WASHINGTON – After a resounding election victory, delivering what President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans said is a mandate to govern, an uneasy political question is emerging: Will there be any room for dissent in the U.S. Congress?
Trump is laying down a gauntlet even before taking office challenging the Senate, in particular, to dare defy him over the nominations of Matt Gaetz, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other controversial choices for his Cabinet and administration positions.
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The promise of unified government, with the Republican Party’s sweep of the White House and GOP majorities in the House and Senate, is making way for a more complicated political reality as congressional leaders confront anew what it means to line up with Trump’s agenda.
“This is going to be a red alert moment for American democracy,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said on CNN after Trump tapped Gaetz for attorney general.
Trump is returning to the White House at the height of his political power, having won both the Electoral College and the popular vote for his party for the first time in decades. The trifecta in Washington offers a tantalizing political opportunity for Republicans, opening up a universe of political and policy priorities — from tax cuts to mass deportations to the gutting of the regulatory and federal bureaucracy, along with Trump's vows to seek vengeance and prosecution of his perceived enemies and pardon those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
But for Congress, it’s also a potentially existential moment, one that is testing whether its status as a co-equal branch of U.S. government can withstand a second Trump administration.
“One of the possible futures for Congress is that it becomes a rubber stamp,” said Phillip Wallach, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who writes extensively about Congress.
Wallach said the threat to Congress has been on his mind, but he also believes it would be more pronounced if Republicans had won larger majorities. The House, in fact, may end up with slimmer numbers, and the Senate's 53-seat advantage, while more than the simple majority needed to confirm nominees, can hardly be seen as mandates.
Besides, “they’re not wimps,” he said of elected lawmakers. “There’s no reason for them to just turn themselves into a doormat.”
It’s a changed Washington from Trump’s first term. Congress has been purged of his strongest critics. At the same time, the Supreme Court has shifted dramatically rightward, with three Trump-appointed justices, and a majority decision over the summer that granted the president broad immunity from prosecution.
Trump’s Cabinet picks are posing the biggest early test for Congress.
While Trump's choice of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for secretary of state is expected to have somewhat broad support, including from Democrats, others like Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and Pete Hegseth as defense secretary are raising more scrutiny.
The choice of Gaetz, a fierce Trump loyalist who talks about the wholesale upheaval of the Justice Department, is all the more troubling for senators because of a House ethics probe over alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. He denies the allegations but submitted his resignation from Congress as soon as he was nominated, effectively shutting down the probe.
Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would consider the Gaetz nomination, called on the House to “preserve and share their report" with the panel.
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a Republican member of the Judiciary committee, said he expects “any and all” information on the nominees will be made available.
Other Republicans in the House and Senate stood with Gaetz, supporting his effort to take on the Justice Department over what they see as perceived bias, particularly over its prosecutions of Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election ahead of the Capitol attack and for hoarding classified documents.
"I know the Democrats are clutching their pearls right now, and they’re very, very upset about everything," said Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., on Fox News.
“But if you think about how they have weaponized the DOJ, this is a situation that needs serious reform,” he said. “It’s President Trump’s prerogative to choose who he wants to nominate.”
Incoming Senate GOP Leader John Thune said confirming Trump's nominations will be a priority next year and senators “should expect an aggressive schedule until his nominees are confirmed.”
Complicating the matter for senators is the Trump campaign's decision to not engage, so far, in the traditional transition process, having declined to sign agreements with the federal government that would launch FBI background checks of nominees, among other standard steps before confirmation hearings.
Senators may be forced to consider nominees that have not been vetted in the traditional ways.
Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., a former member of the House Intelligence Committee, worried Americans may be left in the dark about their top officials. “People have a right to know who’s leading critical aspects of their government,” he said.
Intensifying his demands on the Senate, Trump suggested it should consider so-called recess appointments of his nominees — a highly unorthodox request that essentially asks the Senate to drop its constitutional advise-and-consent role and allow his nominees to be installed without a vote.
Wallach said if senators chose that route it would be “an act of extreme institutional self-sabotage.”
Congress has been here before, in the first Trump administration, when the White House tested the limits of its executive power.
One of the most significant confrontations of that earlier Trump era was over his promised border wall, when the White House tried to poach congressionally approved funds for military base construction projects and repurpose them for the wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
Congress largely won that round, after long fights, but it's about to be tested in new ways.
Trump is planning a series of executive orders on Day One of the new administration to launch his mass deportations and other priorities.
Trump allies, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and influential commentator Charlie Kirk, have warned of consequences in the form of primary challenges to senators who fail to confirm nominees.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the on-again-off-again Trump ally, said he typically confirms a president's nominees, regardless of party, and intends to be a yes vote again.
“I consider this matter closed,” he said.
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Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.