The post-election presidential transition period is relatively short — Donald Trump is inaugurated in just 70 days — and there is a tremendous amount of work to do to ensure a smooth transition of power between governments. Even competent elected presidents who worry about governing find the challenges daunting.
All things considered, though, the last thing Trump needs to worry about is the Senate confirmation of his nominees. The Republican majority will likely have 53 members in the new Congress, and there will be nothing the Democratic minority – or even the so-called “moderate” faction of the Republican Party – can do to stop the Senate from being a rubber stamp for the upcoming elections. The White House administrative selections.
And yet this issue apparently preoccupies the president-elect. NBC News reported:
Newly elected President Donald Trump publicly became involved in the battle for leadership in the Senate for the first time on Sunday. He wrote on Truth Social that anyone running to become the next Senate majority leader must agree to let him make recess appointments to his Cabinet.
The current Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is about to resign after seventeen years in office. Three Republicans — John Thune of South Dakota, John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida — are vying to succeed him, and by most accounts Thune is the frontrunner, although Scott has received enthusiastic support from a variety of right-wing figures. including Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck and Charlie Kirk. (The leader will be chosen by private vote, so members don’t have to worry about backlash.)
It was against this backdrop that Trump turned to his social media platform to make an unexpected call. “Every Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we cannot get people confirmed in a timely manner,” the President-elect wrote.
I suspect many political observers have forgotten what recess appointments actually are, and for good reason: It’s been a while since they were relevant.
The basic idea is that the Constitution gives a president the authority to appoint emergency personnel when Congress is not in session. Numerous White Houses have tried to play fast and loose with this power, but in 2014 a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court strengthened lawmakers’ hand.
Moreover, legislatures have held pro forma sessions in recent decades precisely to prevent presidents from making appointments without congressional approval.
Trump apparently finds this unacceptable.
Predictably, McConnell’s would-be Republican Party successors responded to the president-elect’s message by issuing statements designed to make Trump happy and providing new evidence that too many Republicans in Congress are willing to to act as employees of Trump, rather than elected officials serving in an equal position. branch of government.
But let’s not miss the forest for the trees: Five days after he won a second term, one of Trump’s first priorities was to target a basic element of checks and balances. Despite the circumstances that will ensure that all of his nominees are confirmed anyway, regardless of merit or qualification, the incoming Republican president wants more authority to bypass the Senate altogether and simply install whomever he wants into powerful posts.
When many of us warned before Election Day that Trump, operating on an authoritarian platform, would take deliberate steps to undermine democracy if he prevailed, we weren’t kidding.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
