Will he or won’t he go along with Donald Trump’s plan to jam down the Senate’s throat his controversial Cabinet and other picks for his administration?
That’s the question buzzing around the newly elected Senate majority leader, John Thune of South Dakota, who faces his first big test from the powerful president-elect in his top role when the new Congress convenes next month.
Trump’s apparent favored candidate in the race for majority leader, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who lost, reportedly said all three senators who ran for majority leader agreed to go along with Trump’s demand for recess appointments. If that happened, none of president-elect’s unpopular choices to fill key roles in his administration—including once-accused child sex trafficker, Matt Gaetz, and Tulsi Gabbard, alleged Russian propaganda pusher—would have to face confirmation hearings to examine their records.
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Scott, MAGA world’s failed choice for Senate GOP leader, told USA Today that he, Thune and Cornyn, the third candidate, all agreed on Wednesday to allow recess appointments, as Trump had asked. Ceding their constitutional Senate obligations to vet a president’s executive branch nominees en masse would amount to an extraordinary reversal of the checks and balances between the three branches of government.
Trump is essentially asking Congress to turn a blind eye and give him full authority to ram through his nominations when the Senate is not in session. Such appointments would last until the end of the next session of Congress, which, in this case, means Trump’s newly chosen Cabinet secretaries and other officials who require Senate confirmation could stay in their roles until the end of 2026.
Even conservative legal scholars oppose giving Trump cart blanche power to install administration officials without proper scrutiny and deliberation by the Senate. They include Ed Whelan, who was instrumental in winning Senate confirmation of Trump’s three conservative nominees for the Supreme Court in his first term.
Senate Republicans are giving conflicting reports over whether they’ll accept Trump’s demand to circumvent Senate protocol and rush through his Cabinet and other selections, no questions asked. The cast includes Gaetz, the firebrand Florida lawmaker who formally resigned Thursday ahead of a House ethics report about this alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
Members of Gaetz’s own party were aghast at the choice, imperiling his chances of being confirmed by a majority vote.
Gabbard was causing a similar reaction from at least a few Senate Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.
Thune has said he would like to maintain standard confirmation hearings, but would need Democrats’ cooperation. If they don’t help install some of Trump’s nominees, he suggested, he might have to take more drastic measures.
Thune told reporters, “I’m willing to grind through it and do it the old-fashioned way,” but posted on X that “all options are on the table.”
Though Trump himself did not weigh in ahead of the leadership race, he insisted that whoever Republicans picked would need to support recess appointments, the process by which the president could appoint his nominees while the Senate is not in session.
“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner,” he posted on TruthSocial.
