Can the President "Adjourn" Congress?

“…in Case of Disagreement between [the House and Senate], with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, [the President] may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.” — Article II, Section 3 

The presidential power of adjourning Congress has never been used. There are no precedents and scant commentary about what it means or exactly what triggers it. But now, there is credible consideration of the idea being discussed as part of Trump’s demand for an adjournment to let him use recess appointments to completely bypass the Senate confirmation process. It wouldn’t be the first time the issue has come up, as Trump briefly floated it during his first term, and Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to rule out possible support for the scheme. 

It is important, then, for us to quickly get a handle on exactly what this obscure bit of constitutional text means and what it does, and doesn’t, allow the president to do. 

The possibility is uncomfortably suggestive of one of the most firmly repudiated ideas in Anglo-American law, the attempt by Charles I to rule without Parliament. That did not end well, to put it mildly, for either side of the dispute or the nation as a whole. It was an example the Framers of the Constitution were very aware of and consciously sought to avoid by explicitly constraining the chief executive’s power to interfere with the legislature. 

As Ed Whelan writes at NRO, the basic outline of the idea is as follows: the House (presumably more amenable, though that’s far from certain with a razor-thin Republican majority) would pass a concurrent resolution adjourning Congress, which is the normal procedure. The Senate would not concur. Trump could then cite this as the two chambers being in “disagreement,” and adjourn them to whenever he wants. To allow for recess appointments would require an adjournment of at least ten days. But in theory it could extend nearly an entire year, until the next constitutionally mandated annual convening of Congress on January 3, 2026, per the 20th Amendment. 

Read the rest here.

Our Next Secretary of Defense

Here's Donald Trump's new defense secretary, Fox News' Pete Hegseth, hawking grenade soap so you can join the "well-groomed militia."

JFC.

Are all these people total grifters? pic.twitter.com/PyKHOn0SCu

— Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) November 13, 2024

Words fail.

Quote of the day...

"He's resigned! All my prayers have been answered. And I don't even believe in God." -A comment from the Daily Telegraph on the news that the Archbishop of Canterbury has resigned

Armistice Day

One of the few upsides to Trump's (re) election

Some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke.

Donald Trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of Black and Latino voters and young men.

Democratic insiders thought people would vote for Kamala Harris, even if they didn’t like her, to get rid of Trump. But more people ended up voting for Trump, even though many didn’t like him, because they liked the Democratic Party less.

I have often talked about how my dad stayed up all night on the night Harry Truman was elected because he was so excited. And my brother stayed up all night the first time Trump was elected because he was so excited. And I felt that Democrats would never recover that kind of excitement until they could figure out why they had turned off so many working-class voters over the decades, and why they had developed such disdain toward their once loyal base.

Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism — Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and second-term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like “Latinx,” and “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).

This alienated half the country, or more. And the chaos and antisemitism at many college campuses certainly didn’t help.

“When the woke police come at you,” Rahm Emanuel told me, “you don’t even get your Miranda rights read to you.”

Read the rest here.

Some Democrats have been worried about the crazy cult of identity politics for years. A lot of others are now seeing its perils. (FTR I am not a Democrat. Although I briefly considered it after leaving the GOP in 2016, far too many of their political views are anathema to me. I am  a registered Libertarian.)

Gasoline on a fire

FEMA employee removed from role after telling relief team to skip houses with Trump signs after Florida hurricane

The number of conspiracy theories emanating from the usual sources on the far right in recent years has been off the hook. Most are too silly for serious discussion and some are just bat-fecal matter-crazy. Unfortunately this nuttery has taken a firm hold in Trump world. So when you get the odd incident like the above, that actually is true, it just reinforces the belief in all the others. There is a veritable cottage industry out there made of kooks, cranks and conmen who are making a comfortable living off the credulous that regard people like Alex Jones as a more reliable source than the New York Times. 

Where we are

Trump’s legal allies set the stage for DOJ investigations of adversaries 

Pentagon officials discussing how to respond if Trump issues unlawful orders

Lord Save Thy People

Ross Douthat, David French and Bret Stephens discuss conservatism in 2024 and beyond

Not going to excerpt this. Read it all here.

Why?

People sometimes ask why I'm generally so hostile to government. 

Read this.

(No "Trump will save the squirrels" commentary please. Dictatorship is not the answer to governmental overreach.)

The Paths to 270 for Trump & Harris

A good examination of how each side could win in 19 maps. 

(Spoiler: The math and the maps favor Trump, but not by a huge margin.)

A few quick observations. 

* The undecided vote is still(!) believed to be around 4-6%. How they break could be decisive. 

* Disaffected voters could swing the election either way. But the risk is greater for Harris given the extreme rancor in the political left over Israel and Gaza. There are also a lot of Muslim Americans in Michigan. Right now, I'd say that Jill Stein is a dagger pointed at the heart of the Harris campaign. 

* The most likely path for a Harris victory (MI, WI and PA), especially if she wins them by very slim margins, could see her elected while losing the popular vote nationally. That would be flipping the usual script as Republicans generally believe the Electoral College gives them an edge in elections. It's how Trump won in 2016. But if this happens for Harris, expect MAGA world to erupt.

Why the Right Thinks Trump Is Running Away With the Race

The torrent of polls began arriving just a few weeks ago, one after the other, most showing a victory for Donald J. Trump.

They stood out amid the hundreds of others indicating a dead heat in the presidential election. But they had something in common: They were commissioned by right-leaning groups with a vested interest in promoting Republican strength.

These surveys have had marginal, if any, impact on polling averages, which either do not include the partisan polls or give them little weight. Yet some argue that the real purpose of partisan polls, along with other expectation-setting metrics such as political betting markets, is directed at a different goal entirely: building a narrative of unstoppable momentum for Mr. Trump.

The partisan polls appear focused on lifting Republican enthusiasm before the election and — perhaps more important — cementing the idea that the only way Mr. Trump can lose to Vice President Kamala Harris is if the election is rigged. Polls promising a Republican victory, the theory runs, could be held up as evidence of cheating if that victory does not come to pass.

“Republicans are clearly strategically putting polling into the information environment to try to create perceptions that Trump is stronger,” said Joshua Dyck, who directs the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. “Their incentive is not necessarily to get the answer right.”

Last week, the right-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong shared a survey with his 1.1 million followers on X. The forecast from a new polling company suggested, without sharing its methodology, that the former president would take 74.3 percent of the national vote — a landslide unprecedented in American history.

“Trump is absolutely going to win,” Mr. Cheong wrote. “The data shows it.”

Read the rest here.

How Campaigns Used to be Run

This needs to be forwarded to the Catholic Synod

Car humor

The sad thing is that there is an entire generation of people who won't get the joke.

The Case for "Saint" Dositheus II of Jerusalem

Study on treatment of gender dysphoria goes unpublished over political concerns

An influential doctor and advocate of adolescent gender treatments said she had not published a long-awaited study of puberty-blocking drugs because of the charged American political environment.

The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which stave off the permanent physical changes — like breasts or a deepening voice — that could exacerbate their gender distress, known as dysphoria.

The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called gender-affirming care.

But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began.

“They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” said Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who runs the country’s largest youth gender clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.

That conclusion seemed to contradict an earlier description of the group, in which Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues noted that one quarter of the adolescents were depressed or suicidal before treatment.

In the nine years since the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and as medical care for this small group of adolescents became a searing issue in American politics, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s team has not published the data. Asked why, she said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court.

“I do not want our work to be weaponized,” she said. “It has to be exactly on point, clear and concise. And that takes time.”

Read the rest here.

Paul Tudor Jones sees fast approaching reckoning over US debt levels

Billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones is raising alarms about the U.S. government’s current fiscal deficit and the increased spending promised by both presidential candidates, saying the bond market may force the government’s hand after the election in addressing it. 

“We are going to be broke really quickly unless we get serious about dealing with our spending issues,” Jones told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Tuesday.

Read the rest here.

I tend to agree. No matter who wins, their spending plans are going to spike the national debt. Trump's are worse, by far. But the next four years, and possibly beyond, are going to be a bumpy ride. A quarter century of bipartisan fiscal profligacy may finally be reaching its inevitable end.