President-elect Donald Trump has faced furious backlash for wanting to fill his Cabinet through recess appointments, but he would not be the first president to use the controversial method. In fact, the precedent was set by none other than Barack Obama.
President Obama made "routine" use of recess appointments, Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow told America First with Sebastian Gorka.
Normally, the president nominates officials and the Senate votes to confirm.
With recess appointments, the president can unilaterally appoint officials without input from Congress.
The Constitution allows the president to fill all vacancies that "may happen during the Recess." While the recess appointments power was meant to ensure the smooth functioning of government, it has been used by presidents in recent years to overcome opposition to political appointees.
Some of Trump's Cabinet picks, such as Matt Gaetz and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have faced furious pushback in Washington. But Trump could get his polarizing nominees appointed "because of the idea of a recess appointment, which, until Barack Obama, was rarely used," Marlow said.
"But Obama used it for routine appointments that weren’t going to get through the Senate. So, now, the precedent’s there and Trump can do this.”
Trump's insistence on using recess appointments has sparked backlash, with critics accusing him of an unconstitutional power grab - but he is not the first president to use them.
According to the Congressional Research service, President Clinton made 139 recess appointments, George W. Bush made 171, and Barack Obama made 32.
Trump did not make recess appointments during his first term.
The first Supreme Court ruling on recess appointments came in 2014, when the court unanimously rebuked Obama for filling the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was holding "pro-forma" sessions, meaning the Seante was not actually in recess.
“For purposes of the Recess Appointments Clause, the Senate is in session when it says that it is, provided that, under its own rules, it retains the capacity to transact Senate business,” the court ruled at the time.
The newly elected Senate Republican leader, John Thune (Sd.), has said recess appointments are "on the table" after Trump demanded that all leadership candidates agree to use them.
"We must act quickly and decisively to get the president’s nominees in place as soon as possible, & all options are on the table to make that happen, including recess appointments. We cannot let Schumer and Senate Dems block the will of the American people," Thune said.
The Supreme Court rejected the appeal of a January 6th defendant who challenged his conviction for “parading, picketing, and demonstrating” at the Capitol.
The misdemeanor charge is one of the most common in hundreds of January 6th cases. John Nassif, the defendant who filed the appeal, was sentenced to seven months in prison on four misdemeanor convictions, including parading and violent entry, the Washington Examiner reported.
Nassif's public defenders said he has a First Amendment right to demonstrate at the Capitol, but lower courts have disagreed.
According to Nassif's defenders, he was inside the Capitol briefly, for about 10 minutes, and he only entered an hour after the initial, violent breach of the building.
His defenders say the parading charge criminalizes First Amendment expression that bears no comparison to the violent conduct of some other January 6th defendants and is "in no way disruptive."
Lower courts, including the federal appeals court of D.C., have ruled that "The People's House" is not a forum for the public to air grievances with their government, despite what some may think.
“Nassif has not established that the Capitol buildings are, by policy or practice, generally open for use by members of the public to voice whatever concerns they may have — much less to use for protests, pickets, or demonstrations,” a three-judge panel of the appeals court said.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Nassif's appeal, sparing the DOJ a potentially massive setback in hundreds of cases. But it may be a temporary victory.
President-elect Donald Trump has often described the January 6th participants as "patriots" who have been treated unfairly, and he has promised to pardon many of them.
Hundreds of January 6th defendants have been charged with assaulting police, but many others did not spend much time inside the Capitol or otherwise remained peaceful.
"I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can't say for every single one because a couple of them, probably they got out of control," Trump said previously.
The Supreme Court rebuked the Justice Department earlier this year for its sweeping interpretation of a felony obstruction law that prosecutors used in hundreds of January 6th cases.
The justices expressed concern in that case, Fischer v. United States, about overzealous prosecution chilling the right to protest.
The court held that the DOJ requires evidence of physical destruction of documents to bring charges for obstruction of an official proceeding, which had never been used against protesters before January 6th.
With President-elect Donald Trump backing him up, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) won a unanimous vote Wednesday to continue leading the House Republican Conference.
Some House Republicans were reportedly planning to challenge Johnson on Wednesday but backed off after Trump endorsed Johnson "100%" at a meeting on Capitol Hill.
The vote was delayed for over an hour as Johnson met with critics to "hash it out," Fox News reported.
Trump has backed Johnson in the past, and he re-iterated that support at a meeting with Hill Republicans on Wednesday, effectively quieting any rebellion before it starts.
Johnson's predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was thrown out last year by a group of conservative hardliners who said he reneged on commitments to shrink federal spending.
Similar threats have loomed over Johnson, who has worked with Democrats to fund the federal government and the war in Ukraine.
Johnson did not face a challenger on Wednesday, despite reports that members of the House Freedom Caucus were planning a protest. Prominent Republican critics of Johnson, including Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), have gone quiet.
With Johnson facing a full floor vote in January, some Republicans have expressed worry about a repeat of the McCarthy drama. It took McCarthy 15 rounds of voting to win the position as conservative holdouts withheld their support.
"What would worry me is if they're willing to take that battle to the floor again. That's where it doesn't serve any kind of positive purpose at that point," one lawmaker told Fox News Digital.
A full-scale mutiny against Johnson would risk opening up divisions in the party, even as Trump prepares to return to the White House with Republican majorities in the House and Senate for at least two years.
With Republicans poised to control the levers of power in Washington, the possibility of more infighting has led to some eyerolls.
"Frankly, I am tired of the instigators. I am tired of the conflict for the sake of conflict-type nonsense that happened last session," Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., told Fox News Digital.
Some have speculated that Trump's Cabinet nominees could also jeopardize the narrow House majority, with Trump tapping several loyal allies on the Hill for key positions.
Trump nominated Matt Gaetz - who led the dramatic effort to dump McCarthy - to be attorney general Wednesday, in a shock announcement.
Trump nemesis Chris Wallace is quitting his job at CNN to explore the world of podcasting.
It's the latest career shift for Wallace, who quit Fox News after 20 years in protest of the network's coverage of the 2020 election and January 6th.
During his tenure at Fox, the veteran news anchor carried on a feud with President-elect Trump, who accused Wallace of being unfair to him in a presidential debate in 2020.
Wallace joined CNN in 2021 as a host for the short-lived streaming platform, CNN+, before getting his own weekend talk show. The veteran journalist is departing CNN to enter the podcast space after an election that highlighted the decline of the legacy media's influence.
President-elect Donald Trump's victory over Kamala Harris has been attributed partly to his interviews on various podcasts, which enabled Trump to reach young, male voters. Trump mostly shunned left-wing news networks like CBS, which were openly hostile towards him.
Wallace, 77, has worked his entire journalistic career in the legacy media, spending 20 of his years in broadcasting at Fox News. The son of newsman Mike Wallace said he is excited to launch an independent venture in podcasting, where the "action seems to be."
“This is the first time in 55 years I’ve been between jobs,” Wallace told the Daily Beast in an interview. “I am actually excited and liberated by that.”
Wallace noted to the Daily Beast that the election cycle was driven by podcasters like Joe Rogan and Charlamagne the God, but Wallace added, "I don’t flatter myself to think I will have that sort of reach.”
“I have nothing but positive things to say. CNN has been very good to me,” he told the Daily Beast.
Wallace's career move comes as CNN suffers a plunge in ratings that has the network eyeing massive layoffs. CNN reportedly denied raises to top hosts like Jake Tapper and had asked Wallace to accept a pay cut.
CNN wanted to keep Wallace, but he ducked out ahead of talks to renegotiate his $8.5 million contract.
“Chris Wallace is one of the most respected political journalists in the news business with a unique track record across radio, print, broadcast television, cable television and streaming,” CNN CEO and Chairman Mark Thompson said in a statement.
“We want to thank him for the dedication and wisdom he’s brought to all his work at CNN and to wish him the very best for the future.”
Kamala Harris spent lavishly in her failed effort to win the White House, doling out huge sums of cash to effectively bribe celebrities like Oprah for their support.
The Washington Examiner reports that Harris paid $1 million to Oprah to boost her glitzy presidential bid, which burned through $1 billion and left Democrats locked out of power in Washington.
Despite an enormous cash advantage and overwhelmingly positive media coverage, Harris lost in a wipeout to President Trump, who secured a historic second term backed up by the popular vote. Trump also led Republicans to reclaim the Senate, and they are on pace to maintain a House majority.
Harris' disastrous defeat has reignited criticism of the Democratic party's embrace of identity politics, with many arguing the party has lost touch with the electorate to embrace niche, "woke" causes.
While voters were concerned with the economy and immigration, Harris focused on "democracy" and the notion of Trump as an aspiring dictator, using famous celebrities to get out her message.
An October 1 town hall event with Oprah cost the campaign $1 million, the Examiner reported. Oprah lavished praise on Harris as the only moral choice for voters.
"We’re voting for values and integrity," Winfrey said at the rally. "We’re voting for healing over hate."
A source told the Washington Examiner that the campaign spent six figures to build a set for Harris' appearance on the sex podcast Call Her Daddy, where Harris plugged her messaging on abortion.
The spending spree kept going until the night before Election Day, when Harris' campaign blew $20 million on a swing state concert series featuring Bon Jovi, Lady Gaga, and Christina Aguilera.
The Democrats' disastrous defeat has led to finger-pointing, with some blaming Joe Biden for taking too long to end his re-election bid and others criticizing the party's drift from the working class.
While few Democrats have said so publicly, Harris was a weak candidate, who struggled to separate herself from the unpopular Biden administration and often left voters puzzled about her agenda with rambling, vague responses to questions.
Voters were ultimately drawn to President Trump's authenticity and his message, which was focused on day-to-day issues like inflation.
The lesson here? “Money can’t buy you love or a good candidate,” one Trump campaign adviser said.
Democrats in Congress and in the mainstream media are still reeling from President-elect Donald Trump's ultimate landslide victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.
In the wake of Harris' crushing defeat, which anyone who buys groceries and gas could have predicted years ahead of time, those same Dems are scrambling to come up with excuses and point fingers at who's to blame.
According to reports, ESPN host Stephen A. Smith played a new blame card in an effort to come to grips with Harris being defeated so soundly by blaming none other than former First Lady Michelle Obama.
Just a day after Election Day, Smith, while hosting The Stephen A Smith Show, laid out why he believes Harris lost to Trump so badly, making strong points along the way.
Smith's take on the matter was the fact that Harris relied on high-profile celebrities to boost her campaign while at the same time, Trump was gearing his campaign toward working-class America.
With groceries, gas, and bills at record highs, American voters simply couldn't or didn't want to connect with ultra-rich celebrities like Michelle Obama or Oprah, as their lives are completely unreliable.
"In fairness, I don’t think anybody should be laying the Party’s loss at [Harris’s] fee,t" Smith said.
"In the end, celebrities, who are worth hundreds of millions, if not billions, who most American citizens feel are incredibly detached from their way of life and their quality of life, were not going to get away and guilt them into doing something different than what their experience says is going on and what they should do about it."
But Smith's main issue with Michelle Obama was a particularly bizarre speech in Michigan to prospective voters in which she said that a Black man’s "vote for [Trump] is a vote against us."
"If we don’t agree with you, we’re against you?" Smith snapped back.
Smith also pointed to a dumb comment made by Oprah Winfrey who essentially said that with Trump as president, voters would never be able to vote again.
“Who believed that,” Smith questioned. “This is the kind of stuff that alienates an electorate, alienates a voter."
Clearly, Harris' campaign focused on all the wrong people and all the wrong issues.
At the end of the day, most American voters simply want better economic circumstances for themselves and their children, and obviously, will place party ideology aside if there's a chance at achieving that.
Vice President Kamala Harris was soundly and devastatingly beaten on Election Day by President-elect Donald Trump, who can now claim he emerged with a landslide victory over his opponent.
In the days following the crushing loss, Democrats have grappled, hilariously, with why and how they could have possibly lost to Trump, who they claim is the worst possible thing that could happen to America.
In a lengthy piece published by The Guardian, one of its writers, clearly stricken by deep Trump Derangement Syndrome, warned the Democratic Party that former President Barack Obama and the old ways of the party have to go.
The piece was titled, "The long Obama era is over."
The piece attempted to explain, to some degree why Democrats were wiped out this election, with plenty of excuses and blame to go around.
At one point, the columnist wrote, "The long Obama era is over. The familiar homilies – about how there are no red states or blue states and Americans share a set of common values and working institutions novelly and externally threatened by agents of chaos like Trump – never described political reality."
They added, "They now no longer work reliably even as political messaging. The hunt should be on for alternatives.
The columnist also wrote that the Democratic Party is still in a "stunned silence" while it processes the loss -- a loss that tens of millions of Americans and a wide swath of political analysts and media types saw coming a mile away.
They just don't care to admit how easy it was to predict a Trump win. Most Americans who aren't completely whacky simply wanted a shot at affordable groceries, gas, and utility bills.
Lower interest rates would be nice, too. Whether it was Trump or virtually any other decently popular Republican, Harris, who was at least partially responsible for what's happened the past four years, would have probably lost to them.
According to Newsweek, Trump was able to gain support from new groups that Republicans used to not have, including this time around, people who once voted for Obama.
The outlet noted:
A surprising shift in American voting patterns has emerged as a significant number of low income non-college educated voters, who traditionally support Democrats, are now supporting Donald Trump.
Again, politics comes second to most reasonable Americans who simply want better economic circumstances for themselves and their children.
It's not difficult to understand why Harris lost, and why Trump won, so bigly.
A federal judge appointed by President-elect Donald Trump has shut down a Joe Biden "parole" program that effectively granted amnesty to illegal immigrants married to U.S. citizens.
The ruling is another blow to a liberal immigration agenda that helped to seal Kamala Harris' landslide election loss to Trump.
The policy would have placed up to 500,000 non-citizens on a fast-track to citizenship, along with 50,000 stepchildren.
U.S. District Judge Campbell Barker said Thursday that Biden's program stretched his lawful authority "past its breaking point.”
“The Rule exceeds statutory authority and is not in accordance with law," the judge wrote.
Judge Barker found that Biden circumvented the law, which allows parole only in exceptional circumstances for newcomers at the border. Biden instead sought to arbitrarily shield hundreds of thousands of migrants who have been living in the country for 10 years.
The administration argued the policy would allow illegal immigrants married to Americans to complete the normal process of getting citizenship without leaving the United States and putting themselves at risk of being denied re-entry.
The rule had already been on pause, but the judge effectively threw it out. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), who led the challenge to the program, issued a statement on the ruling.
“Once again we have stopped the Biden-Harris administration’s radical attempts to destroy America’s borders and undermine the rule of law,” he said. “I look forward to the day when the federal government starts following the law again.”
The judge's ruling is likely the final say on the program, with President-elect Trump set to take the oath of office in January. While Biden could appeal, Trump's Justice Department would almost certainly terminate it.
Biden announced the "parole in place" program this summer, even as Democrats attempted to make an election year pivot toward a tough-on-the border message.
Biden's day-one decision to end President Trump's tough border policies led to a massive influx in illegal immigration that eventually became a problem for Democrats on Election Day.
The "parole in place" program was just one example of Biden's unilateral, sweeping use of parole to let millions of immigrants into the country.
The chaos boosted Trump, who campaigned on carrying out the largest deportation operation in American history while highlighting the murders of American citizens by illegal aliens.
As Democrats reckon with Donald Trump's epic re-election victory, the Obamas are coping with their party's devastating defeat by blaming global economic forces.
Frustration with inflation and an overrun southern border were some of the factors that drove Trump's shocking comeback, while many have interpreted the results more broadly as a repudiation of Barack Obama's liberal vision for the country.
In their first public reaction to the election results, Barack and Michelle Obama pointed the finger at an economic funk lingering from the COVID pandemic, rather than any mistakes by the Democratic party.
The Obamas had both stumped for vice president Kamala Harris, blasting Trump as a selfish billionaire who is unfit for office. Their rhetoric was highly personal, with Barack Obama bitterly accusing Trump of stealing credit for economic prosperity that Obama said he created.
In the end, voters ignored smears and hyperbole painting Trump as a dictator and sent him back to Washington with a mandate. Trump won a decisive victory, sweeping the battleground states and putting himself on track to win the popular vote.
In Illinois, the reliably Democratic state where Obama launched his career in politics, Trump came within a stunning eight points of victory.
Trump made especially strong gains with young, black, and Hispanic men after Barack Obama had scolded black men who find Trump appealing.
In a statement congratulating Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance, the Obamas briefly offered up their diagnosis for why Harris collapsed.
They absolved Democrats of any responsibility for voters' woes, blaming global economic conditions for driving a backlash against "democratic incumbents" around the world.
America is not "immune" to forces working against democracy, they added, more or less implying that Trump is an authoritarian figure who benefited from the public's anger.
“America has been through a lot over the last few years — from a historic pandemic and price hikes resulting from the pandemic, to rapid change and the feeling a lot of folks have that, no matter how hard they work, treading water is the best they can do,” the Obamas said.
“Those conditions have created headwinds for democratic incumbents around the world, and last night showed that America is not immune."
Harris finally conceded defeat Wednesday, waiting hours after Trump's victory became clear in the early morning. In a defiant statement, Harris took pointed jabs at President Trump over his alleged refusal to honor a peaceful transfer of power in 2021.
Donald Trump won a clean and decisive comeback on Election Night, but there were some echoes of the chaotic 2020 election in Wisconsin, where officials had to recount 31,000 absentee ballots.
Tabulators in the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee were left unsecured, leading to a manual recount that delayed reporting in the swing state. The recount did not impact the outcome in Wisconsin, where Trump won by about 30,000 votes.
An election observer noticed that the doors on the tabulators were not sealed, leading the city to perform a recount "out of an abundance of caution."
“It’s just out of an abundance of caution. We have no reason to believe that there was any compromise to any of the machines,” city spokesman Jeff Fleming said.
Milwaukee finally delivered its absentee ballot count in the early morning Wednesday. While officials blamed "human error" for the delay, Republicans blasted the oversight as an unacceptable error.
"This is an unacceptable example of incompetent election administration in a key swing state: voters deserve better and we are unambiguously calling on Milwaukee's officials to do their jobs and count ballots quickly and effectively," RNC Chairman Michael Whatley and Co-Chair Lara Trump said.
"Anything less undermines voter confidence," they added.
The results Tuesday night proved to be historic: President Trump swept the battlegrounds, including the "blue wall" states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, denying Kamala Harris her last line of defense in the Electoral College and securing his path to a second, non-consecutive term.
Trump's commanding victory - which is expected to carry over into a popular vote win - left Harris no option but to concede the race on Wednesday.
The election was wrapped up much faster than in 2020, when Joe Biden was declared the winner after nearly a week of counting mail-in ballots. Despite Trump's quick and decisive victory this year, Americans still do not know the winners of key Senate contests in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada.
The Associated Press called Wisconsin's Senate race for Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin on Wednesday, defeating Republican challenger Eric Hovde. Republicans have flipped seats in West Virginia, Montana, and Ohio to regain a Senate majority.
The House of Representatives is still up for grabs, with many elections yet to be called in California. Ballot counting in the state, which has universal mail-in voting, could last weeks.