President-elect Trump is testing the loyalty of Senate Republicans, calling on them to allow him to make recess appointments to the executive and judicial branches without the advice and consent of the Senate.
Republicans are also bracing for Trump to pardon many of the people convicted of Jan. 6, 2021-related crimes, a step that a number of GOP senators who lived through the Capitol riot would not approve of.
And Trump has threatened to impose steep tariffs on imports that many GOP lawmakers worry would hurt the economy.
“He’s always pushed the limits of his presidential power, and Congress is a separate branch of government that will have to assert its authority when warranted,” said a Senate Republican aide, who argued that GOP senators would assert their independence if Trump goes too far.
But Senate Republicans are extremely reluctant to publicly criticize Trump after he won a resounding victory on Election Day.
The vast majority of Senate Republicans agrees with Trump on the biggest legislative agenda item on the table, extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
“There are issues where Republicans will disagree with Trump, but they are not likely to oppose his central agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, naming new judges, cutting military aid to Ukraine, and cracking down on immigration,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow specializing in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.
“If legislators get out of line, he will threaten to support a primary challenge to them in two years. That threat will quiet many possible critics,” he said.
Trump sought to assert his authority over Senate Republicans only days after racking up massive Election Day wins by insisting the next Senate majority leader agree to restore his power to make recess appointments, something Senate leaders from both parties have agreed to curb over the last decade.
The three candidates vying to become the next Senate majority leader — Senate GOP Whip John Thune (S.D.), Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) — immediately agreed Trump should have broader power to fill key slots.
And the show of force has Republican strategists wondering how else Trump may try to flex his political muscle and test loyalties on Capitol Hill.
One GOP strategist said Trump may call for the abolition of the filibuster if his agenda bogs down in the Senate, something he did in June 2018.
“I can easily seeing that issue coming back again,” the strategist said. “If Trump says the Senate Republicans are obstructing our agenda by not abolishing the filibuster, all those grassroots supporters of his will say, ‘Damn right!’”
Trump will soon test his Senate GOP colleagues in other ways.
Republican aides and strategists predict he will pardon many of the people convicted of Jan. 6, 2021-related crimes.
A Senate Republican aide warned such a move “will anger a lot of Republicans on the Hill, especially the ones who were in the building on Jan. 6.”
One of Trump’s closest Senate allies, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), warned in 2022 that granting pardons to people who stormed the Capitol would be “a bad idea.”
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said at that time that while Trump would have the constitutional authority to grant blanket pardons of Jan. 6 criminals, he warned, “There was an insurrection and I think these folks need to be punished.”
Republican strategists warn Trump’s tariff policy will emerge as one of the most divisive issues between the incoming president and Senate Republicans.
Retiring Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) told reporters in September he’s “not a tariff fan.”
“They raise the prices for American consumers. I’m more of a free-trade kind of Republican that remembers how many jobs are created by the exports that we engage in,” he said, reflecting a view shared by many GOP senators.
West, the expert at the Brookings Institution, said Trump’s threat to levy steep tariffs poses a serious political problem for GOP lawmakers.
“The tariff issue will be tough for Republicans because they are inflationary, and the GOP knows Democrats will be all over them if inflation goes back up. That would endanger their slim House majority in 2026,” he said.
Other friction points are Trump’s plans to deport millions of immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border under President Biden, to conduct workplace immigration raids and to load up a budget reconciliation bill with ambitious reforms likely to run into procedural obstacles in the Senate.
Mass deportations would put an immediate strain on businesses who have come to rely on migrants in the country illegally as a source of cheap labor. An expert at the Center for Immigration Studies testified before a House committee last year that as many as 9 million such immigrants are now in the nation’s labor force.
Michael Marsh, the president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, warned last month that employers are “very concerned” about the prospect of losing a big chunk of their workforce.
And Trump’s failure to sign a legally required ethics pledge on potential conflicts of interest — something that was due by Oct. 1 — will put Republican lawmakers on defense, as Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) are already accusing his transition team of breaking the law.
Some of Trump’s more controversial potential nominees may face Senate Republican opposition, particularly Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose controversial views on health and science are sparking alarm in the public health sector, if he’s appointed to a senior position at the Department of Health and Human Services.
If Trump nominates Kennedy, who said last week that “entire departments” at the Food and Drug Administration “have to go,” it would put scrutiny on Republicans on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions subcommittee that would need to handle it. That includes Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), both of whom are up for reelection in 2026.
While Trump helped give them at least a 52-seat majority, if Senate Republicans let Trump walk all over them, it could put that majority at risk in 2026 or 2028.
