You hear things like “Donald Trump is playing chess while the rest of us are playing checkers.”

Um, no.

But Trump does have a demonstrated knack for getting some people — assorted feckless, craven, insecure, stupid, gullible, and willfully ill-informed members of Congress, for example — to do what he wants them to do while saying (and maybe actually thinking) it’s what they themselves want to do.

So now Trump is talking about forcing through his manifestly unqualified cabinet picks by abusing what is very clearly meant to be a limited ability of presidents to make appointments when Congress is in recess for more than a few days (going back to a time when it could take weeks for legislators to return to D.C. from all over the country because, you know, we hadn’t invented airplanes yet).

• Of course, it is completely up to each chamber of Congress — House and Senate alike — whether or not to go into recess.

• This plot only works if enough members of both the House and Senate agree to put themselves into recess in abject fealty to Trump and utter dereliction of duty to their constituents and the American people.

• If Republicans in the House and Senate go along with this ruse, they will in essence be rendering Congress — and therefore themselves — a no-longer-coequal branch of the federal government.

• And whether they should want to preserve Congress as a coequal branch purely out of their own egotism and lust for power, or for any number of good reasons, they should want to defend it all the same.

To every Republican in Congress:

Whatever you think about Donald Trump and his nominations, you must not forfeit the role of Congress as a coequal branch of the federal government. Because make no mistake — if you agree to go on recess or to let nominations slide through without an affirmative Senate vote — that is exactly what you will be doing.

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- Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
 
 
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