The Senate Gop’s Summer Hot Seat: Pro Forma Sessions

Sen. Jim Justice is being branded in corners of the internet as a “traitor” intent on “BLOCKING the America First Agenda.”

The West Virginia Republican’s sin? A brief appearance he made on Capitol Hill Monday afternoon, according to a wave of online conservative fury, wherein he gaveled the largely empty chamber quickly in and out of session, then left.

“Thank you for being out here today,” Justice told reporters as he exited the Capitol’s second floor after chatting about the farm bill, the Iran war and the odds of passing a third party-line spending bill before the midterms — seemingly unaware he had just stepped on a right-wing landmine.

Justice is the latest of the 11 Republican lawmakers who will sit in the Senate GOP’s unlikeliest hotseat during the chamber’s five-week summer recess and preside over what’s known as a pro forma session of Congress.

These brief sessions lasting a few minutes or less have traditionally been little-noticed, low-drama affairs. They require one senator from the majority party to make the trek back to Washington every few days during an extended break. Their purpose is to effectively limit a president from either party from temporarily installing a Cabinet pick or filling other vacancies without securing Senate confirmation.

A 2014 Supreme Court decision laid out restrictions on recess appointments that have limited presidents’ use of the maneuver, and the House would need to agree to terms that would allow them. But those restrictions are lost on hard-line online activists who now view presiding over a Senate pro forma session as a failed loyalty test to President Donald Trump, and they're willing to publicly skewer even typical Trump allies they incorrectly perceive as undermining the president.

Some GOP senators, rather than laugh off a huge misunderstanding, have told colleagues in recent weeks they don’t want to be included in the conference’s rotation for presiding over the chamber because it will result in being flamed on the internet, according to two people granted anonymity to disclose private conversations.

“I think people just do it to get clicks, right? And they are also misinformed. There was no issue with recess appointments, but we are getting blasted ‘why would you do this to prevent President Trump from doing recess appointments?’” Sen. Ron Johnson said in an interview about the online furor, adding that Republicans “broke the logjam” by confirming most of Trump’s nominees before break.

The Wisconsin Republican is no stranger to the outrage, having presided over the chamber briefly in early July as part of Independence Day recess. Asked if he got flack online for it, Johnson said, “oh yeah,” but added that he wasn’t bothered by the criticism, which included being called one of the “five filthy failures” who oversaw a session during the chamber’s two-week break.

Justice — whose office did not respond to a request for comment about the Monday backlash — is the third GOP senator who has done a pro forma session during the current, ongoing summer recess, following Sens. John Boozman of Arkansas and Jim Banks of Indiana.

“The House left town without approving a resolution that would allow recess appointments. Due to their inaction, the Senate is constitutionally-required to gavel-in every 3 days,” Banks said in a statement Tuesday to POLITICO.

“So for all the ‘constitutionalists’ asking: I didn’t think twice about doing my constitutional duty when it was my turn,” he added.

Others have gotten out of the job at critical junctures. Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott, for instance, had been scheduled to preside over a pro forma session in April where Majority Leader John Thune ultimately cleared a bill without a formal roll call vote to fund most of the Homeland Security Department, with the exception of some immigration enforcement activities.

Instead, Arkansas GOP Sen. Tom Cotton ended up presiding and became the target of one conservative activist with nearly 400,000 followers on X. She accused Cotton of helping “the establishment wing of the Senate” prevent “America First nominees” from being confirmed.

It’s not clear why conservative social media circles have seized on Senate pro forma sessions as the newest opportunity to eviscerate Republicans for being insufficiently loyal to Trump. The House holds pro forma meetings during recesses, too, and members on that side of the Capitol have largely evaded similar vitriol.

But Trump himself has perennially hammered Senate Republicans to formally adjourn so he could essentially leapfrog the chamber’s confirmation process and make unilateral recess appointments on nominations.

During the 2024 battle to replace outgoing GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, then-president-elect Trump said anyone seeking the party leadership position “must agree to Recess Appointments.”

Trump also warned last year — in a position similar to the one he took during his first term — that he could try to force the chambers to adjourn so that he could make recess appointments, a move that would be without precedent and spark a fierce legal battle.

Ultimately, Trump never made good on his threat. Instead, Senate Republicans left for their August recess last year with his blessing and changed the rules in the fall to speed up confirmation of most executive branch picks by letting them be confirmed as a bloc rather than individually.

“The reality is, the Senate still has a responsibility and a role to play in appointments,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told reporters last year in defense of pro forma sessions — shortly after he presided over one.

Senate Republicans have confirmed more of Trump’s civilian nominees in his second term so far as compared to this point in his first term, including confirming nearly all of the civilian nominees who have been voted out of committee.

“We’ve been on a mission … to ensure that the president has his nominations in place so we can do the job the American people elected him to do,” Thune said earlier this month from the Senate floor about the Senate GOP’s nominations pace.

Trump has never made a recess appointment; nor did former President Joe Biden. President Barack Obama made 32 recess appointments during his two terms, which sparked a showdown at the Supreme Court over three picks for the National Labor Relations Board. The justices ruled unanimously in 2014 that those appointments were unconstitutional because they were made when the Senate was out for a three-day break.

Yet the idea of being able to leapfrog the Senate appears to still be on Trump’s mind: Late last month, as part of a string of recent comments railing on Senate Republicans and Thune in particular, Trump posted a graphic on Truth Social that questioned “Where is John Thune” along with the number of recess appointments made by past GOP Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Meanwhile, word is circulating among Senate Republicans about the online outrage over the Senate pro forma sessions.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who presided over the chamber during one session in late May, shrugged off a question about whether he had personally received pushback, saying he didn’t recall getting criticism but that he’s not very online. (Hawley, like every other GOP senator who has recently done a pro forma session, has gotten heat from a clutch of social media accounts driving much of the outrage.)

But asked about some of his colleagues not wanting to handle the brief meetings because they’ve gotten grief, Hawley acknowledged: “I’ve heard people say that.”