President-elect Donald Trump continues to fill key staff positions for his new administration.
He has selected Caroline Levitt to be his press secretary.
Levitt previously served as the assistant press secretary in the first Trump White House, as well as the Trump Vance campaign's national press secretary.
At 27, she is the youngest person ever in the job of White House press secretary.
President-elect Trump has also chosen Stephen Chung to be assistant to the president and director of communications.
Chung was director of strategic response in the previous Trump administration and most recently served as communications director on the Trump Vance campaign.
Sergio Gore has been selected as assistant to the president and director of personnel, and Todd Blanch, an attorney who led the legal defense team for President-elect Trump's hush money criminal trial, was selected to serve as Deputy Attorney General, the second highest ranking Justice Department official.
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Joining us now to discuss a GOP-controlled Senate in the 119th Congress and President-elect Trump's potential recess nominations is James Wallner.
He is a senior resident fellow at the R Street Institute.
James, welcome back to the program.
Thanks for having me.
Remind our audience what the R Street Institute is and what you focus on.
Well, the R Street Institute is a terrific organization.
I would encourage everyone to check it out.
It looks at real solutions for real problems.
It's one of the best places for creative inquiry in Washington, D.C. today.
And it really tries to get above the stale left-right kind of dichotomy that we see that has kind of led us to this point where many people feel frustrated with the paralysis and gridlock in D.C.
And I focus on the governance program.
It's my program.
I focus on the Constitution and how our system operates, but more specifically, Congress and in particular, the United States Senate.
It's something that is near and dear to my heart, having spent many years working there.
And I just, I'm fascinated by its rules.
What can I say?
Well, we are going to talk about the Senate for the next 45 minutes.
And this week, President-elect Trump announced several key cabinet nominations and has asked Republican leaders in the chamber to allow recess appointments.
Explain what that is.
Well, the Constitution's appointments clause requires the president to nominate, then the Senate to confirm any judge or other officer of the United States.
This is advice and consent.
But it also has a provision in the Constitution that allows for the president to put officials into positions, including judges, when the Senate is in recess.
Because for much of the Senate's history, senators weren't in town and it took quite a long time to get to town.
This is before you could hop on a plane and get to D.C. from anywhere in the country in a few hours.
And the idea was to ensure the functioning of the government while the Senate was away.
But when the Senate returned, the Senate would have to then vote on that nominee if the president wanted that person to continue in that job for a longer period of time, because recess appointment nominees, unlike other nominations, can only serve for a limited period of time.
And when was the last time a recess appointment was used?
And what kind of position have they been used for?
Has it ever been used for a cabinet-level position?
Well, recess appointees have been used for pretty much every position.
I mean, the presidents throughout American history have used them on a routine basis.
They're not controversial in and of themselves.
However, they've gained added controversy in this era of partisan polarization that we have.
But they've also gained added controversy since former President Barack Obama appointed several commissioners to the National Labor Relations Board when the Senate was ostensibly not in recess, but he claimed they were, and that went to the Supreme Court.
And there was a case in LRB v. Noel Canning, which spoke to this issue and really limited the power of the president to make recess appointments.
And this may be a tricky question, but who decides if a recess appointment can be used?
Well, the first thing I like to say is that at the end of the day, no one is in charge.
No one rules America.
That's the point of America.
Ultimately, it's the people, and the people will make a decision as to how their elected officials, both in the White House and in the Congress, act when they go back to the polls in the next election, right?
And they can make their feelings known in between.
But with regard to the powers of each branch, each branch gets to decide how it will execute its powers, use its powers under the Constitution, right?
The president can certainly decide that, as President Obama did, that he wants to make a recess appointment.
But if the Senate and House disagree, they have tools that they can use, the power of the purse, and other things they can even impeach if they want.
And then the courts also have a role to play in this as well, as we saw in 2014 with the Noel Canning versus NLRB case at the Supreme Court.
And you were talking about the chambers having control over the use of recess appointments.
It was during former President Trump's, now President-elect Trump's, once again, his first term, that he threatened to adjourn Congress to push through nominees using recess appointments.
How does that work?
Well, the Constitution does give the president power to adjourn the House and Senate on extraordinary occasions.
That's the term it uses: extraordinary occasions when they can't agree, when they are in cases of disagreement between the two chambers in terms of the time of the adjournment.
So the president has floated, or others have floated, this idea that maybe the president could use that to forcibly adjourn Congress and therefore create a recess, create the opportunity that he could then use this power under the Constitution to make recess appointments.
But if you actually look at it, one, it's never been done before.
It would be an extraordinary power that the president would use, something more akin to what the king had in Great Britain when we declared our independence, when the king could convene and dissolve parliament at will.
And that's not something that the founding fathers were really thrilled about, right?
But also, you have to be in a state of disagreement.
And that's a very precise term.
And it seems to me very clear that the Senate can control when it wants to be in a state of disagreement with the House and when it doesn't want to be in a state of disagreement with the House.
We are talking with James Wallner.
He's a senior resident fellow at the R Street Institute about the GOP-controlled Senate in the upcoming Congress and also President-elect Trump's potential recess nominations.
If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now.
The lines: Democrats 202-748-8,000.
Republicans, 202-748-8,001.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
And, James, you talked about both chambers.
You mentioned both chambers, although appointments and nominations usually go through the Senate.
What is the House's role?
What can they do when it comes to nominations?
You're absolutely correct that the Senate and only the Senate has a role in that confirmation process.
The House does not.
However, if the President wants to make a recess appointment or if the President is to make a recess appointment, the Senate has to be in recess.
And the Senate can control when it goes into recess, when it adjourns, and when it doesn't adjourn.
However, the Constitution requires the Senate to get the permission of the House if it wants to adjourn for more than three days.
And so this will involve the House, whether the Senate wants to or not, or whether the President wants to or not.
You have to have both chambers in agreement to adjourn for a sufficient period of time in order for the president to have the opportunity to make a recess appointment.
And for viewers who regularly watch Washington Journal, you probably see us dip into a House pro forma every now and then.
And that is what some of what James is talking about in order to continue to keep chambers in session.
James, the Republicans won control of the chamber for the upcoming 119th Congress.
Right now, they'll have, it's expected, 53 seats.
There is one House in Pennsylvania or one race in Pennsylvania that is going into a recount, but they're expected to have 53 seats to the Democrats and Independents with 47.
What does that mean for things like wanting to gavel out for a recess appointment and potential legislation?
Well, the first thing your viewers need to understand is that a simple majority can adjourn in the Senate.
And ever since we saw them use the nuclear option to get rid of the filibuster for executive and judicial branch nominations, a simple majority can overcome a filibuster and ultimately confirm a nominee.
So this isn't a problem.
There is no problem.
There is no crisis if you're president-elect Donald Trump if you have the support of all the Republicans because you have the votes right there.
You can't filibuster these nominations.
However, if you don't have the support of all of the Republicans, then this isn't going to happen because as I suggested before, you have to be in a state of disagreement for the president to use this extraordinary power on, as the Constitution says, extraordinary occasions.
And it seems to me that you can't force the House into a state of disagreement.
It has to take action on its own, which itself takes a majority.
So in the meantime, and we've seen this going back to President George W. Bush and before, majorities will take these pro forma sessions, which will sound a little bit bizarre to those watching at home, but where you come in, you gavel in, someone's in the chair, there's no one else around, just a few staffers, and then they say, we're here, and then they adjourn.
And then that's it.
And they do that every three days.
And as long as they keep doing that, that prevents the president from making a recess appointment because the Senate isn't in a recess of sufficient length.
Our first caller for you, James in Rome, Georgia, line for independence.
Good morning, James.
Good morning.
You know, I was a progressive Democrat, but, you know, I agree that Trump should be able to put into place anybody that he wants.
The Democrats are weak.
They could have did it.
They let him do merit-garland.
They can interpret the Constitution.
Trump can.
I'm for Matt Gates and whoever else they want to put in there.
I'm sick of the Democrats crying.
We gave them Obama 60 votes.
They could have did whatever they wanted.
Use the filibuster.
Do not use the filibuster to stop y'all from passing any legislation.
Pass it.
The people who voted for Trump, and what I'm trying to say is they should live through whatever he wanted to do.
All the Democrats do is complain all the time and stuff about the Constitution and this and all that and everything else.
But the Constitution can be interpreted to mean anything that any administration wants.
Democrats, shut up, especially you Hispanics who voted for Trump.
James, any response for James?
Well, the first thing I would point out is that we've been in this position before.
We had unified Republican control of government.
We had Donald Trump in the White House making cabinet-level appointments, and Democrats were very much opposed to that.
And at the time, Senator Chris Murphy, this is in February of 2017.
They went around the clock one night, one night, they went around the clock, stayed in session all night long voting on cabinet-level nominations.
And afterwards, Senator Chris Murphy spoke to a group, a progressive group, and they asked him, they're very excited.
They're like, this is going to be great.
We're going to take the fight to them.
Chris Murphy looked at them and said, I'm exhausted.
I don't know how much we can sustain this.
And I think that's an important thing to remember.
We haven't seen all-out obstruction with the filibuster or even without the filibuster of presidential nominations because it takes a lot of effort and it takes time.
And if you know you're going to lose in the end, that's very, very hard to do.
And so I think it's important that we kind of keep this context in mind because in reality, we've seen this before.
And the president typically gets his nominations.
The only other thing I would say is a lot of the people right now who are alarmed by this idea that the president would use recess appointments in this way and are pushing back very aggressively against the president are also the very same people who argued aggressively that the president ought to have his team, that the president ought to be able to put people in executive branch positions with George W. Bush.
And if we look at George W. Bush's judicial nominations in 2003, four, and five, Miguel Estrada among them, Priscilla Owens, these very same people would say things like, it is unconstitutional for the Senate to not have a vote, an up or down vote on a presidential nomination.
And so, again, I think it's important to keep this history in mind because the moment we're in, you know, maybe they've changed their talking points.
Maybe people have turned things around a little bit, but it's never totally unique in American history.
And James, to the caller point, the caller's point, there's a Reuter headline: expect to hear the F-word a lot in the Senate next year.
F-word, of course, is the filibuster.
It's something that Republicans have said that they want to keep in place.
How could that impact President-elect Trump's legislative efforts?
Well, as we understand the filibuster, it operates as a veto, which means that you have to get 60 votes, not 51, to get anything done.
And because the Republicans don't have 60 votes, that means they would have to moderate their agenda in order to get stuff done.
And that's the kind of conventional understanding of the filibuster.
After having worked in the Senate for many, many years, watching senators try to filibuster things, I can assure you, the filibuster is not a veto.
And it doesn't seem like that until you're actually tasked with trying to filibuster something.
No one asks for your permission if they don't want to, right?
And so the filibuster is an opportunity to speak.
It's an opportunity to speak and be heard and participate in the debate.
And you have to sustain that filibuster and sustain that obstruction.
And that's very hard.
And for much of American history, there was no way to end a filibuster.
And the Senate still did very, very big things on very narrow majority votes.
And so we could still see lots of things pass, even with the filibuster on legislation.
But that's up to the Republicans, not the Democrats.
It's up to how they manage the Senate and how aggressively they try to push through their agenda next year.
And remind us when, what type of legislation 60 votes is not needed on.
So in recent years, everyone's probably heard the term budget reconciliation.
And budget reconciliation is just a, it's a fancy term that just refers to a bill that can't be filibustered, that there is a time limit for its debate on this Senate floor and the House floor, but the House can do whatever they want with the special rule.
So these rules and the budget process only really apply to the Senate.
And the idea is that when the Congress passes a budget and it has top line levels for spending and revenue, that later on they can look at that budget, look at the permanent law and see how they're comparing.
And if we're spending more than the budget said we ought to, if we're not bringing in as much, we're bringing in too little as the budget said we ought to, then they can pass a bill to reconcile or align that permanent law with the budget.
And that's what this budget reconciliation measure does.
But it's ostensibly meant to only focus on budget-related items, not policy-related items.
But of course, both parties have used budget reconciliation in recent decades to do purely policy-related stuff.
Richard in Allslip, Illinois, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Richard.
Yeah, I just had a basic question.
It's due to the fact that Trump says that he wants to put two czars up there to make major cuts, which I'm being there.
These are two billionaires.
I would like to know where does the American people fit in where if they disagree with what he's doing, that they can call and put in a complaint because he's eliminating Congress, too.
So I just want to know.
That's my question, sir.
Well, Richard, we've seen the executive office of the president and the president's staff grow significantly since its kind of first real appearance with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
So presidents in both parties have used non-Senate confirmed positions and people to basically get advice and ultimately to carry their agenda to Capitol Hill and out into the press.
I can reassure you, though, unless Congress gives the president this power, the Congress ultimately has the power of the purse.
James Madison calls it the most effectual power that any free people can give their elected representatives to defend themselves against tyranny.
It's the most important power.
And so the Congress ultimately has to approve, has to approve of any cuts.
And I would go one step further.
The Constitution is explicit.
No money can even leave the Treasury.
So we have to spend money every year.
We approve it every year.
No money can even leave the Treasury unless the House first acts to approve that.
So if the House decides to do nothing, then no money leaves.
If it decides it wants to spend money, then it goes to the Senate.
The Senate will have to decide how they want to spend money.
If they disagree, then they vote on that bill.
Then they're in a state of disagreement.
Then they'll work that out.
Then it goes to the president.
That bill may or may not be based on the recommendations of that czar, of whatever process that President-elect Trump establishes.
But ultimately, the people's elected representatives in the Congress have to make that decision.
Another James for you.
This one in Secaucus, New Jersey, line for Republicans.
Good morning, James.
Hi, good morning.
Thank you both so much for taking my call.
I do have a question regarding these recess appointments.
What would be the political cost of, I'm not even sure what the correct term for that would be, recalling a Trump nominee.
So, for example, Matt Gates seems to be one of the more controversial choices for a very consequential position.
And so, hypothetically, Matt Gates is put in that role via a recess appointment.
And then, what happens when the Republican-controlled Senate returns?
Is it even remotely possible after President Trump's resounding victory that a Republican-controlled Senate would even consider something like that?
It seems to me, and I'm no expert by any means, but it seems to me like a huge political risk.
I mean, some of them are up for re-election in 2026.
So, to me, it's they want to do anything and everything to keep President Trump happy and his supporters happy after such a resounding landslide victory.
So, the president can't nominate the attorney, the presumptive attorney general nominee until he's sworn into office.
But once he's in office, then that nomination can be made.
That nomination will then go to the Senate.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will review it.
If the Senate Judiciary Committee, after reviewing it and has a hearing, wants to vote on it, they vote on it.
Then it goes to the full Senate.
At any point in that process, that nomination can be withdrawn by the president.
We've seen this, for instance, with former Senator, former majority leader Tom Dashel, for that matter.
President Obama appointed Dashel to serve in his cabinet.
And ultimately, because of a tax issue, that nomination was ultimately withdrawn.
So presidents can withdraw nominations all the time.
And the Senate ultimately, you know, defeating a cabinet-level nominee in a vote is going to be rare, right?
But what is much more likely to happen is that the Senate will lean on the president, tell the president, make it very clear to the president that he doesn't have the votes if he doesn't have the votes, at which point the president would then presumably withdraw the nominee.
But of course, President-elect Trump is unlike other presidents in many respects, and so it's unclear whether or not that would be the case.
James, a question coming in on X for you from Pep.
He says to your guest, explain a filibuster used by Tommy Tuberville used in promoting generals.
So what Senator Tuberville did was not a filibuster.
So this is why we think the filibuster is a veto.
Because again, the filibuster is just the opportunity to stand up and talk.
You can't call a vote in the Senate as long as the senator is speaking or seeking recognition to speak.
And as all of you know, standing up and talking takes a lot of effort and you get the lights on you and the cameras are rolling and there's other places you want to be and your colleagues are grumbling and maybe your spouse or your kids back home are like, why aren't you coming home?
You know, there's a lot of things that factor into that and make it very hard to sustain.
What Senator Tuberville did was just simply say no.
And the Senate has rules, right?
And it can follow those rules.
And for much of its history, those rules led it to do big and great things.
But just like the House today, the Senate doesn't really follow its rules all the time.
Instead, it creates new rules.
It just cuts to the chase.
And the mechanism it uses to do that is what we call a unanimous consent agreement.
You would say, I ask unanimous consent that, you know, we take these five nominations here.
Let's put them together and just confirm them, right?
That's something that you would do.
But when you ask for unanimous consent, you are asking for everyone's consent.
This is a vote which essentially requires 100 senators to vote yes.
You're essentially asking for Senator Tuberville's permission at that point, at which point Senator Tuberville is completely justified if he wants in saying no, because after all, you asked for his permission.
And I would submit to you that if you don't want Senator Tuberville to say no, then don't ask for his permission and just use the rules instead of asking for unanimous consent.
David in New York, Line for Independence.
Good morning, David.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
So my question is kind of framed around Matt Gates and whether Trump has the ability to install whoever he wants to install in that position.
And the way that I'm looking at it is basically I'm looking back at January 6th, right, and what happened in January 6th, which is a terrible time for our country.
But in January 6th, it was framed at the viewpoint that Donald Trump was trying to stop the certification of the votes, right?
But I'm looking at it from a different perspective.
I'm trying to figure out what was actually happening in the House when January 6th happened.
And what was happening was that Ted Cruz was standing there with two congressmen ready to try to debate whether the election was fair or not.
So I'm looking at that as motive.
Why would Trump want to stop that?
Who would want to stop that?
From my perspective, Trump wouldn't want it to stop that.
When everything stopped and they went back, they didn't pick up with Ted Cruz.
Everyone, I guess, got scared and just said, we're going to certify this election.
So my point is, what really happened?
Do we need to investigate that?
Does Trump have a duty to get someone in government that would actually look at possibly people that are still in our government that might have done something illegal that day?
James.
Well, what the members of Congress were doing, severed apart from the people who broke into the Capitol and ransacked the place, and, you know, separate and apart from all of that, what the members of Congress were doing, whether we like it or not, was that they were using rules that are on the books.
The Electoral Count Act establishes procedures, and they were using those procedures to adjudicate electors, presidential electors.
Again, their motives may be, you know, we can question their motives, we can question all kinds of things.
But ultimately, they were using rules that Congress under the Constitution has the authority to make and set.
And I think that when we talk about, you know, punishing members for using the rules or punishing members for what we call illegal acts that are ostensibly sanctioned by the rules, we get into a very slippery situation because ultimately then it becomes any behavior we don't like that is pursuant to the rules is somehow going to be damaging to the Constitution and we ought not to do it.
And so I think what I would encourage everyone to do in thinking about January 6th is to try to separate the kind of the institutional processes that were playing out inside and then the stuff that was happening outside.
And I don't think that the institutional process caused what happened on the outside, right?
I don't think that maybe they're both manifestations of the same thing.
But ultimately, you know, rulebound behavior in and of itself, in my opinion, is not illegal, right?
I think that's an important thing to remember.
Kyle in Honolulu, Hawaii, line for independence.
Good morning, Kyle.
Aloha, Sanha.
Thanks for doing this program.
I just have a super question.
Despite the deal-controlled Senate and Congress, what still requires a two-thirds vote?
And I'll listen off the air.
So the filibuster, when we talk about the filibuster, essentially says that you have to have three-fifths of all senators duly chosen and sworn.
So if you have 100 senators in office, that's 60.
You have to have 60 senators vote to win debate if a senator or senators don't want to win debate and go to a final vote, right?
So that's one thing.
But of course, since the nuclear option, that doesn't apply to nominations anymore.
It still applies to legislation.
However, within the legislative realm, there are certain things like budget reconciliation measures and the past trade approval measures.
There are things that don't require 60 that are what we call fast-track.
They have time limits on their debate.
And then when we get to the two-thirds level, any effort to end a filibuster on a proposal to change the Senate's rules requires two-thirds of senators not duly chosen and sworn, but present in voting.
So it's if you have all 100 senators on the floor, then it's going to take 67 to end a filibuster on an effort to change the Senate's rules.
It also requires, you also need two-thirds to confirm treaties and ultimately to impeach a president or any other official of the United States.
And James, we've been talking about the Senate winning control or the GOP winning control of the Senate chamber for next term, but the House also, Republicans there, were able to hang on to it.
But it's likely that they'll also have a very slim majority.
What does that mean when it comes to legislative efforts?
And when was the last time a party had a trifecta?
Well, the Republican Party had a trifecta in 2017.
Like we have been here before.
Very narrow control in the House, in the Senate with a President Trump in the White House, right?
And this is coming off after seven years of the party signing blood oaths that they would repeal and replace Obamacare.
The Senate had one vote on it.
They came one vote short and then they walked away.
They didn't so much mention it again.
The majority leader now, the former or the minority leader, the majority leader then, Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, after that said, if there's anything that Republicans agree on, anything at all, it's tax reform.
We all love tax reform.
They barely, barely passed tax reform.
And that was only after senators like Pat Toomey and Bob Corker came in and ultimately led an effort in the finance committee to help to jumpstart that process.
So if you don't like the Republican agenda and you don't like President-elect Trump's agenda, I think a lot of the concern that you may have right now is fully justified.
But it's, you know, I think that it's not likely based on past history that Republicans are going to be able to just steamroll and pass whatever they want.
If you are a big fan of that agenda, if you want to make America great again, I think a lot of the excitement and the expectation is going to lead to maybe some disappointment.
Because in reality, Republicans don't all agree on the agenda.
They just don't do that.
I mean, immigration is a great example of that.
The same with the Democrats.
And so I think what we're going to see over the next, say, six, seven, eight months is going to be the reality of our partisan kind of divisions within the parties coming to the forefront.
And it's going to change our expectations that we have right now.
And you mentioned Senator Mitch McConnell.
He has stepped down from his leadership role of the party after 18 years.
And this week, the Senate Republicans elected John Thune of South Dakota as their new leader.
What do we know about his relationship with President-elect Trump?
Senator Thune, like most Senate Republicans, has a relationship with President-elect Trump.
He's been making efforts to get closer with the President-elect Trump.
And even when he was president before, he comes from a state in which the president is very popular.
But look, any Senate leader is going to have a relationship with the president, especially the president of your own party.
I think the question becomes, you know, when that Senate leader is seen as just doing the job of that president versus helping to facilitate the process for all of the senators and all of his or her own senators in their own party.
And we saw this, you know, Alvin Barkley, he was known as the president's man.
He was another majority leader from Kentucky, incidentally.
And his president was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
And he was criticized.
He was criticized for being too close to FDR.
And at one point, he resigns his seat as leader.
And then the Senate Democrats come in and unanimously re-elect him the very next day.
And so I think it's about, there's a give and take here, right?
Because ultimately, when we say the president's agenda, what we're talking about are an agenda that the voters of these senators want to pass, right?
And so it's not that the senators are working for the president.
It's that they are basically doing things that their voters want them to do.
But when that changes and their voters decide they don't want that to happen or the senators themselves say that's just a bridge too far for me, then they're going to expect their leader to work for them and not for the president.
Audrey in West Babylon, New York, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Audrey.
I want to know if the senators refuse to do the recess, will their states be impacted?
Will their states be impacted, James?
Well, the only, you know, the impact would be if they refuse to help President Trump, if they vote against his nominations for that matter, or they speak out very aggressively against the president and his effort to make a recess appointment, right?
There would be a political ramification if the president-elect is very popular in their states.
And then that would play out and say, as soon as two years from now, when one class of the Senate is up for reelection.
But in the near term, in the near term, it's not like it's going to have an impact on any one particular state.
Catherine in Maine, line for independence.
Good morning, Catherine.
Good morning.
Yes, I would like to ask: can there be more than one president at a time?
Biden is currently president.
Therefore, how can Trump, who has not been inaugurated yet, do recess appointments?
Well, the president-elect can't actually nominate anybody until sworn into office until he takes the oath of office in January of next year.
So we only have one president.
Edmund Randolph, governor of Virginia, and the Constitutional Convention back in 1787, actually proposed to have, he wanted three presidents.
And we can think, I mean, how remarkable our politics would be today if we had three presidents instead of one.
But the idea that we have one president is something that the framers believe in very strongly because the president is meant to have unity in the executive so that you can manage the executive branch, a hierarchical organization, unlike Congress, and ultimately represent the nation abroad, right?
And so we only have one president at a time.
Now, the president may be eclipsed by other figures in his or her own government.
The president may be eclipsed by their successor.
Like in this case, people are talking about Trump and what's to come, as opposed to Biden and what we have right now.
But we still have, from a legal perspective, only one president.
And if we didn't, then Edmund Randolph would be very happy.
He called having one president the fetus of monarchy.
And that's something that he was very, very, had strong opinions on in the Constitutional Convention, but he ultimately lost.
Rick in Idaho, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Rick.
Hi, how are you doing?
I want to know if somebody's appointed or confirmed to like the Department of Justice or whatever, what mechanism can the Senate use to get him out of there if they don't like him, if he's messing up or whatever.
Good morning, Rick.
So the Constitution gives the Congress the power to impeach, right?
So it gives the House the power to impeach.
And if you think about an impeachment, it's like an indictment, right?
It's like, we are going to charge you with this crime.
And the House will pass a resolution of impeachment, and then it goes over to the Senate.
And then the Senate would have a trial and they would hear, you know, they would, and then ultimately decide.
Senators are both the judge and jury in this sense.
And then they would decide whether or not to convict.
And if they convict, then that official in the government is then removed from office.
But that's not the only power they have.
They have the power of the purse, right?
Which you can cut off salaries.
You can do all sorts of things.
You can limit the way funding is used.
And you can use your power of the purse and your power to just pass laws to ultimately insulate that person so that they can't cause a lot of trouble and try to make their lives miserable so that they can ultimately leave.
The president can veto anything, of course, but then the Congress has the ability to override that veto.
And then lastly, they have the ability to conduct oversight.
And that's not, you know, that's not nothing, as I would say, right?
That's the, you know, you have hearings, and then those hearings are opportunities for the media to cover something, and you can draw attention to stuff and then let the American people know what's happening.
And that's a very important tool to use in between elections because it ultimately shines a light on what the government is doing.
And then the people can make it very clear, very clear to their elected officials what they expect them to do moving forward.
And if they don't comply, that they're not going to go back to D.C. after the next election.
Ralph in Washington, D.C., line for independence.
Good morning, Ralph.
Well, it gets me how you say that the congressman representing, clearly Harvard did a study that said that they only vote for what the positions want about 30% of the time.
What I'm saying is everybody, it's both parties.
And that's, you know, people say, well, how can you not be a Democrat or you can not be a Republican?
I think both parties are full of crap.
What you're saying is all these congressmen, 95% leave Congress rich.
So how can you leave Congress millions of dollars in your pocket and not be corrupt?
And then it's just, You know, we have we have a media that's for example, we have a media that's bought by the drug companies, then we have um a vaccine that was was funded by um fauci.
I mean, a virus is funded by Fauci.
So they have a they have a rule that says, oh, you can't leave your house unless you get a vaccine shot, you know, because the politicians are bought and the media is bought, and now and now the Pfizer's made 90, what, 90, 100 billion dollars off of his vaccine?
And the death rate is so high in the country, it's 13% higher.
I don't trust any of these guys anymore.
Well, and maybe it's because I'm a staffer, but I can assure you, I didn't leave Congress with millions of dollars in my pocket.
You know, I mean, obviously, they're going to be, you know, they're going to be bad apples.
There's going to be things that happen.
I can't explain everything in our system is by no means perfect.
But what I can also believe very deeply that our system of government, while not perfect and it's gotten better over time, all of the things that we've done in our nation and in our history, those things have happened with the exception of the Civil War amendments to the Constitution.
Those things have happened not in spite of our Constitution, but because of it and through it.
And I think a big, you know, one of the big tragedies we see with a lot of the frustration right now, a very genuine frustration, frustration, I understand, with the government on both sides, with how it's operating and the inability of the people's elected representatives to adjudicate their concerns, right?
That frustration, when it then is turned on the system itself, I think that's the danger, right?
Because the way that you fix these things, the way that you rein in an executive that you don't like, that you stop a president, that you replace the Congress, that you force Congress to take action on things, the ways that you do that is through the system, not in spite of the system.
And the American people have all the tools they need to get the government they want.
But we have to first see the system as the place where we go, the politics as the place where we go to adjudicate our disagreements and then govern ourselves.
Because after all, we are a self-government, and that means we have to govern ourselves.
And we need a place to do that.
And for better or worse, that's Congress.
That's where we go to negotiate the non-negotiable.
Mark in Malone, New York, Line for Democrats.
Good morning, Mark.
Yes, I was asking the guests or interested in what the guest has to say about the presidential immunity.
And I'm sure that don't only extend to Trump.
It must extend to Biden as well.
So with all Trump's threats about the martial, whatever, calling out martial law and bullcrap, I'm assuming Biden would be able to do the same thing.
Am I wrong?
Well, the Supreme Court recently had a case that basically declared the president, an official act is immune.
And this is a very controversial decision, and it's one that we're going to continue to see the consequences of.
But I think we have to play it out and see what happens.
But ultimately, these questions, when we think about immunity versus not, you know, these types of questions, we are trained almost today to think of them in terms of the law, as in it's a legal process with a legal decision and a legal outcome.
And that's very good because it's very certain.
This is what the law says.
And therefore, if you break that law, then you pay the consequences.
And if you don't, somehow the system isn't working.
When we think about presidents abusing their power, when we think about Congress abusing its power, like with the Alien and Sedition Acts, or back in the 1790s, for instance, and other things, when we think about the branches of government abusing their powers under the Constitution that they have, I think we need to think of it in terms of political, kind of political, fundamental type law, where the people ultimately are tasked with protecting their own liberties by replacing that government.
Or if the, say, the president isn't doing something, then the Congress needs to step up and the people need to act through the Congress, not the courts, to rein in the president.
Because after all, that's the whole very notion of the separation of powers.
But instead, today we hand it all over to a legal process into judges because we expect that that's what it's going to take to ultimately rein everything in and make sure that presidents don't abuse their powers.
But I can assure you that if you have a very popular and very aggressive executive, and this has been the case throughout human history, the judges aren't going to be able to stop the executive.
They aren't going to be able to stop Napoleon, right?
The only thing that stops executives like that, the only thing that stops tyrants for that matter, is the people themselves.
And ultimately, it's up to them acting through the political branches, acting through the branches established by the Constitution to preserve that Constitution and the separation of powers on which it depends.
Liz in Waterford, Connecticut, line for independence.
I'm sorry, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Liz.
Hi, how are you?
A caller, a couple callers before me, asked, how can President-elect Trump put nominations forward if he's not the president?
And if the Senate and House are on the recess, and he didn't answer the question.
He told the history of how there was only one president, but he didn't answer the question.
Well, the President-elect Trump can't make a recess appointment until he is the president.
The Constitution gives that power to the president, not the president-elect.
And the president-elect won't be the president until the end of January next year.
And just for a point of clarification, when we are talking about the nominations this week, it is who Trump, President-elect Trump, is planning to nominate once he is sworn into office on January 20th.
He's just getting a head start.
James, we appreciate your time.
Our guest, James Wallner, he is a resident senior fellow at the R Street Institute.
You can find them online at rstreet.org.
Thank you so much for being with us, James.
Thanks for having me.
Coming up next, a hearing on government research into unidentified anomalous phenomena or UFOs.
And then the commissioner of the FDA and the director of the CDC join other healthcare officials to talk about equity and increasing patient access to new technologies.
And later, President-elect Trump meets with President Biden in the Oval Office.
President Biden is traveling to Manaus, Brazil to visit the Amazon rainforest and learn about preservation efforts there.