Another issue is that who are the heads of the principal officers of the executive departments would be in dispute, with a majority GOP SCOTUS deciding the dispute.
Two reasons. One is that if the head of a executive department like the CIA was pro-Trump, he’d say they should be included. But there’s an even bigger second reason – Trump would fire disloyal cabinet members the moment a loyalist leaked to him what was happening.
The 25th amendment does provide a way around this. Congress can pass a law saying that instead of the heads of executive departments, the decision can be left to “such other body as Congress may by law provide.” Congress could give over the removal power to some body whose members Trump cannot fire, like the Supreme Court, or – in theory – the Ivy League presidents. But Trump would veto that law, and then we are back to Congress needing a 2/3 majority of both Houses, which is a harder requirement than for impeachment removal.
Impeachment did work in the case of Richard Nixon. In a way, it resembled chess. The king is never actually captured. The game ends when the capture is obviously unavoidable. Barry Goldwater told Nixon that the senators who would vote to acquit would fit into two cars. Nixon resigned.
I don’t see why the VP would get involved. The “or” clause involving another Congress-appointed body does not mention the VP at all and is clearly designed to go around the position. The VP does become Acting President in either case (assuming that the position is filled) but doesn’t seem to play any part in the deliberations of “some other body.”
What “Acting President” means will certainly be bitterly disputed, as will the “powers and duties” of the President which can’t be discharged.
Another arguable point. Can a President veto a bill that interprets an amendment? The President does not sign amendments in the first place: they go directly from Congress to the states. The 25th gives a power directly to Congress; certainly it was designed not to be interfered with by the President if they exercise it .
Because it says: “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”.
I take the placement of “either” there to mean either ‘the VP and Option A’ or ‘the VP and Option B’ — as opposed to, uh, either ‘the VP and Option A’ or ‘Option B’.
A few commas would have made it clearer, but I am personally unconvinced of your interpretation. And I’m sure SCOTUS Republicans would be unconvinced.
By your interpretation, Vance could be handed a disputed presidency, against his will, and then daily bring Trump into the Oval for on-the-spot guidance.
I relayed “Can a President veto a bill that interprets an amendment?” to ChatGTP, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and CoPilot. The AI’s say yes, 5 for 5.
Normally I would not ask an AI this question because I want to be directed to their sources, rather than to give me their opinion. But this time I wanted to get an idea what tools that, however imperfect, lack much of a partisan bias, would say.
P.S. I do deplore the U.S.-centric bias of all five chatboxes. All assumed, without a follow-up question to me, that I was referring to the United States and it’s constitution. Disgraceful.
People have been saying that the 25th Amendment was sloppily written since it was ratified. I agree.
The clause as written has three parts: The VP, principle officers, other body. Call them A, B, and C. Parsing the conjunctions may give A and (B or C). Alternatively it may be read as (A and B) or (C). IANAL, but I recall cases in which the first interpretation was denied because the antecedent A’s successor was not clarified. I’m sure there have been cases in which the opposite was the result. We won’t know until the Supreme Court rules.
If there were an attempt to invoke the amendment, the President may argue that the amendment requires a majority of the principal officers of the executive departments (plus the Vice-President) to concur in the “temporary removal,” pending action by Congress before invocation of the amendment taking place, meaning all the departments. This would mean that a number of departments would not be represented because their executive officers are acting and unconfirmed, but are still counted toward the majority, leaving less bias in any effort to defeat attempts to invoke the amendment.
If some form of invocation failed to obtain a majority of all executive departments, but a majority of the confirmed principal officers, the President may argue that the invocation is unconstitutional and thus ineffective, bringing about a constitutional crisis.
I can’t think of a case in which a President vetoed a Congress’ bill implementing an Amendment. I know Congress has done passed these bills: The Volstead Act put in place the enforcement of the 18th Amendment. Many other Amendments also refer to Congress taking action, which it thereupon did. If you have an example of such a Presidential veto I’d be fascinated to read it.
For that matter, no case has ever defined “Acting President.”
Until the event occurs in reality and the resulting crisis resolved, all we have are opinions and no definites.
I don’t disagree, but I suspect that it was written with a specific use-case in mind.
It came about on the heels of JFK’s assassination, and I would not be surprised if the thinking was, “what if JFK had survived, but was permanently incapacitated, comatose, etc.? What would we do now?”
I don’t think that they conceived of a malignant narcissist and unstable President, who is clearly “incapable” in the eyes of most Americans, but has filled his Cabinet with sycophants, and has majorities in both houses of Congress petrified by the wrath of him and his supporters.
Right. And they came up with a good plan for what to do if the president admits being too disabled to do the job, or is too disabled to dispute the determination. But they did not come up with a viable way to deal with a president who disputes being unable to do the job.
25th Amendment Article 4 gives Congress the power to set up a disability review committee, instead of having cabinet members, the President hand-picked, make the determination. This makes a little sense. So why didn’t they set up the committee in the amendment, rather than putting the power, by default, in the hands of political figures who would have a conflict of interest? There is some discussion here.
In my view, there would be a conflict of interest regardless of who is on the committee. So if Congress made the determiners. say, the department of neurology at Walter Reed, Trump would order any who made the wrong medical determination relieved of duty. Congress did not find a way to make the 25th amendment workable for situations where the president disputes being disabled because, without reducing the separation of powers (such as by making impeachment conviction easier), there is none.
I do not see any way to fix the the 25th amendment without changing the constitution.
There’s a lot of criticisms to make about George W’s middle eastern adventurism, but I don’t think “delusional” is among them. They knew exactly what they were doing, and what they expected to get out of it.
There are legal complications involved with confining someone for mental health issues. Similar considerations could apply to removing a president from office. People, at least in most countries, cannot be arrested and locked up for things that they might do, only for something that they have done. If the president does something illegal, the constitution provides impeachment.
The laws vary from state to state but when someone is confined for a mental health issue, it goes before a judge within 72 hours. If he or she finds that the person is a danger to himself or to others, the confinement can be extended. It means that mental hospitals have 72 hours to get medication started before releasing the patient.
If someone is accused of a crime, they have that same 72 hours to arraign them. At that hearing, the judge normally sets bail and the person is released but obligated to go through a trial.
One section of the 25th amendment provides an alternative to impeachment for mental and physical health issues. It is and should be an even higher bar than impeachment.
The rest of the 25th amendment deals with replacing the vice president after he has become president. Gerald Ford became vice president under the 25th after Spiro Agnew was caught in some sort of illegal activity and resigned.
This is not a criminal or civil law situation. It is political and internal in nature, and governed only by its own rules. No other laws are applicable or relevant. No other morality is applicable or relevant. “Unable to discharge the powers and duties” of the office of the Presidency is a unique and totally undefined term. “[M]ental and physical health issues” need not be involved, nor need they ever be specified.
I understand that people desire to find a grounding in precedent for unprecedented issues, and I could wish that some foundation for invoking the 25th exists. It doesn’t. We’d be in Terra incognita, with everybody involved flailing in darkness. That’s probably why no serious attempt has been made in the past 60 years and why I doubt that it’ll be an issue under Trump, barring public and totally noncontroversial catastrophe.