Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the preparations, personnel decisions and policy deliberations of Donald Trump’s transition. POLITICO Pro subscribers receive a version of this newsletter first. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren | Email Lisa | Email Megan DONALD TRUMP is turning Republicans’ governing trifecta dreams into a nightmarish power struggle — and he’s not even in the Oval Office yet. The president-elect is pushing controversial Cabinet picks and has threatened to leverage what was historically a failsafe mechanism for filling critical vacancies — recess appointments — if Republican senators won’t bend to his whims.
The idea of Trump using his constitutional authority to recess Congress and install his Cabinet could be an elaborate “West Wing” fan fic — or a fundamental test of Senate authority at a time when the GOP is broadly falling in line behind him. Already, there are signs of resistance. In a secret ballot last week, GOP senators selected JOHN THUNE as their leader over RICK SCOTT, who offered a full-throated endorsement of Trump’s recess strategy idea. THOM TILLIS told reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday that while he could support recess appointments for lower-level nominees, the practice should “be absolutely off the table” for Cabinet positions. And there are longtime institutionalists, like MITCH McCONNELL, who, while shrinking in number, care deeply about preserving Senate authority and could find doing so more important than avoiding Trump’s wrath. There’s a chance that Trump’s recess appointment push is merely a “red herring,” said JUDD GREGG, a former Republican senator and past New Hampshire governor. “I can understand why he’s trying to get everyone’s attention that he wants to get his Cabinet together — this may be a way of poking folks to act faster. But I don’t see any reason why the Senate should give up its prerogative, which is constitutional.” But it could also foreshadow how Trump, who spoke on the campaign trail of wielding “extreme power” as president, will again attempt to test the limits of executive authority when he resumes office.
Trump is far from unique in looking for ways to exploit the power of the presidency. GEORGE W. BUSH drastically expanded executive power after 9/11, using the “war on terror” as a pretext to utilize enhanced interrogation tactics against suspected terrorists and to conduct unwarranted surveillance of citizens’ private communications. BARACK OBAMA enacted his signature immigration policy, DACA, through executive action, authorized missile strikes without congressional approval as part of the ongoing war on terror and employed a pen-and-phone strategy to push policies in his second term. And JOE BIDEN, despite entering office vowing to restore constitutional norms his predecessor had tested, also pushed the scope of presidential power by forgiving $430 billion in student loan debt through executive action — a move challenged by seven states as a breach of the separation of powers.
But Trump, in his first term, went further than anyone to test the constitutional framework, pushing both the legislative and judicial branches to accede to his demands, overlook transgressions that twice led to impeachments and grant him legal immunity — all tipping a rickety system of checks and balances further toward the president.
“Each of the 21st century presidents — Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden and Trump again — have expanded the powers of the presidency in discreet ways that, when viewed in total, show a huge expansion of the power of the presidency,” said TEVI TROY, a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute who served as deputy Health and Human Services secretary in the Bush administration. “We just have a bigger presidency, a more powerful presidency, than the one Bill Clinton left 20 years ago,” Troy said.
Now Trump is threatening to bulldoze anything in his path as he returns to power with a (shrinking) popular-vote mandate and broad immunity for official acts. And his first order of business — stacking his administration with loyalists — could become an early test of both how far Trump will try to stretch his executive authority and whether Hill Republicans will let him. If GOP senators move to block, say, MATT GAETZ — who the president-elect is standing by even as allegations of sexual misconduct imperil his path to confirmation as attorney general — Trump could try to make good on his threat to proceed with recess appointments. Doing so would be logistically challenging. For nearly 20 years, the Senate has rarely truly recessed — the chamber holds pro-forma sessions every few days to avoid it — because on a bipartisan basis, senators have agreed that the president shouldn’t use a recess to appoint people.
The Constitution outlines a scenario in which Trump could force Congress to recess. But the theory is untested — and likely to send the president back into court. MESSAGE US — Are you MITCH McCONNELL? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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