Increasingly, Trump has decided to ignore Congress altogether. He’s told advisors to do the same, goading them to flagrantly defy congressional restrictions. One time, a leader of a national security agency asked the president for support in convincing Congress to pass an upcoming defense bill. Trump could use his megaphone to prod representatives who were on the fence to support the legislation.
“Don’t worry about Congress,” the president said. “Just do what you need to do.”
The official explained that it wasn’t like that. The law needed to pass so that certain defense restrictions could be lifted. Until then, the agency wouldn’t be able to do its job to protect the American people. That’s why they needed Trump to champion passage of the bill.
“No, no. It doesn’t matter. You have my permission to do whatever you need to do, okay? Just forget about them.”
The official sat in stunned silence and then gave up, moving on to the next topic.
Donald Trump is also comfortable flouting Congress when the law explicitly says Congress shouldn’t be ignored, should be consulted, or must approve something before action can be taken.
He infuriated Capitol Hill by moving forward with controversial weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates without congressional permission. By law, the president is required to provide Congress a thirty-day heads-up before weapons sales can move forward, allowing them an opportunity to block the transactions. Trump knew there was bipartisan opposition, so he invoked an “emergency” provision in the law, sent it to Congress at the last minute, and went forward with the sales anyway. To be clear, there was no “emergency,” and Trump set another bad precedent for future chief executives to pretend the legislative branch doesn’t matter.
The president hasn’t tried to hide the fact that he actively shuns Congress’s crucial “human resources” role. The Constitution requires the president to nominate the government’s senior-most leaders and to appoint them to their positions only “with the advice and consent of the Senate.” But Trump prefers to keep un-nominated and un-confirmed individuals in key posts, as noted earlier by his own admission. It’s off-putting to watch how agency heads must continuously curry his favor and carry out his bidding if they hope to ever be nominated, and thus, they are more loyal to him and less accountable to Congress. All told, midway through his third year, Trump had nearly 1,400 cumulative days of cabinet vacancies in his administration, days when top agencies had no confirmed leader. By comparison, Barack Obama had 288 cabinet vacancy days at the same point, and George W. Bush only 34.
The gaps mean Congress only has a temporary official to hold accountable. “Acting” leaders are more like babysitters than empowered executives, and are often hesitant to wade into congressional waters until an actual top official is named. Legislative requests get put “on hold.” Hearings get delayed. Transparency weakens. When the organs of state lurch along for months like this, rudderless and without robust congressional monitoring, the functions of government atrophy. The potential for abuse grows, and the end result is bad for organizational management and bad for democracy.
On top of it all, the president has fought to actively obstruct legislative inquiries. It’s become almost a regular occurrence for him to snub congressional requests and even subpoenas, which are supposed to be Capitol Hill’s most powerful weapon to compel information from the executive branch. Trump now treats these official demands like junk mail. He has his lawyers dismiss them by flaunting “executive privilege,” the prerogative of a president to prevent the disclosure of certain confidential information and advice. The refusals go beyond standard practice and have turned into a full block-and-tackle exercise against congressional investigators across an array of Trump administration controversies. The president himself admits as much to this subversion of proper legislative oversight, having declared categorically that the administration will be “fighting all the subpoenas” from Congress and daring the legislative branch to do something about it.
Frankly, this makes it a lot harder to promote the president’s policies when we go up to Capitol Hill. Members of Congress don’t want to listen to us if we won’t listen to them. Meetings these days start off with a list of grievances. Behind closed doors, senators and congressmen rattle off all the ways our administration has undercut their mandates or flat-out ignored them, and I’m not just talking about Democrats. I’ve gotten the same treatment from Republicans, too. We’re forced to tell these representatives that our hands are tied until the president changes his mind or they have something to trade with him.
The obstruction is part of a deliberate and coordinated campaign. Before the midterm elections, the White House counsel’s office started developing a contingency plan to shield the executive branch in case Democrats took power. New lawyers were brought in, and new procedures were put in place. The goal wasn’t just to prepare for a barrage of legislative requests. It was a concerted attempt to fend off congressional oversight. When Democrats finally took the House, the unspoken administration policy toward Capitol Hill became: Give as little as possible, wait as long as possible. Even routine inquiries are now routed to the lawyers, who have found unique ways to say “We can’t right now,” “Give us a few months,” “We’re going to need to put you on hold,” “Probably not,” “No,” and “Not a chance in hell.”
Of course it must be said that no one here is blameless. The Democrats came into power with uncontrolled anger toward Donald Trump and an attitude that the ends justified the means, as long as it brought him down. They told their base they would investigate anything and everything that moved, which is a particularly stupid tone to strike when your hope is to get the executive branch to cooperate with a probe, if only initially. A number of House investigations are obviously political in nature and lack substance. At the same time, others are the legitimate duty of Congress, from examining executive branch ethics violations to analyzing whether official government actions were taken for political purposes.
It’s not the White House’s job to decide what Congress should oversee. That decision was made centuries ago and effectively enshrined in the Constitution. Congress is a co-equal branch of government, and one of its many rightful roles is to monitor the executive. The more vehemently the president inhibits that proper function, the more likely future administrations will avoid accountability, creating fresh opportunities for government malpractice.
A common refrain you hear in the Trump administration after the president cooks up an unwelcome scheme is “We’ll get enjoined by the courts immediately.” His ideas veer toward impropriety and illegality so often that virtually every senior official has heard this phrase, said this phrase, or fears this phrase. It’s the canary in the coal mine—the signal that a bad idea is about to come crashing down. Donald Trump is the miner with his headphones on and the music turned up, oblivious to the warnings. Sometimes it seems he genuinely enjoys taking actions that will get the administration sued.