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On Capitol Hill, concern grew among those defending House and Senate authority that Trump might try a novel maneuver to force theSenate into adjournment, the precondition for the president to make a recess appointment.
The Constitution says that if the House and Senate disagree on when to go into recess,the president has the power to force them to adjourn. Under one scenario, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) could speed to the floor a measure to adjourn both the House and the Senate.
If the Senate disagreed out of fear of the president making appointments in its absence,Trump could adjourn both chambers anyway and proceed with placing his choices in office.
It is unclear whether such a maneuver would be legally sound. But in a federal government with total Republican control, the only barrier could be resistance from enough Republicans like Rep. Mike Simpson (R., Idaho), who said he wouldn’t go along. “The Senate has a job to do,” Simpson said in an interview Thursday. “The recess-appointment procedure was not meant to avoid that process in the Senate, at least to intentionally avoid it.”
Concern also stirred on Capitol Hillthat Trump might follow through on a promise to try to undermine the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which Congress passed after President Richard Nixon failed to spend money as lawmakers had appropriated.
Trump as a candidate called the law unconstitutional and promised to overturn it. “For 200 years under our system of government,it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending through what is known as impoundment,” he said.
Such a move “would be a major turnaround,” said Bill Hoagland, a former staff director for the Republican chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “It would clearly shift the power of the purse back to the executive.”
Some fear Trump will act, even without court approval, to put in place the recommendations to come from billionaire Elon Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump’s choices to lead a search for ways to cut federal bureaucracy and regulations. Trump has said that on day one of his presidency he would ask federal agencies to identify spending that merited impoundment.
Jentleson said Trump could gain the upper handby moving ahead of any court action, especially if the Republican-led House backed him up."Any time you’re relying on the courts to stop them, that’s probably a losing proposition,” he said. “There’s a powerful first-mover benefit, where you simply start doing things that you say you’re going to do.And if you have the House to back you, there’s not much stopping you.”
Adding to the concerns were memories of Trump’s first term, when he tried to push some of these same ideas. He withheld money appropriated by Congress for Ukraine while pressuring that country to investigate Joe Biden, his likely challenger in 2020. Those actions led to his impeachment by the House in 2019. The Senate declined to convict.
Citing emergency powers, Trump diverted money from the military budget without congressional approval to pay for the construction of a wall along the border with Mexico.The Supreme Court ultimately allowed construction to proceed while the legal challenges played out in a lower court.
Judd Gregg, a Republican who represented New Hampshire in both the House and Senate, saidTrump is right to try to trim the federal bureaucracy. But he thought Trump had misstepped with some of his nominees, who he said don’t have the proper experience to avoid getting “chopped up” by the agencies they would be trying to change.
Gregg said that defense secretary nominee Hegseth, for example, “will spend a couple of years trying to figure out where his desk is. The Pentagon is an institution unto itself. If you don’t know the games that are played over there and are peppered throughout the military, you’re going to have a very difficult time changing them.”
But Sen. Dan Sullivan (R., Alaska), who recently retired from the U.S. Marine Corps, said that defense secretaries have a long history of getting stymied by the Pentagon’s internal processes.
“Having guys who are on the outside kick that building into gear is not a bad combo,” Sullivan said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-s-top-team-sets-stage-for-white-house-power-grab/ar-AA1ubfwk
Get your asses in gear Senate. Vance says y'all hardly work already.