Is there a process in the US, analogous to parliamentary non-confidence votes, that can get kick out a POTUS before a federal election? Or, in the case of Trump, does the world have to wait until 2028, even if he does nothing criminal or anti-constitutional?
IANA political expert so please forgive me if my terminology is wrong.
A sitting U.S. president can be removed two ways:
Impeachment and conviction: The House of Representatives votes to impeach (Article I, Section 2, Clause 5), and the Senate then holds a trial and convicts by a two-thirds vote (Article I, Section 3, Clauses 6-7). If convicted, the president is removed automatically (Article II, Section 4).
25th Amendment: The Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet declare the president unable to do the job (25th Amendment, Section 4). If the president contests it, Congress must decide, needing a two-thirds vote in both chambers to remove.
They can come up with any reason they want and it doesn’t have to be anything he’s actually done.
Impeachment is not a criminal indictment. If you can convince the House to impeach and the Senate to convict, they are removed.
The President can also resign, of course.
But as far as involuntary removal by legal means, yes, it’s just those two.
It is worth remembering, of course, that Trump was impeached twice by the House on the basis of things he did during his first term; but the Senate declined to convict in both cases. One must therefore conclude that the likelihood of Trump being removed from office via this method is rather low.
How many senaters are elected mid terms. If things go bad and repulicans blame Trump could the democrates get a 2/3 majority?
Zero chance the Dems get two thirds. Current forecast says they pick up two seats but remain in the minority. See here.
It would take an absolutely catastrophic turn of events for the Dems to squeak into the majority at all. Two thirds is impossible.
The Senate is currently split 53 seats Republican, 45 seats Democrat, and 2 seats Independent. The chances of the Democrats gaining 21 Senate seats in any election is extremely unlikely. It would take some Republicans to switch sides and vote to convict for it to ever happen, and that would be political suicide for them to do so.
Senators serve 6 year terms, 1/3 of the Senate is up for election every 2 years.
Since recent Supreme Court rulings that effectively give the President criminal immunity for anything done as part of presidential duties, it’s not clear that even criminality would remove one. If Trump shot on a person on Fifth Avenue, as he once boasted, he would claim it was part of his presidential duties, even if he shot Melania. If that didn’t trigger an impeachment and conviction or a 25th Amendment ouster, it’s no longer clear that anything could be done before a president left office.
No President has ever been removed via impeachment. However, many think Nixon would have therefore the resignation.
Well there is one thing that could be done, it just wouldn’t be legal or constitutional. I am not suggesting thst anyone do it.
Somewhat analogous to a vote of no confidence, in the sense of rejecting the consent of the executive branch, is that Congress can override a presidential veto. After legislation passes both houses, the president can veto it to prevent it from becoming law. Each house then has the opportunity to override the veto, which requires a two-thirds majority in both houses.
Note that it takes a larger majority in the House to override a veto than to impeach, but it’s often politically easier.
It should be noted that Judge John Pickering was impeached and convicted basically for being insane and a drunk.
How about we all pitch in to get him to up his consumption of KFC and hamberders?
Well. We have half of that, Trump is insane, but he is not a drunk.
I’m (obviously) not an American, but to my mind, Trump has … well crawled under - he’s not able to vault - most of the checks and balances set in place by law to keep people like him out.
The Democrats gained a record 12 Senate seats in the Depression-era election of 1930. AFAICT the only times one party was able to have a 2/3 majority in the senate to support an impeachment conviction without some bipartisan support would have been during Franklin Roosevelt’s second and third terms (1935-1943) and the 89th Congress During Lyndon Johnson’s elected term (1965-1967.) And both those times the majority party was the same as the President’s.
[Moderating]
It’s factual that this is a possible way for a President to be removed from office, but any further discussion would verge too close to advocacy for illegal acts, so let’s drop this line of discussion, now.
I considered that, and with enough Republicans crossing over it’s a possibility, but I wouldn’t hang my hat on that happening for a variety of reasons. As long as Trump has a stranglehold on Republicans, nobody is going to do anything to get on his bad side. As mentioned earlier, that would be political suicide. Now if someone could prove that he ordered the assassination of a high ranking judge who had ruled against him, then all bets are off.
Not really. Nothing Trump has done has made him immune from the various checks that are placed on a President.
The checks are still there. What’s happening is the Republican majority in Congress and the Supreme Court are refusing to invoke them in regards to Trump.
But they could decide to do so at any point. If a Democrat gets elected in 2028, he or she will not enjoy the same immunity Trump has. And if the Republican party decides that Trump is becoming too big a liability, they can reverse themselves and decide to act.