If you wanted to test the loyalty of the U.S. Senate and its members’ willingness to capitulate to you and your agenda, you might do what the president-elect just did: nominate a slew of underqualified and unsavory characters to lead the nation’s most important institutions, all at once, and dare the upper chamber’s majority to say “no.”
In the past 72 hours, Donald Trump has named former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to lead the Department of Justice; former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, to oversee the U.S. intelligence community; and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. All three lack relevant leadership experience and have been accused, respectively, of having sex with a 17-year-old, spreading deranged conspiracy theories about Syria and Ukraine, and having a literal worm eating away at their brain (actually, Kennedy said that about himself).
Then there’s the Fox News personality, Pete Hegseth, who doesn’t wash his hands and maybe has white nationalist symbols tattooed all over his body, that Trump picked to lead the Department of Defense.
What are Senate Republicans going to do, their party’s 78-year-old leader seems to be asking: Go along with the MAGA agenda that was just embraced by a narrow majority of American voters or take the blame for immediately derailing the second Trump presidency? Seventy-six million Americans spoke — and they said, whether they knew it or not, that they want the government to be in chaos.
But senators are people, which is to say they too have egos and a desire to feel needed and appreciated. In comments this week, some suggested they weren’t fully or at least immediately on board with handing over key Cabinet posts to cranks and an alleged pedophile.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, for instance, said he “absolutely” wants to subject Gaetz, in particular, to a rigorous confirmation process. “I don’t want there to be any limitation at all on what the Senate could consider,” he told reporters Thursday, saying he’d like to see an unreleased House Ethics Committee’s report on Gaetz and his purported improprieties.
The newly elected leader of the incoming majority, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., likewise affirmed his commitment to the Senate’s traditional role of providing “advice and consent” to the executive branch.
“What we’re going to do is make sure that we are processing his nominees in a way that gets them into those positions so they can implement his agenda. How that happens remains to be seen,” he said earlier this week. “Obviously, we want to make sure our committees have confirmation hearings like they typically do.”
No one, however, has ever gone broke by betting that elected Republicans would ultimately cave to Trump and his whims. That could come in a couple ways: by confirming Cabinet picks who have no business serving in government — who would weaponize the justice system, put a pro-Russia spin on intelligence findings, discourage the use of life-saving vaccines and purge dissenters from the military — or by simply giving up their power in an ultimate act of surrender.
“All options are on the table,” Thune himself has noted, acknowledging the Senate has a role to play but also suggesting he’s open to bypassing it, if need be. How? By allowing Trump to unilaterally appoint members of his Cabinet while Congress is in recess.
It was one of the first things Trump demanded after winning the Nov. 5 election.
“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments,” Trump posted Sunday on X, blaming the confirmation process for thwarting his first administration.
Senate Republican leadership, perhaps having some respect for themselves and their offices, are hesitant to explicitly say they are 100% cool with that plan (“All options are on the table,” Thune has demurred). Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University, told The Washington Post that such a move would be “an absolute abdication of their constitutional power.”
It would, among other things, be sort of embarrassing. But this is also Trump’s Republican Party, to a far greater extent than it was in 2016. Why wouldn’t they just do whatever he asks?
He might not even need their consent. Trump’s transition team team is currently pushing the idea that the president himself could adjourn Congress, exploiting an “obscure and never-before-used provision of the Constitution” to effectively neuter a co-equal branch of government, in the words of conservative attorney Edward Whelan. The play here would be having House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., a reliable sycophant, pass a concurrent resolution through the lower chamber calling for Congress to go on recess; if the Senate failed to act, Trump could then declare that neither body is in session.
“I’ve heard that theory just now, and I’ve not researched that. I’ve not heard of it before, so I’ll have to go back and look at that,” Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., told reporters this week. As anyone familiar with Trump’s first term knows, claiming ignorance is often the first step toward acceptance for elected Republicans. The next? Blaming Democrats.
“I think you get into a recess scenario where they grind the Senate to a halt and are refusing to allow regular order move forward and confirm folks,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told HuffPost.
Perhaps this is all smoke — or not even necessary. Already some senators who had been previously critical of Trump’s nominees (like suggesting Gaetz is a lecherous scumbag) appeared to be talking themselves into confirming them, noting Trump’s popular vote win and implicitly admitting they do not want to be blamed for obstructing his whims. This could all end with the Senate nominally preserving its institutional power by rubber-stamping Trump’s Cabinet of oddities.
But however it pans out, lawmakers — elected Republicans — finding the courage to say that science is real, the age of consent matters and that you really should wash your hands after using the bathroom? It’s 2024: Those people don’t really exist anymore.
