Let's Do This: Trump Has a Way to Adjourn Congress Indefinitely. Here's How We Can Stop Him.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

One of the first major tests of our democratic institutions that we may face during the incoming Trump administration is an attempt by Donald Trump to force Congress to adjourn—indefinitely—so that he can fill his entire cabinet through recess appointments without Senate approval.

That sounds scary, because it is scary. However, please clear your head and bear with me, because there is a realistic way to stop this from happening.

It is important that we familiarize ourselves with the specific constitutional and legislative mechanism through which Trump could adjourn Congress indefinitely, so that it can be prevented. Over at Public Notice, my former Daily Kos colleague David Nir explains:

It all rests on a never-invoked provision of the Constitution found in Article 2, Section 3, which says that “in Case of Disagreement between” the Senate and House “with Respect to the Time of Adjournment,” the president “may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.”

What this means is practice is that Trump needs to get one house of Congress to agree to adjourn itself, and then he can adjourn the other house of Congress on his own.

The first piece of good news I have about this frightening scenario is that the Senate just isn't going to go along with it. As Burgess Everett of Semafor explains, there are procedural maneuvers that Senate Democrats could employ to block it, and, as Alexander Bolton of The Hill explains, there is opposition among some Republican senators. As such, Trump's most direct path to making recess appointments actually runs, oddly enough, through the House of Representatives.

Here is what Trump needs Speaker Mike Johnson and the House of Representatives to do in order to adjourn Congress indefinitely (again from David Nir):

Under this scenario, Johnson would put forth what's known as a “concurrent resolution” that would call for both the House and the Senate to adjourn, which the House would then approve. At that point, it would no longer matter if the Senate was unable to muster a majority to go into recess. Trump would simply cite Article 2, Section 3 and direct both chambers to adjourn — perhaps for a very long time.

I have to be honest: while the idea of Trump adjourning Congress indefinitely frightens me, I believe that we can stop it from happening because the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is just too narrow. He doesn't have the votes.

When all the counting in the 2024 elections is completed, the final tally of House seats will be either 221-214 or 220-215 in favor of Republicans (the only truly unclear seat, as of this writing, is the 13th congressional district of California). This means that Republicans can only lose two or three votes—depending upon the outcome in CA-13—and still muster a majority to force adjournment.

The path gets even more complicated given that Trump has said he will nominate three sitting Republican House members to his cabinet: Reps. Elise Stefanik, Mike Waltz and Matt Gaetz. If any of those three are confirmed, it will result in temporary, months-long vacancies that will further narrow the Republican majority. Notably, one of those three—now former Rep. Matt Gaetz—has already resigned his seat in order to prevent the House ethics committee from releasing a damaging report about him. So, we could easily be talking about a Republican majority of 219-215, 218-215, or even 217-215 if and when Trump and Johnson attempt to force the House of Representatives, and thus Congress as a whole, to adjourn.

It is hard to imagine Republicans only losing one, or even zero, votes on a move as extreme as allowing the president to adjourn both houses of Congress indefinitely. Given the mixture of House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump but who have retained their seats in Congress, vulnerable moderate Republicans in blue and purple districts who narrowly won re-election, and the inevitable prickly institutionalists who just won't like going along with something unprecedented, those of us in the resistance/opposition should have the upper hand in this fight.

That said, nothing should be taken for granted. As such, I have started a campaign to stop Trump from adjourning Congress with a simple petition to all members of the incoming Congress: Do not adjourn. Protect the constitutional rights of Congress as a check on executive power.

Please add your name to this petition, which I will deliver next week to Democratic leaders in Congress via email. Later on, in the coming weeks, we will escalate this campaign to include direct letters to all members of the House of Representatives.

Please sign the petition to all members of the incoming Congress: Do not adjourn. Protect the constitutional rights of Congress as a check on executive power.