Donald Trump’s latest impossible threat further exposes him as a blithering idiot
President Daffy Donnie keeps trying to argue that he has full power and authority vested in him to do whatever he pleases, channeling President George W. Bush’s “I’m the decider” to its extreme. Trump continues to say preposterous things, but the feckless GOP twists into knots to accomplish his whims.
The latest is the threat Trump made to shut down Congress. He stated: “The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis. It is a scam. What they do, it’s a scam and everybody knows it … They know they’ve been warned and they’ve been warned right now. If they don’t approve it, then we’re going to go this route and we’ll probably be challenged in court and we’ll see who wins.”
The thing about this is, Trump is crying about not getting his judicial nominees confirmed. Except he has, a record in first term, 193, to be exact. There are pending nominees, but at district court level, and the courts are closed for business right now. The language that is in the Constitution, but has never been tested, is in Article II, Section 3, given the president power to: “on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper.”
But Congress has agreed on adjournment, January 3, 2021. And unless we are at the end of the republic, and unless Mitch “the Con” McConnell wants to completely castrate himself and Congress by invoking the nuclear option to vote only by majority, which assuredly will end his Majority Leader status, this is a proposal that has no basis to it. Wonder what Susan Collins thinks now about her “hopes and prayers” Trump learned a lesson.
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.