Dem
47
GOP
53
Many Democrats are calling for the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to be invoked to get rid of a president they hate. That is not what it was intended for. John Feerick, the law professor who thought of it and who helped write the text, finally got around to explaining what it was for.
It was adopted after John F. Kennedy was assassinated and was intended to provide continuity of government in times of crisis. It was never intended as a tool for the opposition to undo an election it doesn't like. The Constitution says: "in case of the removal of the president from office, or of his death, resignation or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the presidency, those powers 'shall devolve on the vice president.'" The problem is that this raises some questions that did not have clear answers. What does "inability to discharge the powers and duties" mean? Who gets to make the call? And if the president is dead, does the vice president actually become president or just a kind of acting president? The general idea is clear: The vice president is like a spare tire that can be rolled out if needed, but the mechanism isn't clear, especially if the president is alive and claims there is no "inability." Also, if the vice president becomes or acts as president, how do we get a new spare tire?
The Amendment was meant to provide clarity. It has four sections. The first three are not controversial, and are as follows:
The fourth section is the tough one. It says the veep and a majority of the Cabinet (or some other body Congress may choose) can declare the president unable to discharge the duties of the office. The authors were thinking of a situation like the one that occurred in 1919, when Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and his wife, Edith Wilson, didn't tell anyone and ran the country herself for 17 months. Sec. 4 says if the veep and half the cabinet see that the president is not up to the job, the veep can take over. However, if the president contests this, Congress gets to decide who is right, with a two-thirds majority in each chamber required to actually remove the president. This is intentionally a steeper hill than an impeachment and conviction (which requires a majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate), to reduce the chances of the opposition using this section for partisan reasons. The framers of the Amendment were really focused on a medical situation, not a political one.
Could this come into play before Jan. 20, 2029? It could. If Trump goes the way of an earlier guy who ruled the place, King George III, and becomes stark raving mad and that is clear for two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate, then J.D. Vance could invoke the Amendment and there would be votes in both chambers. That would be consistent with the intention of the framers of the Amendment. It was never intended to remove a president who was sane but making decisions the opposition didn't like. The intended cure for that situation was for the voters to replace the entire House and one-third of the Senate within 2 years. Or, alternatively, impeachment and conviction. (V)