In the wake of the violent raid on Congress by pro-Trump rioters on Wednesday, there's speculation that Vice President Pence, along with heads of executive departments, will invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to temporarily remove the president from power. Harold Hongju Koh, professor of international law at Yale Law School and co-author of a reader's guide to the 25th Amendment, explains how this unprecedented action might play out.Inside Edition added another detail when it asked What Is the 25th Amendment?
Demands mounted Thursday from lawmakers, business leaders and former government officials for the immediate removal of President Trump after a violent mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attack that left four people dead. Many have called for Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump. So what is the 25th Amendment? Here's a synopsis of the constitutional provision that allows for the president's removal under certain circumstances.I found Margaret Brennan saying "a two-thirds majority of the House and Senate would have to be on board with doing so" ambiguous — two-thirds to sustain the President's objection or two-thirds to keep him out of office? Here's the text of Section 4 from the National Constitution Center.
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.It would be two-thirds to keep him out. That's a high hurdle for this to succeed. I don't think Congress can jump that high right now. I don't even think Vice President Vance can get eight members of the current Cabinet on board. A President Vance could get more competent Cabinet secretaries than Donald "Hoover Cleveland" Trump was able to, at least during his second term. Also, should an attempt fail, Hoover Cleveland would replace anyone who voted for him to be removed. It's bad for their careers either way.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
Besides, Vance invoking the 25th Amendment might result in a cure worse than the disease, as Katie Phang pointed out in Trump, Vance and the 25th Amendment.
78-year-old Donald Trump, who has survived two alleged assassination attempts in the past three months, would end his second term as the oldest person ever to serve as President of the United States. Katie Phang explains the reality of what could happen in the event of an emergency where Trump becomes incapacitated or dies and JD Vance could become president of the United States.True, Vance would be less erratic (mercurial would be a polite way of saying it) and not driven by Hoover Cleveland's obsessions with tariffs, grifts, and revenge, but he'd be more likely to implement the parts of Project 2025 that Hoover Cleveland hasn't yet. He'd also be more under the influence of Palantir founder Peter Thiel, his pet bad philosopher Curtis Yarvin, and Palantir CEO Alex Karp. They're the sources of what I called "cyberpunk villain ideas straight out of Snow Crash..." Vance can certainly learn new tricks, but I worry about the ones Thiel, Yarvin, and Karp could teach him. They might be worse.
Enough DOOM. Stay tuned for the winners of the Super Awards as the Sunday entertainment feature.
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ReplyDeleteTrump would treat any attempt to use the 25th against him as a coup. Because there are (to my knowledge) no rules, no implementing legislation specifying critical details of the process, and no norms established by any past use of the 25th to remove a president against his will, it would actually be pretty easy to sell any such attempt as an illegitimate coup.
ReplyDeleteI would be surprised if Trump hasn't taken two preventive measures against the 25th. The first would be to have everyone appointed to his cabinet sign a letter of resignation triggered by mere participation in any talk of removing him. Then, he also probably has already signed an Executive Order instantly firing any cabinet officer at the point they even begin to discuss removing him.
Both of those measures sure look pretty dodgy, and success or failure here is going to depend on how things look, not on rules or norms, but there are all sorts of claims about the legitimacy of whatever procedure the "coup plotters" followed in producing the letter sent to Congress that the 25th specifies.
Does the cabinet have to meet to discuss removal, so that the pros and cons of this rather weighty decision can be discussed? Can it be considered a cabinet meeting if it is not called by the president, attended by the president, and held in public? Of course any of those features would allow the president to fire any and all of them before the vote, without resort to those rather dodgy agreements mentioned above
Does the letter to Congress required by the 25th have to be physically signed by the cabinet members? Or are we supposed to take it on faith that the VP discussed the matter with cabinet members online or over the phone, and got the assent of the majority?
What you would have would be claims by the coup plotters that their letter of removal had been done in accordance with the 25th, and counterclaims by the counter-coup forces that the whole thing was clearly illegitimate, with no norms or rules to referee these claims.
That's just the first step, the letter of removal. Admittedly that's the step that most needs a specific procedure set in law to make it workable, but, if you can't get past this first stage of the process, the process as a whole is useless.
The 25th would only get past this first stage if just about everybody in the country, all the relevant actors besides the cabinet, wanted to get rid of the president, and so would accept the justifications of the coup plotters over those of the president. The 2/3 thing would not be a problem if that were the case.
The 25th may be how the Trump adventure ends. It's early days and what he has done so far may pale in comparison to what atrocities we have in store for us in the next 3.5 years. We could reach the required national consensus for removal, and maybe R legislators will find it less difficult to agree that he is disabled rather than that he has committed impeachable offenses.
Welcome to Crazy Eddie's Motie News! That's a very thoughtful comment of the kind that I usually recycle into a post. I hope you don't mind when I do.
DeleteThat written, you're absolutely right about the lack of implementing legislation, to say nothing of Supreme Court rulings. An example I was already aware of was a bill by Jamie Raskin to establish "a Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office." That would be very useful right now. Unfortunately, not only did the bill not pass, I'm not even sure it ever came up for a vote.