Donald Trump’s administration is facing another round of calls to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office in the wake of his remarks to an unprecedented assembly of the nation’s military leaders.
Trump’s Cabinet and then-Vice President Mike Pence faced similar demands in the aftermath of the January 6 attack, when a mob of the president’s supporters stormed the halls of Congress to derail the certification of an election he lost.
And it’s not the first time Trump has faced calls to step down since he returned to the White House in January. Liberal commentators and critics on social media routinely demand his Cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment.
It is extremely unlikely that Trump’s allies and a Republican-dominated Congress would vote to oust him. The president has the ironclad allegiance of his Cabinet and Vice President JD Vance, who would effectively have to agree with their political opponents that the president can no longer serve.
But prominent Democrats claim the president is unfit for office, that his cognitive health is in decline, and that a speech to military leaders this week all but endorsed the idea of active-duty troops fighting civilians in U.S. cities.
What are Trump’s critics saying now?
After Trump suggested cities like Chicago should be used as “training grounds for our military,” Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said the 25th Amendment should be invoked to oust the president, marking the first time that the governor has publicly called for his removal.
“It appears that Donald Trump not only has dementia set in, but he’s copying tactics of [Russian President] Vladimir Putin,” Pritzker said Wednesday.
Trump is set to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago, among several Democratic-led cities where he is surging federal law enforcement and military assets.
“Sending troops into cities, thinking that that’s some sort of proving ground for war, or that indeed there’s some sort of internal war going on in the United States is just, frankly, insane and I’m concerned for his health,” Pritzker said.
“There is something genuinely wrong with this man, and the 25th Amendment ought to be invoked,” he added.
That call was publicly supported by at least one Democratic member of Congress: California Rep. Eric Swalwell wrote “25TH AMENDMENT!” on social media as Trump spoke to military officials.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told The Independent that “Pritzker is a slob of a governor” and that “it appears he’s particularly hangry today based on his unhinged ramblings.”
“The only reason anyone has even heard of him is because he’s failed his constituents so spectacularly that the raging crime crisis and dangerous sanctuary city status of Chicago is national news,” she said. “President Trump is deeply concerned with the safety and security of all Americans, including those in Chicago — and he’s stepping in where J.B. failed. J.B., here’s a tip: eat a snickers; you’re not you when you’re hungry (which is all the time).”
Military veterans and former defense officials speaking to The Independent and other outlets were furious with the president’s remarks to the nation’s top military brass in Quantico.
The event was an “expensive, dangerous dereliction of leadership by the Trump administration,” according to a statement from Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Forces Committee.
The president’s remarks amounted to “authoritarian and un-American” rhetoric, Air Force veteran Gretchen Klingler, director of Veterans for American Ideas at Human Rights First, told The Independent.
Trump was “incoherent, exhausted and… at times stupid,” according to Ret. Army General Barry McCaffrey, who called the president’s address “one of the most bizarre, unsettling events I’ve ever encountered.”
One U.S. defense official mentioned invoking the 25th Amendment in an interview with The Intercept. “This is truly disturbing. He is clearly unwell, even for Trump,” the official said.
Has it been used before?
Congressional Democrats publicly urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump after failing to stop hundreds of his supporters from breaking into the Capitol in a violent attempt to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
House lawmakers voted 223-205 on January 12, 2021 to adopt a resolution that would compel Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment. Pence rejected the effort in a letter to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Trump was later impeached by the House for inciting an insurrection.
Republican officials and Trump allies also routinely called on former President Joe Biden’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment against him, including most notably after his decision to end his re-election campaign last year.
Trump himself had baselessly claimed that Democratic leaders told Biden to end his campaign or be removed from office. During the campaign, Vance also called on Biden’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him.
“You don’t get to do this in the most politically beneficial way for Democrats,” he said on Fox News at the time. “If it’s an actual problem, they should take care of it the appropriate way.”
GOP lawmakers also called on officials to invoke the 25th Amendment against Biden after a report from special counsel Robert Hur suggested that then-president Biden’s mental fitness was “significantly limited.”
The 25th Amendment, however, has been invoked as a practical matter several times to temporarily transfer power from a president to the vice president during medical procedures.
Ronald Reagan briefly transferred power to then-Vice President George Bush when Reagan underwent colon cancer surgery in 1985. George W. Bush similarly transferred authority to his Vice President Dick Cheney, twice, in 2002 and 2007, during his colonoscopies. Biden also transferred authority to Kamala Harris for a colonoscopy in 2021.
How does it work?
Prior to the ratification of the 25th Amendment in 1965, the rules of succession were constitutionally vague and did not spell out how, exactly, the vice president would become acting president if the president were to die, resign or be removed from office.
First, the amendment explicitly makes clear that the vice president becomes president “in case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation.”
But removing the president would require the vice president and a majority of the 16-member presidential cabinet to jointly agree that “the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
Another option would require the creation of a disability review panel that would need approval by Congress and signed into law by the president, or, if vetoed, the support of at least two-thirds of the House and Senate.
Once the vice president and either the cabinet or a disability review panel agree that the president must be removed, the vice president would then immediately be able to “assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”
The president can tell Congress that “no inability exists” and will “resume the powers and duties of his office,” which the Cabinet or disability panel can then challenge.
Congress then has 21 days to settle whether the president is fit to serve. A two-thirds vote from both chambers of Congress must agree to let the vice president step in.
