Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a nominal Republican from South Dakota, and the Senate GOP caucus flew home for their August recess. Before leaving, Thune made sure of three things: the recess is happening on schedule; the SAVE America Act didn’t pass; and pro forma sessions have been arranged every few days to keep the Senate technically “in session” — which prevents the President of the United States from making recess appointments while his own party’s Majority Leader is poolside.
This needs to be stated plainly. Usually, when you have a Republican in the White House and a Republican majority in the Senate, the Majority Leader would adjourn without pro forma sessions if normal confirmations weren’t getting done — allowing the president to make recess appointments that the Senate is blocking through its own dysfunction. That’s how the system is supposed to work when both branches of the same party need to get things done and the confirmation process isn’t cooperating.
In this case, Thune is quite literally doing the work of the opposition by arranging pro forma sessions that block Trump from doing the work of the presidency.
The specific targets of the blocked recess appointments haven’t been itemized publicly — but the pattern is obvious. There are positions that need filling – still, nearly two years into Trump’s 4-year term. The confirmation process, which Thune controls, has been slow, contentious, and in several cases actively hostile to the president’s nominees. The pro forma sessions Thune arranged guarantee that Trump cannot work around those bottlenecks during a month-long August vacation.
Before leaving, Thune met with Senators Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, and Rick Scott, and emerged with an agreement: postpone the Senate budget resolution until after recess, and then vote immediately on the voter ID element of the SAVE America Act when they return.
If you believe that will happen, you probably also believe the mullahs in Iran when they say they plan to honor the next ceasefire.
Republicans have made this promise before. They’ve been going to pass the SAVE America Act for months. They were going to pass it before recess. They were going to stay in Washington and get it done. Trump came to Capitol Hill personally. Seven senators said they’d block adjournment. The president put Thune’s job on the line publicly.
And Thune went home anyway. With pro forma sessions arranged to make sure Trump can’t even work around the vacancy problem in the Senate’s absence.
The only thing you can count on with this iteration of Senate Republicans is that when given the opportunity, they will choose to wait. There’s always time to wait, to postpone, to hope it goes away, until time runs out — which is the game we are witnessing.
Democrats are coming for the filibuster. Coming for the courts. Coming for the election system. And John Thune is at the pool making sure they get a head start.
