trump will try anything for control no matter what.

Article I, Section 5, Clause 4:

Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

Still, as I understand, the Constitution does not grant the President the power to adjourn outside of these extraordinary powers.

like they did to Obama when he challenged the Senate's "Pro-forma" session, in this current case, 45 can make up any bullshit reason for this being "extraordinary" and the GOP-controlled Congress would go along to make it so.

The backstop his handlers are doing right now though, is to appoint a couple previously-Senate-confirmed lower level staffers who weren't purged, into the positions he needs, as "Acting" (to be a placeholder). I believe they can hold that for a year (and that can be extended only if a nominee is undergoing a confirmation hearing during that time that goes just beyond the temp appointment).

I just finished reading Woodrow Wilson, The Light Withdrawn by Christopher Cox, which discusses Wilson’s life and career as it related to the movements concerning racial equity and women’s suffrage.

Wilson went to Europe to pursue a treaty to establish a League of Nations. Notably Article 1 Section 4 stated Congress was to convene yearly on the first Monday in December and adjourn when business was completed. Wilson left after Congress adjourned and stayed away for a few months. What happened? No oversight, no investigation of government contracts, no consideration of the Anthony Amendment, no appropriation of money to fulfill government obligations. What did happen were recess appointments. Apparently the use of executive power during recess was common.

The Twentieth Amendment (1933) not only moved the inauguration date from March to January, it also changed the start date of Congress to January.

As you say, the GOP could do anything, but the Constitution is squarely on the side of the Senate’s role in appointments with this schedule.

AND during the worst pandemic of their lifetime - the infamous "Spanish Flu". So all kinds of "extraordinary" things going on then (not to mention Prohibition & the Suffragan movement, as well as the rise of the KKK).

Wilson didn’t say anything about the pandemic during his presidency. His wartime censorship rules suppressed public information about the pandemic. The Public Health Service under Wilson was not doing its job according to the Red Cross.

His military leaders ignored the advice of their medical corps. His own physician advised him against sending troops who had been exposed to influenza. When he met with the general, he yielded and many of those troops died of influenza en route to France.

insisted on holding that infamous super-spreader parade to support "Liberty Bonds"!!!!!!





(St. Louis cancelled theirs and lived to see another day)

Dem in name but a conservative former governor from NJ.

Declaring a general one could certainly be legally construed by the SC as an "extraordinary occasion(s)" allowing him cover to adjourn Congress.

The outcome for Charles I was not a good one.

if the House and Senate disagree about when they should adjourn. He can’t just order them to adjourn whenever he feels like it. Is there anything that says how long the have to adjourn for if the President gives such an order?

Oh we all know this BUT that is where the GOP majority in both chambers, can "MANUFACTURE A 'DISAGREEMENT'" in order to allow this invocation if 45 (I refuse to call him 47) demands it.

We will have to see if they plan to stoop that low but don't be surprised if they do. The GOP legal tyrants have been testing EVERY loophole and vaguery in the Constitution so far (like the "immunity" nonsense) and may end up doing so here.

Democrats are doing what the GOP had been doing whenever we were in charge (going back to the Obama era when they took the volume up to 11) - blocking and stalling, and in our case, rightly so for the parade of abject lunatics and criminals who have been proffered to be appointees.

A Recess Appointment is still a temporary thing and only in effect for that Congressional session's time period.

Ever since Shrub Recess-appointed Bolton as U.N. Ambassador over the objections of not only Democrats but Republicans as well, the Senate has included a pretty much "standard" Rule to do "Pro Forma" sessions every 3 days (following the Constitution's 3-day requirement to either shit or get off the pot ).

Bolton Is U.N. Envoy as Bush Bypasses Senate

This is where someone (usually a "local" Senator from VA or MD or even DE) will go to the chamber, gavel it in as a "President Pro-Tempore", and they will go through their "Morning Business" routine of the Pledge of Allegiance, convocation, etc., will maybe have some speeches, read off a schedule, and then gavel into a "Recess Subject to the Call of the Chair", which is not a "technical" Recess or Adjournment but a "we're still in session and be ready to come back when notified".

Good discussion of this -

that anyone who instigates an insurrection may not run for office. Look how that was obeyed. He has put the Constitution in the shredder, and his republicans are applauding. Forget rules and laws, they no longer apply to our new government.

(IMO he is behaving exactly like an elected asshat who is begging to be assassinated. Some of his new XOs accomplish nothing but delivering cruelty and danger to US citizens, they are totally unnecessary in terms of the state of our union. He hates America and Americans. I am starting to wonder how long he is going to last.)

more empty threats. The thug is out of his mind.

stop this idea now. Verbally and in the media. Someone needs to be screaming about this and more.

without their advice or consent. It didn’t end well for him.

I couldn’t finish typing that because I peed myself laughing so hard.

Supreme Court. ha ha

I doubt Johnson or Thune will allow it. First off Johnson is a coward, he's afraid of Trump but he's also afraid of democrats and his very thin majority. Thune intends to stick around for a long, long time and while I can't stand him he understands that things like this have long term consequences. If he lets Trump do it then there is nothing stopping a democrat president from doing the same thing. I also think Thune is smart enough to know that Trump's expiration date of 4 years is a very short period of time and after the destruction he's going to cause there is virtually no chance any republican wins the WH in 2028. Thune just wants to get what he can in the next 4 years and survive.

Let's say the house votes to adjourn and the sentate doesn't so then Trump tries to adjourn them. If Democrat senators do an old fashioned fillibuster and don't reliquish the podium then they can't adjourn, can they? Is Trump going to send in capitol police to arrest them? If it comes down to it I hope our Dem senators have the guts to try this. We're always complaining about how Trump dominates the news cycle and optics, this would be a perfect opportunity for dems to do that. Imagine the TV coverage of a wanna be demented king demanding they leave the capitol but they stand there in defiance peacefully.

It might not be this but the more he is allowed to do unchecked the more he will do and at some point he will cross a line that even the frightened children in the GOP will break.

mentally declining clown who seems determined to get his way on every little thing like a mini tyrant no matter what the Constitution says.

It's up to the Dems to block the fool because the rethugs won't.

…there are a few senators who are reluctant to approve a couple of his more extreme nominees (yeah, I know it’s hard to narrow down which are the worst!), and this is TSF’s way of threatening them. I dunno, unless his advisors are really lunatics (and yes, they might be), they’ve got to be telling him that he can’t just arbitrarily adjourn congress.

Y'all should have believed him

Who is going to force him to comply? He’s immune from prosecution thanks to SCOTUS, and this Congress won’t impeach him no matter what he does. Laws and judicial orders aren’t self-actualising. They require actual humans to obey them, enforce them, or carry them out. Trump EO on birthright citizenship is going to get overruled, but what if he just ignores the courts? Who is going to make him comply?

Wait until he ignores the Supreme Court...

They've already ruled Donnie has immunity from all prosecution so what's the point?

and explain that his guys will break their kneecaps if they don't go along

We aren't dealing with a constitutional leader here, we are dealing with a mob boss

With mob boss skills and mob boss morality.

Looks like Trump has some legal basis to do this. Chilling. If he adjourns Congress, why would he ever call them back into session? I am a fan of the Constitution but I am not an expert on it. Can anyone answer that question? I will do a search on it.

All our laws will still be there. There's a very limited list of things he can do without Congress.

What if he does not call Congress back into session and just starts giving orders to the military and law enforcement? This man is both ignorant of the law and cares nothing for it. So he breaks a law? Who is going to stop him? He has control of the military and federal law enforcement.

He can't dismiss them if both houses want to be in session. It would take a lot of cooperation from Congressional Republicans for them to just never come back.

I hope that you are right. I tend to think of the worst possible case. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, is definitely one of the mottos that I live by. Thanks for responding.

POTUS cannot adjourn Congress unless the House and Senate disagree on the time of their adjournment. That is a very specific and limited instance. He also can’t stop them from reconvening after 3 days.

I did not know that. That is why I asked. He could just tell his Congressional Republican lackeys to facilitate an adjournment and not come back. Maybe declare some sort of national emergency and/or martial law.

If it was just the Democrats and maybe a small number of Republicans that tried to reconvene, would they be able to? Is there a minimum quorum for the House and the Senate to convene? I don't know. I am just trying to imagine the worst thing that Trump could do. Because he usually tries to do the worst thing.

And he also cannot authorise an increase in the debt ceiling. He needs Congress to resolve those things, and soon.

By mid-March, I think?

I wonder if Congress is going to be the main obstacle to Trump achieving most of his plans in this second Administration. In his first Administration it was mainly a number of people in his Cabinet and the rest of the Executive branch that blocked him. He is working around this by stacking his Cabinet and as much of the Executive branch with his lackeys and loyalists. So he has solved that Executive branch problem but maybe he is not prepared to deal with legal and procedural obstacles in the Congress. I hope so. I think that if Trump could find a way to rule by fiat, he would. Maybe he will be confounded by Congress, or at least slowed down and impeded.

This is Trumplandia after all.

does not want to answer to No one, including Voters

Once again, a msm headline writer "sane washes" Felon47's incoherent shrieks to make them suitable for polite society.

Trump will INSTALL his loyalists - and ignore Congress