Heritage also recommends the Senate adopt a variety of procedural reforms including a reduction in debate time and working on Fridays.
The conservative think tank behind the controversial Project 2025 has a new plan to enable President-elect Donald Trump to fulfill his ambition of using recess appointments to quickly build out his administration.
The Heritage Foundation is coming out with a report Monday detailing how Trump can work with Senate leaders to ensure his cabinet appointees get confirmed as quickly as possible, National Review has learned. One aspect of the report advocates the use of the recess appointment process to staff the Trump administration so that nominees can begin their work before submitting to the standard confirmation process.
“Throughout most of the nation’s history, whenever the Senate failed to hold floor votes on nominations, Presidents could use the recess appointments power granted by the Constitution to install their nominees in office on a temporary basis,” Heritage’s report states.
“Since 2007, however, the Senate has employed so-called pro forma sessions to take this constitutional authority away from the President. During his first term, President Trump was denied any opportunity to make recess appointments by the Senate’s resort to pro forma sessions.”
Heritage advises the Senate to abandon pro forma sessions to allow the chamber to adjourn for ten days in order for Trump to strategically deploy recess appointments, a controversial strategy critics consider an abdication of the Senate’s constitutional advice-and-consent role.
The recess appointments would take place during the confirmation process to allow Trump to fill vacancies for the time being, until the nominees are confirmed. Heritage believes Trump could make the recess appointments in collaboration with Senate leaders and only use recess appointments on individuals he has already nominated. In the same vein, Trump could remove recess appointees who end up not being confirmed by the Senate.
Heritage’s recess appointment scenario would almost certainly be subject to legal challenges. The report argues that under the Supreme Court’s NLRB v. Noel Canning, which determined President Obama’s recess appointments to be illegal, Trump could fill vacancies if the Senate is adjourned for ten or more days.
“In addition to being effective, using the recess appointments power in this way would be supported by clear and controlling Supreme Court precedent,” the report reads. “Even if the adjournment occurs in the middle of a session of Congress, and even if the vacancies arose before the adjournment, it is still constitutional for the President to fill those vacancies. This holding affirmed the political branches’ historical understanding of the recess appointments power and more than 100 years of consistent practice by Presidents of both parties.”
Trump has floated the use of recess appointments to jump-start his administration and begin implementing his agenda on a number of policy fronts. Congressional Republicans are ready to deliver Trump’s agenda on immigration, energy, defense, taxes, and other areas his campaign focused on, if they can resolve tactical disagreements on how exactly to get it done.
The report, authored by legal experts John Malcolm and Dan Huff, lays out other methods Trump and the GOP-controlled Senate can use to expedite the confirmation process without eliminating the Senate’s power under the advise and consent clause of the Constitution.
Outside of recess appointments, Heritage’s report asserts that Trump could use the Vacancies Reform Act to appoint acting officials for vacant, lower-ranking cabinet positions while nominees for those positions are awaiting confirmation. Officials appointed with the VRA are typically allowed to hold their acting positions for 210 days, with extensions if nominations are pending or a new president is inaugurated.
Beyond that, Heritage suggests that Trump’s transition team continue accelerating its selection of nominees to fill key administration posts. They can do so by announcing more presumptive nominees before inauguration day and expediting the background check process, especially for those who have previously served in government. National Review has reached out to Trump’s team for comment.
Heritage also recommends the Senate adopt a variety of procedural reforms including a reduction in debate time and working on Fridays. The 2025 Senate calendar has lawmakers in session for five days a week for most of the year as Republicans hope to push through Trump’s nominees and accomplish their legislative agenda.
Heritage’s report lists out additional potential reforms such as “shortening the com-mittees’ information requests, eliminating or truncating hearings for many nominations, doing away with cloture votes for executive nominees, voting on multiple nominations en bloc, and disposing of floor debates or limiting debate time to a few minutes per side.”
“The bottom line is that there are ways President Trump, acting both on his own and in close coordination with friendly leadership in Congress, might succeed in getting his chosen appointees in place across the executive branch with minimal delay. Doing so would help to ensure that the new Administration loses no time in carrying out the President-elect’s promises of bold reform,” the report reads.
Some of Trump’s cabinet choices have received considerable scrutiny for their past policy records and allegations of sexual misconduct. Former Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) withdrew from consideration to serve as attorney general over a pending House Ethics Committee report alleging sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
Meanwhile, Trump’s defense secretary choice, decorated military veteran and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth has come up against allegations of sexual misconduct and excessive drinking. Hegseth has disputed the allegations and accused the media of waging a smear campaign to destroy his chances of reforming the Pentagon.
The Heritage Foundation became the subject of intense scrutiny during the presidential campaign for its Project 2025 policy and personnel blueprint for the next Trump administration. Trump distanced himself from Project 2025’s goals once the initiative became featured in a barrage of attacks from Democrats over its bold conservative ideas.
But, Heritage has long been one of the most influential conservative think tanks in Washington, and its political arm is spending six-figures to help build support for Trump’s cabinet picks. Heritage president Kevin Roberts was been seen at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month, although it is unclear if he has met with Trump.
Republicans will have a 53-47 Senate majority when Trump takes office again next month paired with an extremely narrow House majority. Trump decisively defeated Vice President Kamala Harris this election to win a second, non-consecutive presidential term largely because of his promises to bolster the American economy and solve the illegal immigration crisis at the southern border.