Trump already laying groundwork to use 'constitutional tricks' for 'power grab': columnist

Even before he makes his return to the White House next year, President-elect Donald Trump is already diligently laying the groundwork for an “unprecedented presidential power grab,” according to a Washington Post columnist, who wondered aloud, “Can anyone stop him?”

Trump’s demands that the next Republican Senate leader must agree to allow so-called recess appointments, which enables him to appoint top officials without the Senate’s confirmation process, may seem like a minor detail in Senate procedures, but as Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus wrote Monday, “it’s actually a dangerous end run around the separation of powers.”

“No president likes it, but the authority to pick appointees comes with a constitutional speed bump: Cabinet secretaries and others in high positions must be confirmed ‘by and with the advice and consent of the Senate,’” Marcos wrote in her column. She added: “This would not be the separation of powers that the framers envisioned but a president without checks and a system dangerously out of balance.”

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Marcus noted that while “both parties have used – and abused – this tool,” she drilled down on the hypocrisy now being displayed by Republicans in their openness to allowing recess appointments under Trump when they sharply criticized former President Barack Obama for his use of recess appointments while the Senate was holding brief sessions during his years in office.

“But that was then — and this is Trump,” Marcus wrote. “What is really going on here? Is Trump planning to nominate officials so extreme that he could not get them through the confirmation process despite the comfortable padding of a likely 53-seat majority?”

She continued by writing that Senate Democrats “could snarl the procedure for consenting to a recess,” but warned that Trump has “another possible constitutional trick up his sleeve,” which he threatened to use during the Covid pandemic.

“So, we must contemplate the possibility: One way or another — either because the supine Senate steps aside or because Trump suspends the legislature, as no president has done before — Trump installs his chosen officials without bothering to obtain Senate approval,” Marcus said.