President ‘threatens’ to adjourn Congress

US President Donald Trump issued an apparent threat to adjourn both houses of Congress on Wednesday, citing frustration with legislators preventing him from appointing officials in his administration.

The move, which would be unprecedented in US history, would allow Trump to adjourn Congress

and then appoint officials to his administration without the otherwise required approval of lawmakers in the Senate.

Typically, the Senate does not formally adjourn when lawmakers leave for extended periods and instead hold largely symbolic “pro forma” sessions, thus blocking any presidential “recess” appointments.

“If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress,”

he said at what was meant to be a briefing on the coronavirus.

There is a constitutional provision allowing the president to adjourn Congress, but only if the two houses cannot agree on an adjournment themselves. It has not been used. Trump singled out Voice of America (VOA) news service, which is run by a US government agency, calling their reporting “disgusting”.

Trump said his appointee to run the agency that oversees VOA has been held up for two years and is preventing him from “managing” the news service, which is widely considered editorially independent of the US government.

Trump also said some of the appointments being held up were relevant to the pandemic.

A presidentially-imposed adjournment is expected to be met with pushback by members of Trump’s own Republican party, which controls the Senate.