One of the first tests we are going to face during the next Trump administration will be a likely attempt by Donald Trump to force Congress to adjourn, indefinitely, so that Trump can recess appointment his entire cabinet without Senate approval.

There is a specific constitutional and legislative mechanism through which Trump could accomplish this. It is important that we familiarize ourselves with this mechanism, 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. This just isn't going to happen in the Senate, both because, as Semafor's Burgess Everett explains, of procedural maneuvers that Senate Democrats could employ and, as Alexander Bolton of The Hill explains, opposition among some Republican senators. As such, Trump's path to making recess appointments actually runs, oddly enough, through the House of Representatives.

Here is what Trump needs the Speaker Mike Johnson and the House of Representatives to do in order to make his recess appointments (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 does actually frighten me, I believe that we can stop it from happening. This is not due to some pie in the sky, hope against hope, either. I believe we can stop Trump because the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is just too narrow.

When all the counting in the 2024 elections is completed, the final tally of seats will be either 221-214 or 220-215, both in favor of Republicans (the only really 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 have already been confirmed, and thus resigned their seats, when the attempt to force adjournment of the House of Representatives takes place, 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 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 house of Congress indefinitely. Given the mixture of House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump and who are still sitting members of 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, and I honestly believe that we in the resistance / opposition have the upper hand in this fight.

That said, the idea of Trump adjourning Congress indefinitely is still scary enough that we should not taken anything for granted. As such, I am going to start 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 start by delivering via email to Democratic leaders in Congress. In the coming weeks, we will escalate this campaign into 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.