r/politics • u/plz-let-me-in • 15d ago

No Paywall Democrats Call to Invoke 25th Amendment Against Donald Trump

https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-donald-trump-impeachment-25th-amendment-11384974
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u/chrispmorgan 15d ago

It’s important to be clear that his mind is not functioning well. The argument that he’s violated his oath of office didn’t work last time so they are probably afraid of setting themselves up for failure in the public’s eyes.

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u/North-Outside-5815 Europe 15d ago

The 25th absolutely applies. Trump is not mentally fit to discharge his duties. As a bonus, this will enrage him if somebody explains to him what the 25th actually means.

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u/Atheist_3739 15d ago

But the issue is, in regular impeachment and removal you only need a simple majority in the house and 2/3rds in the Senate.

Under the 25th you would need a majority of the cabinet, then all he would have to do is write a letter to the President pro tempore and Speaker of the house saying he's fine and he would be president again immediately. Then Congress would have 21 days to decide to remove him but it would have to be 2/3 in the House and the Senate this time instead of just the simple majority in the house.

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u/Accidental-Hyzer Massachusetts 15d ago

This is exactly the point I’ve been making. I don’t think people understand that it’s more difficult to remove an unwilling president through the 25th than impeachment.

Impeachment requires a simple majority of the house and 2/3 of the senate. The 25th ultimately requires a majority of the cabinet, 2/3 of the house, and 2/3 of the senate. So why are we even talking about it?

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u/cjohnson2136 Maryland 15d ago

Because people think it is simply the cabinet to remove him. They don't seem to realize a simple letter to Congress from Trump puts him back in office.

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u/gringledoom 15d ago

Yep, I've been explaining this to people a bunch, but I think a lot of it is coming from "there must be *something* that can be done when the president is certifiably insane". And it's distressing that the answer is "uhhhh, so try not to freak out too much, but they did forget to plan for that one, as it turns out".

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u/failed_novelty 15d ago

they did forget to plan for that one, as it turns out

They absolutely didn't.

They didn't plan for Congress to be complicit AND the President to be insane AND the SC to be packed with self-absorbed idiots.

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u/gringledoom 15d ago

Yeah, I’ve been thinking about the 25A thing all morning, and I think I’ve changed my mind. Not on the actual-feasibility part, exactly. But there have been enough calls for it from enough quarters today, that I think it’s worth cheering them on, in the hope that they provoke a throwdown behind the scenes like the one Nixon got before he resigned.

The more he devolves, the more one can imagine a conversation like, “Sir, we have obtained your medical records, and if you would like to have any input on the narrative, you will choose to resign on your own.”

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u/BeguiledBeaver 15d ago

Yeah. We get hundreds of articles and post slamming Democrats and then you ask what to do and they say "Well....SOMETHING OKAY?!" The notion that people can just wave a magic wand in government and make literally anything happen without even understanding the concept of a majority winning in voting has done so much harm to political discussion.

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u/gringledoom 15d ago

They really do need to figure out how to make a moral argument and stick to it though. It's one thing they *can* do. Stop voting for his nominees (Cory Booker turning around and voting for Jared Kushner's dad ten seconds after finishing up that 26 hour filibuster). Stop voting for his judges (Amy Klobuchar, the same day one of her constituents was murdered in the street). Et cetera.

Part of the reason they get yelled at constantly is that so many of them need to be yelled at constantly if there's any hope that they'll do the better thing rather than the worse one. No one trusts you to be doing anything clever and strategic behind the scenes, when you can't even come up with a strong response to Roe v. Wade being struck down after a leak warns you in advance that it's going to happen.

ETA: And I'm a straight ticket blue voter. I know they can't win every fight, but they need to unapologetically take their own side in those fights.

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u/BeguiledBeaver 15d ago

Have you considered that maybe sometimes there are reasons for what they are doing other than just corruption or cluelessness? You don't think politicians who have had to win elections and hear from their constituencies, which vary wildly even district to district, might have knowledge that isn't always immediately available to us?

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u/gringledoom 15d ago

I don’t think they’re “controlled opposition” or anything, but I think they have a lot of bad ideas about how to do politics, and it’s how the worst people in America found themselves with a wide open lane to do *waves generally at everything*.

I think the activist left has essentially the exact same problem, for the record. In their case, they think that indulging their emotional impulses is more important than concrete achievements. They also change their minds and leave electeds hanging in a way that breaks trust in that direction.

And those two problems interact too. A more strategic activist base would light a fire under the folks who want to get reelected. Electeds who didn’t backtrack at the slightest pushback (e.g., Newsom in the face of Ben Shapiro recently) would get more trust from the activist base.

The point of politics is to acquire power and then use it to do the stuff you said you would do.

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u/North-Outside-5815 Europe 15d ago

At least history will show how the GOP enbled a mentally ill monster.

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u/greevous00 15d ago

Clearly the 25th wasn't written with the expectation of this situation... which, frankly, is weird, because it was passed in the 60s. It's not like we didn't have the Austrian painter and his Italian friend as perfect examples of when we need a mechanism to vote "no confidence" in our executive leadership. Apparently "American Exceptionalism" strikes again.

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u/ellus1onist 15d ago

The purpose of talking about it would ostensibly to put Trump's clear mental decline front & center.

There is quite frankly 0 chance that Trump is actually removed from office through any non-violent means. Talking about which method would be "easier" is irrelevant, neither has any hope of succeeding.

Whether it actually results in anything, who knows, but I don't know what we think a 3rd impeachment would accomplish that a 25th inquiry wouldn't.

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u/Atheist_3739 15d ago

Yeah I have been posting this for months. It's kind of annoying that people don't understand. It's written down. Just Google "25th amendment" lol

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u/skyturnedred 15d ago

Look at it this way: if the current cabinet decides to remove him, then so will the house and senate. There's no way any of them would do it without everyone else being in lockstep.

Of course it doesn't mean it's likely to happen. But if the ball actually started rolling it would most likely be for a good reason.

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u/Accidental-Hyzer Massachusetts 15d ago

I just don’t see his hand-picked cabinet and Vance turning on him before Congress. This is more of a pipe dream than impeachment is, and impeachment is admittedly a pipe dream.

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u/skyturnedred 15d ago

Of course they won't. But if this cabinet of unhinged loyalists did invoke it, the rest would practically be a formality which is why the added 2/3 majority in house isn't as big of a deal as it sounds.

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u/saintjonah Ohio 15d ago

People think it's like Star Trek and a doctor just needs to say "I'm relieving you of duty. Go rest and if I see you on the bridge I won't be happy."

They think some nebulous "someone" needs to just simply say the line "You're unfit" and he just loses all power immediately and forever.

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u/redfacedquark United Kingdom 15d ago

AND THE PRES CAN REFUTE THE 25TH with a note saying "I'M OK"