HOW DO ‘RECESS APPOINTMENTS’ WORK?
The US Constitution says the president can make recess appointments to fill vacant positions when the Senate is not in session, though officials appointed in this manner can only serve two years at most.
Past presidents have taken advantage of this clause. Democrat Barack Obama made 32 recess appointments, while Bush made 171, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Since 2007, Congress had increasingly used scheduling tricks to prevent this from happening.
Rather than formally adjourning when it wants to leave town, the Senate now typically holds occasional “pro forma” sessions in which a single lawmaker briefly wields the gavel but no work is done, keeping the chamber technically in session.
The Supreme Court upheld this practice in 2014, ruling that a president can only make a recess appointment when the Senate is out of session for 10 days or longer.
Trump’s gambit would require the Senate to adjourn for at least that long, which could be difficult. It’s not clear how many Republicans would voluntarily give up one of the Senate’s most significant powers.
CAN TRUMP FORCE A RECESS?
Maybe. The Constitution gives the president the power to adjourn Congress when the Senate and the House of Representatives disagree on whether they should leave town. Trump could invoke this power if the Republican-controlled House votes to adjourn and the Senate does not.
That tactic has never been used before, according to conservative scholar Ed Whelan, who called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to reject it. “Johnson can and should immediately put an end to this scheme,” he wrote in the Washington Post on Nov 14.
