Trump faces roadblocks with threat to adjourn Congress – By Jordain Carney (The Hill) / April 16 2020
President Trump’s threat to adjourn Congress so he could force through dozens of nominations is quickly hitting steep roadblocks that make the plan all but guaranteed not to happen.
The idea, floated by Trump during a White House press conference, threatened to pour new fuel into the long-simmering fight over nominations, which have emerged as a lightning rod within the Senate in recent years.
The president’s power to adjourn Congress, enshrined in Article II of the Constitution, has never been used before by a president, setting an all-but-guaranteed court fight if Trump moved forward.
But legal experts say Trump doesn’t have the authority to adjourn Congress without cooperation from at least one chamber, and Senate Republicans poured cold water on the idea.
Steve Sanders, a professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, told The Hill that Trump was making “off the cuff, unsupported assertions about his power.”
“The president is not in charge of Congress, I think that’s the main point. Congress is a co-equal, independent branch of government,” he said.
Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said that Trump’s threat to adjourn Congress is “hollow” and that the president was “misreading” the Constitution.
“Trump’s argument is legally impulsive, practically moot and another example of his attempts, guilefully or not, to move the Overton window on constitutional debate,” Vladeck wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, referring to a phrase for the range of ideas viewed as politically acceptable.
Continue to article: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/493253-trump-faces-roadblocks-with-threat-to-adjourn-congress
