President Donald Trump threatened to adjourn both chambers of the US Congress – the Senate and the House of Representatives – so he can make “recess appointments” for the various vacant positions within his administration, according to The Independent. Many are wondering if the POTUS will really push through with this threat as no president has ever employed this power of the Oval Office.
“As the entire US government works to combat the global pandemic, it is absolutely essential that key positions at relevant federal agencies are fully staffed, and we're not allowing that to take place through our Congress,” Donald Trump said during his daily coronavirus briefing on Wednesday, according to CNN.
Trump complained that due to “partisan obstruction,” 129 nominees were stuck in the Senate. “They're just not giving it to us,” the POTUS added. “We have many positions that are unstaffed because we can't get approval.”
Trump explained that the Constitution has provided him the mechanism to fill the vacancies under such circumstances. “The recess appointment, it's called,” he said. “The Senate's practice of gaveling into so-called pro-forma sessions, where no one is even there, has prevented me from using the constitutional authority we're given.”
But according to The Hill, “Trump doesn’t have the authority to adjourn Congress without cooperation from at least one chamber.” If the President plans to push through with his threat, he will likely be facing legal challenges.
“The president is not in charge of Congress, I think that’s the main point,” Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law professor Steve Sanders said. “Congress is a co-equal, independent branch of government.”
“He can do it only if the Senate agrees to [adjourn],” senior fellow in governance studies at The Brookings Institution Thomas Mann said. But, as the publication noted, neither chamber wants to adjourn at this point.
“I don't think the president has the authority to do what he suggested he … might do,” Sen. Roy Blunt said.
Even Trump knows that making good on his threat won’t be easy. “Perhaps it's never been done before, nobody's even sure if it has, but we're going to do it,” he said during the briefing, Aljazeera reported. “We'll probably be challenged in court, and we'll see who wins.”