On January 3, House and Senate Republicans will give up their gavels, and Donald Trump will take on a new role as President Veto. But that’s 55 days away. The real question is: What happens between now and then?
Somewhat lost amid all the gnashing of teeth about last Tuesday’s shellacking is the fact that Republicans are still in control of all three branches of government. Granted, the GOP has a razor-thin margin in the House, and its 53-47 advantage in the Senate is perhaps even more tenuous when we consider the Trump-derangement of Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, and the bitterness of lame ducks like North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Texas’s John Cornyn, and the reliable unreliability of Maine’s Susan Collins. And the “leadership” of John Thune.
John Solomon at Just the News offers an interesting list of eight “power moves” Donald Trump and the Republicans could still make — either in the next 55 days or sometime thereafter through the power of the executive branch. Those ideas range from hamstringing spendthrift Democrats by passing multiyear budgets for all key agencies in order to lock in federal spending until after Trump leaves office, to using the funds recovered from the administration’s fraud-fighting efforts to help secure Medicare and Social Security, to revoking the tax-exempt status of leftist anti-American (but I repeat myself) nonprofits, to blocking the blue states’ effort to do away with the Electoral College via the so-called National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, to passing the key elements of the SAVE America Act — photo ID and proof of citizenship — through the budget reconciliation process, to using the tax code to go after quasi-governmental leftist organizations like the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, and the teachers’ unions.
Then there’s the judiciary. “The stakes could not be higher,” writes Article III founder and President Mike Davis. “Outgoing Senate Majority Leader John Thune ... must use every remaining day to confirm all of President Trump’s pending judicial nominees. That means 23 judges, four for the circuit courts and 19 for the district courts, before the gavel changes hands.” Why are these judgeships so important? Davis continues:
Appellate courts are the most consequential. They get the final word in the vast majority of cases. The Supreme Court grants only about 1% of all petitions for review. For nearly every litigant in federal court in America, the circuit court is the last stop.
President Trump has nominated four outstanding jurists to strengthen key appellate benches: Anna St. John and Todd Butler to the 5th Circuit, Lee Rudofsky to the 8th Circuit and Dan Domenico to the 10th Circuit. St. John, Rudofsky and Domenico already serve with distinction on the district courts in Louisiana, Arkansas and Colorado. All four are well prepared to step into these roles.
Speaking of the third coequal branch of government, there’s another hugely important matter here that Republicans should consider: the future of the Supreme Court. Stalwart justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are 76 and 78 respectively. And Alito recently sounded about as likely to leave the High Court as Jordan Belfort was to leave Stratton Oakmont.
Which leaves Justice Thomas, whom every constitutional conservative loves and admires. But unless the GOP has a secret plan to nullify last Tuesday’s election results, Thomas should consider his age and the electoral landscape and refuse to be the Republican version of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We can’t afford to cough up the third branch of government. Thomas, at 78, is a full seven years past the life expectancy of a black American male. And the electoral map for the next two Senate cycles doesn’t look at all favorable. Which means he’ll likely be at least 84 by the time a Republican president might have a Republican Senate with which to nominate and seat a worthy successor.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently observed, “Chance of confirming a worthy successor to Justice Thomas and/or Alito during President Trump’s term: Zero.” DeSantis is certainly right if he’s talking about January 3 and beyond. But there are still 55 days during which to prove him wrong.
We should build a monument to Justice Thomas, and communities across the United States should name streets and schools for him. But Donald Trump should have a heart-to-heart with him this week, and he should suggest a 50-year-old strict constructionist to replace him. (For context, Trump needed just 38 days to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Amy Coney Barrett in the fall of 2020. The Democrats and the media could shriek all they want, but there’s nothing they can do besides shriek. Indeed, the shrieking of the Left would be like cool rain on a blistering hot day.)
For many years now, the Supreme Court has been the mostly conservative bulwark against leftist legislative overreach. We can’t afford to lose Justice Thomas’s seat.
Questions abound about the future of the American Experiment, but none of them have the urgency of this one: Will the Republicans of the 119th Congress quietly slink away during the next 55 days, or will they come together with a sense of urgency and do the vital work of the people who elected them? Because this much we know: The Democrats and their Democratic Socialist fellow travelers are most definitely going to go to work on January 3.
The Republicans have 55 more days in power, and they can go out with a whimper or a bang. So far, all I hear is a lot of whimpering — that, and a “60 Minutes” stopwatch going tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick.
