Trump’s pressure campaign in Washington reveals that “the Senate is going to hell” with procedural and constitutionality violations after Thune’s confirmation vote

With Trump there is always the question of raising the stakes as a way of shifting the negotiation to more favorable grounds without really having to go through with everything he’s saying,” Wallach said.

His pressure campaign is already underway, with Trump posting on social media ahead of the Senate Republican leader election earlier this week that a majority leader “must agree” to allow for recess appointments if his nominees otherwise stall out during the confirmation process. The three candidates in the leader race quickly agreed it would be an option, and the winner, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., reiterated publicly on Thursday that “all options are on the table.”

The president may adjourn the Senate and House in exchange for respecting the time of adjournments, according to the Constitution.

But procedure and constitutionality is one thing — entirely separate from a messaging fight that Trump could wage from the White House. And the fact that this is being debated in Washington — with all the murky procedural waters — underscores just how much Trump seems primed for this fight.

“Simply passing the bill and sending it to the Senate and the Senate doing nothing doesn’t mean the Senate disagrees with your bill, it means the Senate’s ignoring you,” Wallner said. The House cannot force a state of disagreement in the Senate. Only the Senate can do that by acting on whatever the House sends them.”

The House would need to approve an adjournment resolution, the Senate would need to amend the bill and then send it to the House for a disagreement, according to him.

James Wallner is a senior fellow at R Street, a think tank focused on public policy through limited government. This is not going to happen.

The Senate, the House, and the Senate. What is a disagreement between the chambers? When does a senator really decide what to do?

For example, congressional parliamentary experts disagree on what constitutes a formal disagreement between chambers. Some told NPR the Senate would need to send a formal resolution back to the House — others said the mere fact that whatever House adjournment resolution gets sent to the Senate doesn’t pass the Senate is indication that there’s disagreement.

“It’s not something that’s ever happened in American history. “It smacks of the model that America was trying to shake off back in the day” said Wallach. “The idea that a king can prorogue parliament. If you had the members of one chamber screaming bloody murder while the president was trying to pull this off it would be an exceptional constitutional crisis.”

So a president could adjourn Congress if there is disagreement between the two chambers and use that as a way to ram his nominees through. It’s something Trump previously threatened to do during his first term.

Both chambers have to consent to adjourn for longer than three days. The House and Senate are considered in disagreement if one chamber agrees to adjourn and the other doesn’t.

Republicans could try to get Democrats to cooperate by staying longer or working on the weekends. But that’s a very different story than the Senate deciding to step aside from one of its biggest duties.

Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn, a former top party leader who ran for Senate majority leader, recently told reporters recess appointments are a kind of “fail safe” if Democrats were to block nominees.

Do the Senate have at least 50 votes to say they are not going to do anything? You have the ability to do what you want. The rights our senators have is more important than our loyalty to you.

But the larger question is — would Senate Republicans really want to abdicate one of their main job functions? The advice and consent of presidential nominations are taken seriously by the senators and don’t want to be bypassed by the president.

The Senate stopped taking long vacations after the ruling. The Senate has “pro forma” sessions where they give input on who the president can install. Little if any business is conducted while most of the Senate is away, and one senator comes to the chamber every few days to technically keep the body in session.

The president can make recess appointments when the chamber is not in session, which circumvents the confirmation process.

President-elect Donald Trump is planning to take on the Senate in order to confirm his Cabinet nominees, something that could lead to an unprecedented power struggle between the executive and legislative branches of government.

“Hopefully it doesn’t get to that, but we’ll find out fairly quickly whether the Democrats want to play ball or not,” Thune told Fox News on Thursday. Despite having a 53-47 GOP-controlled Senate which can approve Trump’s nominees without the help of Democrats, Thune and other Republicans have worked to shift the focus to the minority party.

A true confrontation might not be between the opposing parties. Instead, Trump may have to contend with GOP resistance to his more controversial nominees, including former Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii for director of national intelligence. The Senate Republicans face an early test of their loyalty to a party leader who they say is responsible for getting unified government, and holding onto one of their most important job functions.

Philip Wallach said that it came off as a shot across the bow from Trump. “You’re forcing legislators to think about themselves, do we want to formally let ourselves be swept out of the way, and what kind of precedent does that set?” The idea that the reward for winning the Senate is to put our heads between our knees and watch someone put on a great show is not something senators will be willing to do.

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Presidential nominations are usually referred to relevant committees. For instance, the attorney general is referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. While there are times when a privileged nomination isn’t referred unless requested by a senator, most nominees are vetted this way.

Committees assemble information about nominees before, or sometimes instead of, a hearing. This is where senators look at the qualifications, statements and experience of the nominees. For most Cabinet-level nominees, but especially high-profile nominations like secretaries of state and defense, a public confirmation hearing is common and expected by the Senate.

The committee then reports the nomination to the full Senate with a few options: favorably, unfavorably, without a recommendation, or it can take no action.

While Cabinet-level positions get a lot of media attention, there are thousands of executive nominations made each Congress. The Senate can approve a “en bloc” of them collectively, but there’s not enough time to do that.

Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University, says that kind of limitation isn’t necessarily a drawback for the Trump administration.

And even if incumbents feel confident they can mend fences in the meantime and beat back a primary challenge, primary fights drain their campaign resources. They also force incumbents to take a harder partisan line to hang on to the nomination. A president of the same party has a lot of leverage. The personality of Trump was not the first thing that came to mind.

Not every Republican voter would resent having his or her senator stand up to Trump, not by a longshot. Republicans in the Senate should think about inviting a primary challenger in the next election cycle if they oppose Trump on anything significant in the next two years.

Most of Trump’s voters are Republican officeholders. They know that if they run again they will need these votes in the general election and quite possibly in a Republican primary as well.

They are probably concerned by the fact that Trump has won a second election with a larger share of the Electoral College and carried the popular vote.

Trump is renowned for his rhetorical bluster and force of personality. His supporters can swarm the internet and amplify these effects. Some senators have shown they can handle a bit of heat.

But in the 119th Congress, it is far from certain that a meaningful number of Senate Republicans will show up to oppose any of these nominees. They may state their objections off-the-record in a number of ways. Unless at least four of them come together to make a stand in the Senate, it won’t matter. But that could carry enormous consequences for the few GOP senators who held out.

If there were just one controversial nominee taking all the heat, a withdrawal of a defeat in committee or on the floor might seem likely — or even probable.

There have been controversial choices in the past, but these choices seemed highly likely to antagonize the agencies they would be overseeing. Indeed, that appeared to be the intent.

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Robert Kennedy Jr. would be Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services. That gives him responsibility for the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and countless programs providing medical care and protecting the public. Trump said he and Kennedy would “make America safe and healthy again.”

Gaetz has some fans in the Senate but more than a normal share of critics there too. If you get all your news from TV, you might well think his nomination is the biggest story since, well, the last Trump-linked scandal or outrage. Moderate senators are making concerns about the importance of the Senate’s advise and consent process.

Here’s how she would look: she has no military or national security experience, but she has a reputation as a defense of Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she blamed on President Biden and the NATO alliance toward Russia. Commentators, including some conservatives, have wondered aloud just how deep Gabbard’s sympathy with Putin’s positions might go.

Trump’s choice as the new director of national intelligence was Tulsi Gabbard. Another veteran is critical of “forever wars.” She was a Democratic member of the House for a short time before she became a Trump fan. The senators wouldn’t have a problem with that.

Real trouble started brewing with Pete Hegseth, an Army vet known for his weekend commentary on Fox News, being named secretary of defense. Although a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan missions, he does not have the background that senators would expect from the head of the Department of Defense. HeGSth’s attacks on the uniformed leadership of the armed services have included talk of firing current generals. It was hard to believe that the president-elect was not serious about the choice, as he was mostly giving the Pentagon a shot.

The week started calmly enough with the news that Trump wanted Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state. If they are reliable, senators will never object to having one of their own elevated to Cabinet status.

That led to the creation of a stinging critique of Trump in 2020. He said that Trump’s pick to serve as his director of national intelligence was the worst Cabinet appointment in history.

President George W. Bush used it to install John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2005 (circumventing a Senate committee that included senior Democrat Joe Biden and a first-term member named Barack Obama.) He served in the job on that basis, and he continues to be a leading hawk on military and foreign policy. He was even Trump’s national security adviser during his first term.

That is an understatement as at least four of Trump’s second-term picks to date could qualify as a “problem nominee.” Any one of them could be the focus of negative media coverage and the cause of enormous discomfort for Republican senators who must vote to confirm.

John Thune is hedging his bet at this point. “None of this is going to be easy,” he said Thursday.

The nominees for several key Cabinet posts in the new administration of President-elect Donald Trump caught officials in Washington off guard this week and ignited a firestorm of criticism — not all of it from Democrats.