Matt Gaetzs Plan to Make Donald Trump the Speaker of the House is No Joke

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One cause for concern is that Trump will use enormous power in the legislative process. His presidency suggests he may not be inclined to use that power for the public interest. For the past fifty years, legislators from both parties have had centralized legislative power within the office of speakers. As a result, Trump will effectively decide whether bills that keep the government open or raise the debt ceiling reach the floor of the House. He insisted on closing the government during his own term and called on GOP lawmakers not to remove the debt ceiling earlier this year. It’s not hard to imagine Trump pushing for a prolonged shutdown or even a national default if he thinks it will help him and hurt Biden.

Another reason, and perhaps more urgent, is that the spokesperson can effectively decide on the outcome of the 2024 presidential race. When Electoral College members vote for a president and vice president, they vote in their respective state legislatures in December. Electoral votes are brought before the joint session of Congress in January, where the sitting vice president will open and count them in front of assembled lawmakers. If no candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes, it is up to the House and Senate to elect the president and vice president, respectively.

Often all of this is an anachronistic formality. But it gained new importance after the last election when Trump, drawing on memos made by conservative lawyer John Eastman, forced former Vice President Mike Pence to throw out enough votes in Bidens ’election to reject he of the majority. If Pence went along with it, the thought went, the House would decide on the presidential election as prescribed by the Twelfth Amendment. That amendment included a twist: the House voted for a president through state delegation rather than as individual legislators, which would give Trump a majority with a contingency vote and a second term.

As I mentioned in September, the Eastman memo has a part on legal and constitutional issues. But it also had a big practical problem at the time: the House Democratic majority. Ned Foley, an Ohio State University law professor who specializes in election law, said that if Pence tried to mess up the count in Trump’s favor, House Democrats could just end the joint session to block the plot. to reach fulfillment. After all, both chambers need to hold a joint session, and so if the House closes it (even if it is possible to kick the Senate out of its own chamber), the joint session will not end to determine if a candidate has won the an electoral. mostly in college, he wrote.

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