“…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 houses 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.
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But if the presidential adjournment power is invoked, it should be recognized as not just a serious, norm-defying abuse of a procedurally valid constitutional power. Instead, it would in fact be unconstitutional. The Senate would have firm grounds to ignore it, and the Supreme Court could reasonably agree.
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