WASHINGTON (Gray DC) – President-elect Donald Trump said on X Sundaythat the next Senate Republican leader should be open to bypassing Senate confirmation for appointments in his new administration.

“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted position of LEADERSHIP in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to confirm people in a timely manner,” the president-elect wrote.

Under the Constitution, the Senate must vote to approve the president’s cabinet positions and judicial appointments. But recess appointments are also allowed if the Senate is in extended recess, which allows the president to hold office until the end of a Senate session for up to two years.

“So a recess appointment comes from article two, section two clause of the Constitution, which says the president has the power to fill vacancies that may happen in the executive branch during a recess of the Senate,” said Matthew Glassman, Senior Fellow at the Institute of Governmental Affairs at Georgetown University.

It can take months or sometimes years for all of the president’s appointees to be approved, in part because there are so many the president has to make, Glassman said.

“This is true of all presidents,” he said. “Trump is not wrong about a basic problem here, which is that a new administration comes in, it doesn’t matter who the president is, and it takes a long time, even without a filibuster, to fully stock the government. You know, the president gets about 4,000 government appointments, people he can appoint under the law, about 1,200 of which require Senate confirmation.”

Recess confirmations have been used more frequently in the past when Congress was not in Washington for much of the year.

“In previous eras, the Senate was in session less than it was not in session,” said Casey Burgat, director of the legislative affairs program at George Washington University. “So they wanted to be able to fill cabinet-level secretaries and a lot of federal judgeships without the Senate being here, especially when they needed horses and buggies to get here.”

Recess appointments have not been used much in modern times, and the Senate has routinely gone into what are called “pro forma” sessions to prevent the president from bypassing confirmation votes.

But the three senators running in this week’s Senate Republican leadership election, including Sen. John Thune (R-SD), Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), appeared to support his request Trump, in the posts on X.

The staggered appointments would allow the president to avoid facing opposition and make his nominees quickly without waiting months or even years.

“I’m interested to see how some of the moderate senators respond, particularly on the Republican side,” Burgat said. “Democrats will obviously be against it. It’s going to come down to how many Republican senators say yes to that, because it’s effectively removing them, this check and balance that we say we love, the Senate checking the power of the president.”

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