How the 25th Amendment would work if used on Trump

The siege of the U.S. Capitol by rioting supporters of President Trump has renewed talks on an extreme remedy: declaring the president unfit to do his job and removing him from office under the 25th Amendment.

This is not the first time that critics have called for Trump’s ouster using the amendment. Early in the president’s term, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) introduced a resolution urging Trump to seek a medical and psychiatric assessment to determine his suitability for office, keeping an eye on the law governing presidential succession. .

The proposal was going nowhere.

Many Democrats took up the cause on Wednesday after a pro-Trump mob, encouraged by the president, briefly invaded Capitol and disrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory in November. An unlikely ally, the National Assn. manufacturers, echoed the call to oust Trump less than two weeks before his term expires, urging Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment as a way to “preserve democracy.”

“It’s not law and order. It’s chaos. It’s the crowd rule. It’s dangerous. It is sedition and it should be treated as such, ”said association president Jay Timmons in a statement.

Under the amendment, which addresses the issue of presidential invalidity as well as succession, the vice-president and a majority of the president’s cabinet can declare the president “incapable of discharging the powers and duties of his office. function ”by informing the leaders of the House and Senate. At this point, the Vice-President assumes the duties of President.

But it’s not that simple: Trump should accept, a scenario that seems implausible, to say the least.

If the Vice President and Cabinet declare the President unfit, he could claim his powers by writing to legislative leaders and declaring his ability to do the job. If the Vice President and Cabinet members object, the matter goes back to Congress, which has 21 days to act. It would take a two-thirds vote in both houses to strip the president of his powers, once and for all.

Trump’s term will expire at noon Eastern Standard Time on January 20.

The Constitution makes it clear that the vice-president is next after the president. But there was a question as to how exactly it worked.

In 1955, after a heart attack and other illnesses, President Eisenhower worried about the transfer of power if he was temporarily incapacitated, especially given the hair-triggered relationship with the Soviet Union. He worked out an informal arrangement with his vice president, Richard Nixon, in case he needed to temporarily hand over power.

After President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, Congress passed the 25th Amendment in July 1965. It was ratified in February 1967.

The amendment also explains how to replace a vice-president. The first use of the amendment was in 1973 when President Nixon chose Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to fill the vacancy following the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew in October 1973. Ford, in turn, became president when Nixon resigned in August 1974. Ford then chose former New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president.

In 1987, President Reagan’s aides weighed in on the possibility of invoking the Amendment when concerns grew over his listless and detached behavior during his second term. The prospect was soon dismissed, however, when Chief of Staff Howard Baker ruled Reagan fit for service.

Separately, on three separate occasions, Reagan and President George W. Bush voluntarily transferred power to their vice presidents when they were operated on under general anesthesia. Each reclaimed the powers of the presidency with little notice or disruption to government operations.

In another move to hold Trump to account, Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota said on Wednesday she was writing new articles on presidential impeachment.

“We cannot allow him to remain in power,” she wrote on Twitter, “it is a matter of preserving our Republic and we must keep our oath.”

Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House of Representatives in December 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, resulting from efforts to pressure the leader of Ukraine to dig up Biden ahead of the 2020 campaign. was acquitted a month later by the GOP-led Senate.