How Much, If At All, Will The Senate Stand Up To Trump's Intention Of Sidestepping The Constitution?

When Push Comes To Shove, Will Republicans Back Trump Or Protect America?

Trump has never taken the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration seriously or even tried to understand what they do. Elon Musk, on the other hand, is just looking for big cuts in government functions that could go into reducing taxes on the very rich. Trump and Musk are toxic mixture— toxic for America. Yesterday, Ryan Maue reported that mixture is toxic for the GOP as well. Project 2025 claims the NOAA is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” and recommends defunding it. Musk and Ramaswamy want to privatize it.

Maue: “With the rising costs of and vulnerability to extreme weather in a changing climate for the United States, dismantling or defunding NOAA would be a catastrophic error. Rather, there is a golden opportunity to modernize the agency by expanding its capacity for research and innovation. This would not only help Americans better prepare for and survive extreme weather but also keep NOAA from falling further behind similar agencies in Europe. While the incoming administration may want to take a sledgehammer to the federal government, there is broad, bipartisan support for NOAA in Congress. It is the job of the incoming Republican-controlled Congress to invest in its future… It conducts basic research; provides authoritative services like weather forecasts, climate monitoring and marine resource management; and supports industries like energy, agriculture, fishing, tourism and transportation.”

Carl Hulse poked into the potential for the Senate to put the brakes on the Trump regime’s desire to implement Project 2025 far beyond just the National Weather Service. “Trump’s determination to crash over traditional governmental guardrails will present a fundamental test of whether the Republican-controlled Senate can maintain its constitutional role as an independent institution and a check on presidential power. With Trump putting forward a raft of contentious prospective nominees and threatening to challenge congressional authority in other ways, Republicans who will hold the majority come January could find themselves in the precarious position of having to choose between standing up for their institution or bowing to a president dismissive of government norms.”

Let’s start with nominees who would have had zero chance of being confirmed by any other Senate in history: RFK, Jr, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Russ Vought, Tom Homan, Dr. Oz, Charles Kushner to name a few. Hulse predicted that The clearest and most immediate point of tension is likely to be Trump’s efforts to skip the Senate’s traditional confirmation process to install loyalists, including some with checkered backgrounds, in his cabinet. But the president-elect has also signaled he expects Republicans on Capitol Hill to accede to his wishes on policy, even if that means ceding Congress’s control over federal spending. Both are powers explicitly given to the legislative branch in the Constitution. Lawmakers and analysts say allowing Trump to erode the Senate’s authority to pass judgment on nominees by sidestepping it through recess appointments or watered-down background checks could do permanent damage to the Senate and undermine the constitutional system.”

Petrified on being called a RINO by Trump or being attacked by the ascendent MAGA wing of the party, there are very few Republican senators willing to go against Trump’s demands. To stop his excesses there needs to be 4. So far, only Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Susan Collins (ME) have shown they have the cajones to stand up to him, even a little. Republicans are patting themselves on the back for having persuaded Trump to shitcan Gaetz. Now the hard work begins. “The prospect of a constitutional clash between Republican senators a president of their own party,” wrote Hulse, “originated with Trump’s call for Senate leaders to embrace so-called recess appointments— a disputed practice of installing nominees when the Senate is on break— to circumvent resistance and accelerate the approval of his candidates. That idea immediately set off alarms with some Senate Republicans who see their advice and consent role as defined in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution as one of their defining responsibilities. Several of them said they intended to do what they could to preserve it; Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the outgoing Republican leader, has signaled he may be one of them.”

MAGA extremists like Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Rick Scott (R-FL), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Stephen Schmitt (R-MO), Ted Budd (R-NC)… are much more likley to push Trump further right than to ever oppose him. In all likelihood new members Bernie Moreno (R-OH) and Tim Sheehy (R-MT) will join the MAGA-always faction.

“The Senate has the constitutional obligation that many of us take very seriously, the advice and consent provisions,” Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said. She said that backing off that power “would be violating the intent of the founders. We would be ignoring specific language in the Constitution, and we would be undermining, in a profound way, the authority of the Senate and responsibility that we have.”

… “Senators can vote any way they want, but we all take an oath to uphold the Constitution that includes the advice and consent provisions,” Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said. “Some people may feel so strongly about this administration that they want to just vote ‘yes’ on all of them, and that’s their prerogative. That’s not my position.”

The divide among Senate Republicans over how far they will go in backing Mr. Trump has left Thune, who will take over on Jan. 3, walking a fine line. He has said that Trump has the right to choose who he wants for top positions, but Thune has also suggested he is committed to preserving the Senate’s role of vetting and voting on those tapped to fill the executive branch at the highest levels. Thune has said all options are open for doing so.

…The fight is over more than just whether Trump will try to dodge the Senate completely. Some Republicans are insisting that Trump’s picks undergo standard FBI background checks before being voted on, a requirement that his transition has so far refused to agree to, and which advisors have suggested he should sidestep. Other Senate Republicans, embracing the president-elect’s skepticism of the FBI, say checks by the law enforcement agency aren’t crucial.

“I don’t think the American public cares who does the background checks,” Senator Bill Hagerty, Republican of Tennessee, said on ABC’s “This Week.” “What the American public cares about is to see the mandate that they voted in delivered upon.”

In an effort to hold the Senate in line, Mr. Trump’s allies have promised to exact political retribution for any who loom as obstacles to the new administration by inciting primary opposition when they next appear on the ballot. But Republicans resisted the blitz against Mr. Thune for leader and Ms. Murkowski, one of the Republicans most likely to break with Mr. Trump, said she would be willing to do so without fear of the political consequences if she found nominees objectionable.

“If I’m standing up because the individual lacks integrity, lacks moral character, then that’s on me,” she said. “I’m going to feel a heck of a lot better standing up for that than just being run over and cowed because that’s what everyone else is doing.”

As the new administration assumes control, both the House and Senate are likely to face other challenges to their fundamental authority, including assertions by some in Trump’s inner circle that the administration is not bound to spend money even if Congress appropriates it for a designated purpose.

But lawmakers expect that the handling of nominees in the early days of the Trump administration will be telling about the Senate’s future.

“If we allow recess appointments to fill the entire Trump cabinet without confirmation hearings, we take away one of the most important tools senators have,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said. “Whether or not the Senate can be the institution that our framers intended is going to be proven one way or the other here in the next two months.”

Many of the Trump die-hards keep repeating the lies about Trump’s “huge”— albeit basically nonexistent— “mandate.” Trump won, barely, but protested to the voters that  he didn’t know anything about Project 2025 and wasn’t running on their platform and even opposed much of it and found some of their proposals foolish. Now his entire agenda is taken straight from their 900-page handbook— and many of his top nominees were the authors.

Criminals Hate Law Enforcement— Dream Of Turning The Tables

Whatever a top advisor Trump is, this morning’s Wall Street Journal reported that they were cautioning Señor T that “Patel not only lacked the right experience, but they feared his embrace of controversial theories could hurt his chances at Senate confirmation… Trump ignored those aides and chose Patel anyway in a Saturday night decision that sent shock waves through the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump now hopes to install the bombastic, hard-line critic of the bureau as its leader, the latest step in his long promised plans to remake the nation’s law-enforcement and intelligence agencies more fully into an arm of his agenda. The announcement not only signaled that he would oust the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, but that he would seek to empower a polarizing figure—even within Republican circles—and dare the Senate to defy him. Less than 24 hours after Trump announced his nomination of Patel, there were early signs that winning Senate approval could be a challenge.”

Patel… has said he wants to shrink the FBI and shutter its Washington headquarters, prosecute agents he considers corrupt, and take legal action against journalists he called traitors, views that set him apart from earlier directors. 

His varied work history also includes business ventures under the logo “K$H,” selling pro-Trump merchandise and author of provocative books, including one for children that pays homage to its hero, King Donald. 

… [S]ome who supervised Patel during the first Trump administration warn that he is unfit for the job. 

“He’s absolutely unqualified for this job. He’s untrustworthy,” said Charles Kupperman, who served as Trump’s deputy national security adviser and worked closely with Patel. “It’s an absolute disgrace to American citizens to even consider an individual of this nature,” he said.

His critics say his four-page resume— covering stints as a public defender, a counterterrorism prosecutor and a national-security official during Trump’s first term— masks a lack of management experience and a firm grasp of how the FBI works. 

Trump’s growing disdain for the FBI following a slew of investigations and indictments into his own conduct has made his choice of Patel even more disconcerting for critics who worry he will wield the bureau as a weapon to go after his perceived enemies— including some within its ranks. 

Trump saw in Patel someone who would unapologetically tackle the “deep state,” Trump’s disparaging term for the federal bureaucracy he views as out to get him, people familiar with his decision said. His desire to oust Wray had intensified in recent months, and he wanted, in Wray’s place, a deeply loyal ally who would work more closely in step with the White House. 

…A month before the election, at a rally in Prescott Valley, Ariz., Patel issued a warning:

“The government gangsters and the fake news media are coming for our constitutional republic,” he said. “They have used their unconstitutional means and their two tiered system of justice and the deep state— and it’s not a Republican or Democratic thing.”