, staffed by volunteer retired and departed federal workers who could provide constituent services to the increasing number of companies, local governments, communities, and non-profit organizations facing abrupt cancellations in grants or contracts without the resources to navigate an investigation (using the Freedom of Information Act) or litigation (using the Administrative Procedure Act) that could provide them with relief and safeguard Congress\u2019s power of the purse. Or there might be other ideas that could make an impact and be accomplished by even a small handful of representatives or senators, without the need for leadership approval, funding, or legislation. If the executive branch plays hardball, ready-to-implement legislative hardball countermeasures could lessen the harm to the separation of powers. And simply having such countermeasures in development during negotiations might itself encourage the president to move forward on a bipartisan basis.<\/p>\n

– Matthew B. Lawrence is Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Faculty at Emory University School of Law. Published courtesy of Lawfare<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The expiration of the comptroller general\u2019s term is an opportunity for Congress to reassert itself, or retreat further. When drafting the Constitution, the framers chose to place control over Americans\u2019 tax dollars with Congress. But from Elon Musk\u2019s chainsaw leadership at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought\u2019s unlawful assertions of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":9634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/lawfare-assets-new.azureedge.net\/assets\/images\/default-source\/article-images\/government-accountability-office-sign-gao.jpg?sfvrsn=af5a360e_5","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9635,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9633\/revisions\/9635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}