On November 3, Democrats won the Senate, flipping seats in Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina, and probably Alaska and Mississippi. When the new Congress convenes in January, Trump will face an opposition majority in both chambers.
Before the election, Chuck Schumer warned that if Trump kept sending nominees like his current ones, “very few of them are going to get through.” Trump’s aides already expect him to lean on acting officials now that confirmations will be harder, and they are preparing for court fights over it.
Limits on the president’s power to remove top officials have mostly fallen away. Cabinet secretaries have long served at the president’s pleasure. In June, the Supreme Court extended that rule to most independent agencies. Its decision in Trump v. Slaughter overruled the 1935 precedent that had protected their members from removal without cause.
The confirmation vote is now the main point at which the Senate has a say over who exercises executive power, and Democrats should use all of it. That means taking the Constitution at its word.