70 Civil Rights and Pro-Democracy Groups – Including D21 – Join In Opposition To Preemptive Recess Appointments
Seventy national civil rights and pro-democracy organizations, including Democracy 21, sent a joint letter to Senators on December 4, urging them to uphold the Senate’s critical constitutional responsibility to advise and consent on presidential nominations to the executive and judicial branches.
The letter comes as President-elect Donald Trump is urging incoming Republican Senate leadership to let him bypass the Senate confirmation process and make recess appointments of his chosen nominees.
“Donald Trump will not be the first President in history to want to get his nominees confirmed quickly at the start of his Administration,” the groups write. “Indeed, every President wants that. Yet every other President has accepted that he is not a king. Every other President has abided by the constitutional role of the Senate. And no other Senate has accepted, or would have accepted, a demand that they give their power away.”
The confirmation process can be time-consuming, the groups note. But, they write, the process “gathers important information that helps ensure that nominees who will be dangerous or ineffective for the American people are not confirmed and given great power, and that those who are confirmed meet at least a minimum standard of acceptability.”
The letter concludes: “Senators are elected to do a job. Every Senator should have the dignity and fortitude to demand that the Senate exercise its constitutional responsibility to rigorously and impartially vet, and then vote on whether to confirm, the nominees of the incoming President.”
The group letter was organized and led by People For the American Way in collaboration with Public Citizen, the Constitutional Accountability Center, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
