Everyone is fretting about the cast of characters Donald Trump is nominating to help him Make America Great Again. Great, and a bit lighter, thinner, leaner, and (hopefully) Less expensive. All of that is what has the blob and it’s minions in a tizzy. They like their fat and the influence that follows, so any threat to their “way of life” is a reason to panic. Yes, they will try to tie everyone up in the legal system, but there’s a lot the Chief Executive Can do that they can’t stop, including getting the appointments he wants on the job as soon as possible.
Recess Appointments
Everyone, including the never-Trumpers, is babbling about the constitutionality of recess appointments. But when Congress is not in session, the constitution allows for recess appointments, which are no different than the ones that follow the star chamber treatment or made for TV interrogations. Just ask the Constitution. That doesn’t stop people of a certain mindset from saying otherwise, but the clear language suggests any legal challenge will fail, and not just because past presidents in both parties have used recess appointments, sometimes to place hundreds of people into jobs in the Executive Branch.
Even Obama did it!
So what’s the plan? If you like weeds, read this, but here’s the opening paragraph.
Given the extensive delays experienced during his first administration in getting the Senate to approve his nominees expeditiously, President-elect Donald Trump recently proposed the use of recess appointments, if necessary, to briskly stand up his new administration early next year. The question is whether the law and our history confirms the President’s belief that he should be allowed to assemble his Cabinet quickly via recess appointments? The answer is “yes.”
The question then is how, when, and how long. The constitutional answer is as long as Mr. Trump thinks it is required.
The Framers very deliberately bestowed upon the President authority to adjourn the Congress when the two Houses of that body disagreed about whether to take a recess. Indeed, they are prevented from returning to their duties until the President deems that return to be fitting:
“[The President] may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.”18
Trump can recess Congress for (at least ten days), after which he and all of his appointments, at his discretion, may assume office with the full faith and power provided to them, knowing the Constitution permits and affirms this.
The media will lose its f**king mind, but that’s just more grist for the mill, likely to inspire a number of challenges none of which will stand any chance of surviving.
This appointment strategy is wickedly smart. It took everyone by surprise. It evidences a stratospheric level of planning and master-level chess-playing by the Trump Team. Trump is getting some of the best legal advice I have ever seen. No wonder he is being so bold in his nominations, as if he’s not giving a single thought to the political considerations of nominating people that a majority of the Senate will go along with.
In a Fox News interview on Sunday, Speaker Johnson refused to rule out helping Trump evade the Senate. “There may be a function for that,” he said suggestively. “We’ll have to see how it plays out.”
In other words, Trump doesn’t need the Senate. He has Mike Johnson and the House of Representatives in his pocket. And since the Senate knows it, President Trump probably won’t even have to play his ace cards. For an even more mind-blowing experience, cast your mind back over the last four years, and recall how hard Trump has worked to get into this position of having a friendly Speaker and a MAGA Congress.
The real question is not if but how. Mr. Trump loves to make a deal, and having this power is the sort of leverage that motivates him. He has his priorities, and they have theirs, and he’s not beyond giving them something in exchange for not recessing Congress to get his next Administration up and running as quickly as possible.
As it pertains to the electoral mandate, Americans should want and expect this change agent they voted for to have his toolbox full as soon as possible. They will not likely appreciate internecine warfare as blob puppets like Murkowski and Collins (to name two) nit-pick every name Trump Advances. Congress can, after all, try to impeach any of them at its discretion—from which there is no return.
So, why not give Trump what he wants as quickly as a Republican congress should be expected to manage, and if they do something truly egregious, bring articles of impeachment? The Democrats would do it on day one for no reason at all, so, you see, there’s leverage on both sides.
One more point: The Senate has only recently adopted the made-for-TV Executive office nominee confirmation circus. The precedent suggests a simple up or down vote on the floor was more than adequate, but politicians love TV, so don’t expect any change in practice.
