Will Trump bend the Senate to his will? A Q&A with Dr. Ross Baker

By Dave D’Alessandro
Members of the world’s greatest deliberative body affirmed their independence last week by doing nothing – other than publicly sharing their distaste for a credibly-accused pedophile to be named the nation’s top law enforcement official. It’s what you’d call a promising start.
But even though many Republican senators made it clear that Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz needed to be dropped into history’s wheelie bin, there will be more tests of their collective spine in January, when other repellent contenders sent by President-elect Trump will face confirmation hearings.
Trump would rather bypass the process entirely by installing cabinet secretaries and other appointees without debate via recess appointments, which allows a president to act on his own when the Senate is not in session — a clear attempt to break the Senate and its new Republican majority before he even takes office.
To better understand that strategy, measure the Senate’s appetite to obey in advance, and gauge its sense of self-preservation, we turned to historian Dr. Ross Baker, the distinguished emeritus professor of political science at Rutgers University who served three US Senators. This conversation from Friday was edited for brevity.
Q. Do you expect incoming Majority Leader John Thune to run the Senate in any way that differs from Mitch McConnell, whom you referred to as an “unyielding partisan” who values party over country in our previous chats?
In some ways, Thune will be very much like McConnell, in that he sees himself as a protector of the institution and less openly combative — he’s got a much sweeter disposition. Nonetheless, I think he is very much an institutional patriot, sees the Senate as a major player in American public policy, and as both an ally and an obstacle to a president, depending on what the situation is.
Q. Even before Thune was voted in, he faced a loyalty test, when Trump demanded that candidates for leader violate the advice and consent requirement of Article II and allow recess appointments for his nominees. Can Thune withstand this kind of pressure for long? What happens once GOP Senators bypass the Constitution at Trump’s behest just once?
Let’s first consider the vote Thune got when he ran for majority leader: It was overwhelming. There was very little support for the president’s choice, Rick Scott (13 votes), and the (15) votes that went to John Cornyn could have easily gone to Thune. So a number of senators – many unfamiliar even to the politically literate — are strong backers of Thune, and there’s a phalanx of moderate-to-conservative senators who are prepared to fall behind him in battles with the Trump administration.
Clearly, there are senators like Thom Tillis who are up in 2026 who see themselves as more vulnerable and they’ll be less willing to defy Trump. But there are enough Republicans who aren’t up for another four years, who perceive themselves as politically strong enough to defy Trump on things like nominees. And you’ll find that these same people have reservations about Pete Hegseth or Tulsi Gabbard as they did with Matt Gaetz.
Q. Thune did say, however, that while he prefers the confirmation process, recess appointments were “on the table.” Most interpreted that as a willingness to torpedo the constitution.
Well, historically, the Senate has never recessed for 10 days. Trump is asking Thune to run up the white flag, and I just don’t think he’s going to adjourn the Senate for 10 days – he’d have to agree on a concurrent resolution with (House Speaker) Mike Johnson to recess Congress completely. So the idea of these nominees getting through without advice and consent is pretty unlikely.
And if it so happens that someone is confirmed during the recess, that appointment only lasts until the following year – they still have to face the process again, so you can’t escape a vote entirely. A four-year recess appointment doesn’t exist.
Q. What do you make of Trump’s nominations so far, and what do they tell us about how he’s approaching his second term?
Well, they’re deliberately provocative. My theory — since Matt Gaetz’s name came up – is that this first tranche of nominees was daring the Senate to confirm some marginal people. And when they get rejected, he had people in reserve – most of them alumni of the Heritage Foundation or hangers-on, but who are more conventional.
But these are very unconventional. The idea that Bobby Kennedy has the credentials to run HHS — and the idea that Doctor Oz would report to him – is right out of a science fiction novel. The nomination that frightens most people is not Pete Hegseth – I believe he will simply drown in the Pentagon, in its vastness and its complexity – but Tulsi Gabbard. Proposing that the family jewels – our deepest and most important intelligence secrets – should be placed in the hands of someone as inexperienced and erratic as Gabbard is an invitation to the Senate to come down on that nomination like an avalanche.
Q. So you think those three – Hegseth, Gabbard, Kennedy – will also be rejected by the Senate?
I think Hegseth could be confirmed. The sexual assault accusation is pretty lurid, but he has a military background, reached the rank of Major – not a commander of large numbers of troops, but a field grade officer. If there’s any organization in US government conscious of rank, it’s the Pentagon: They practice “chest reading” in the hallways there, which means when they encounter someone in the halls, they look at the ribbons they’re wearing. That’s carrying your résumé on your chest.
Hegseth served honorably and got two Bronze Stars – a moderately important distinction – and that might make him acceptable to lead, let’s say, the Department of Veterans Affairs.
But the Pentagon will overwhelm him. I don’t think he’s the kind of person who has the kind of mind that would be able to encompass the enormity of what the Pentagon does. I don’t think he’ll get to 50, because there are people in the Senate who will look upon this as well above his pay grade.
Q. The Republicans will have 53 in the next session. Who are the ones you’ll be watching?
There are people you don’t hear much about, like Mike Crapo and Jim Risch from Idaho, who are really fine senators. Risch will be chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. You’ll be hearing more about Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia. The usual contrarians are still there — Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and someone I admire, Todd Young of Indiana, a moderate from a very red state. I also will watch Bill Cassidy, who will be vulnerable (to a primary challenge) in 2026. Louisiana is a tough state with a crazy ballot system that could easily cause him to lose, and he was one of the seven Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.
Some are not household names, but they are solid, respectable Republicans who have been on the McConnell team all the way and are fully transferrable to the Thune team.
Q. The recess appointment demand will not be the last attempt by Trump to cut the legislative branch out of its constitutional role. But you seem confident that the Gaetz debacle was proof of political gravity and that institution will hold up, even though there are countless executive orders to come.
I stand behind the writers of The Federalist Papers on this one. Members of Congress don’t want to surrender their roles and simply say, “I’ll be a rubber stamp for the president,” even though some are. But there’s an institutional pride which burns particularly brightly in the Senate.
I admit a bias; it’s the institution I’ve studied most closely. Senators might have a very high opinion of themselves, which some people would regard as hubris. But I see it as institutional patriotism: At some point, they’re going to have to defend the relevancy of the Senate, and I think there are enough senators there who are prepared to do that.
Q. So will the Senate have the largest role in establishing the guardrails on Trump?
It’s interesting: The House is just organizing now, selecting offices and so on. It’s a much smaller scale on the Senate side: There’s a kind of intimacy, senators encounter each other more often, they get to know each other, they have more committee assignments than House members. The difference shows in the inability of the House even to organize itself; it’s composed of a lot of people who are easily re-elected every two years, with 98% of incumbents returning to office.
But Senators have a sense – partly because they’re protected by a six-year term – that they are required not only to defend the constitution, but the institution itself, so that it continues to be relevant in the 21st century.
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