“All the right people are angry.”
This is what MAGA will tell you when you point out that President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is an unhinged authoritarian crank.
If you point out that Kennedy is a chemtrail truther who believes the water supply is turning children gay, MAGA will ask you if he’s any worse than “Rachel Levine” or Anthony Fauci.
Probably not, no.
And when you mention that Kennedy has neither the credentials nor expertise to offer anyone advice on their health, much less make national policy, people like Elon Musk will point out that Democrats believe men could be pregnant.
That’s also true.
But none of those contentions are arguments for Kennedy. A man who celebrates the notion of climate lockdowns doesn’t become a stronger candidate because Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra is also an extremist.
Even if we found out Fauci was the devil himself, it wouldn’t erase Kennedy’s lifetime of crackpottery. It’s not merely that Kennedy possesses no experience for the job. It’s that most of the things he believes are dangerously untethered from reality.
Anyway, you may disagree. And Trump has the right to pick anyone he likes. But the Senate has the duty to vote down any irresponsible and ridiculous nominees. It’s why advice and consent exists.
In a normal year, Kennedy would have to answer a slew of awkward questions in a Senate confirmation hearing. Which is probably why Trump has reportedly cooked up a scheme to bypass the Senate and recess-appoint his Cabinet.
Recess appointments, which, the late Justice Antonin Scalia noted, are an “anachronism,” were intended to let the executive branch make appointments when Congress was out of session. In the 18th century, elected officials were compelled to travel hundreds of miles by carriage to go home or escape Washington, D.C., during smallpox outbreaks – which, to be fair, may well make a comeback under Kennedy.
This isn’t some esoteric debate over the spirit of the law. Trump wants to force fake recess with the help of Speaker Mike Johnson in the House, so his nominees can circumvent senatorial scrutiny. It is an open attack on the separation of powers. It is the kind of executive abuse Republicans would rightly be howling in indignation over if the other party was doing it. Recess appointments still exist. No president has ever tried to abuse them in this way.
Whenever MAGA is itching to blow up some norm, it will argue that Democrats would surely do the same if they had the chance. Why should the GOP unilaterally disarm, they ask? Even if this were true, the GOP claims it is a defender of the constitutional order. But maybe ask yourself if it’s worth destroying 250 years of tradition for the likes of Kennedy.
Because “making all the right people angry” isn’t any great accomplishment. Virtually everything makes leftists angry. What would really bring a reckoning to corrupt government are ruthlessly competent administrators who will dismantle the stultified culture in these agencies and reinvent them. There are plenty of people available who can do it and get through a confirmation hearing.
Too bad, MAGA tells me, Trump has a “mandate” from the people. But, of course, mandates aren’t a real thing, either. Every incoming administration imagines it’s been given a magical ability to implement an agenda unilaterally. We don’t have oligarchs with time limits, even if they have captured overwhelming wins, which Trump has not. We have three branches of government. And one of them is empowered to reject the president’s Cabinet picks no matter how people voted for the president.
Sen. John Thune, the incoming majority leader, has already extended deference by promising Trump his nominees will get timely votes. That’s a completely normal thing to do.
And that’s all he needs to do.
