Candidates for Senate majority leader have said they will honor President-elect Donald Trump’s request to make appointments when the Senate is in recess.
Ahead of the Senate leadership election on Nov. 13, Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) have said they would support recess appointments.
“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,” Trump said in a post on X. “Sometimes the votes can take two years, or more. This is what they did four years ago, and we cannot let it happen again. We need positions filled IMMEDIATELY!”
“100% agree,” Scott wrote on X, sharing Trump’s post. “I will do whatever it takes to get your nominations through as quickly as possible.”
Thune said in an X post: “We must act quickly and decisively to get the president’s nominees in place as soon as possible, & all options are on the table to make that happen, including recess appointments. We cannot let Schumer and Senate Dems block the will of the American people.”
“It is unacceptable for Senate Ds to blockade President @realDonaldTrump’s cabinet appointments,” Cornyn wrote on X. “If they do, we will stay in session, including weekends, until they relent. Additionally, the Constitution expressly confers the power on the President to make recess appointments.”
Recess appointments would allow the president to nominate executive and judicial personnel who would likely not receive Senate confirmation. Recess appointments have not happened in years due to the Senate meeting in pro forma sessions, meaning that although the Senate is meeting, it is only for a few minutes and therefore no legislative business is conducted.
The recess appointments clause of the U.S. Constitution states that “the President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.”
In 2012, President Barack Obama made recess appointments, including appointing Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“The convening of periodic pro forma sessions in which no business is to be conducted does not have the legal effect of interrupting an intrasession recess otherwise long enough to qualify as a ‘Recess of the Senate’ under the Recess Appointments Clause,” the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote at the time. “In this context, the President therefore has discretion to conclude that the Senate is unavailable to perform its advise-and-consent function and to exercise his power to make recess appointments.”
However, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2014 that recess appointments cannot be made when the Senate is in a pro forma session.
Then-Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that “the Recess Appointments Clause is not designed to overcome serious institutional friction. It simply provides a subsidiary method for appointing officials when the Senate is away during a recess.”
