I always thought the 25th Amendment came about because, thanks to advances in medicine, it was conceivable that a President could survive a JFK-type assassination attempt (it was proposed just over a year after the ghastliness in Dallas) but be in a constant vegetative state. Of course, given Trump's age and overall health, "constant vegetative state" may be on the menu before January 20, 2029.
otoh, toughing it out for the next 33 months might be the least bad option, because a President JD Vance scares the shit out of me.
You’re right about the history. Of course, as anyone who’s dealt with an elderly relative knows, the line between “incapacitated” and not is often blurry. I think in a sane world, we’d be having good-faith conversations about where Trump is at (and a not-to-be-dismissed counter argument is “he was brain damaged when he was elected”). I think in that same sane world, we would have had conversations about Biden, but Democrats didn’t want those conversations for obvious reasons and Republicans didn’t want them because they didn’t want to run against Harris as a sitting president.
Yes, I think you are correct. My understanding from Akhil Amar is that there were real worries after Kennedy’s assassination about what would have happened had he not been instantly killed, but instead been put into a coma or other vegetative state. Before the 25th amendment, there was no function by which a comatose president could be removed from office. Modern takes on the 25th amendment often ignore this.
The removal function is in place for a president who cannot protest. If the cabinet invoked the amendment to remove a president, but he was still conscious, he could easily reject them. That’s not something the writers of the amendment envisioned, and it would likely lead to a real constitutional crisis.
Yeah, the whole discussion around the 25th Amendment has a rather desperate "One Weird Trick to Remove an Unpopular President" air to it. I think most people envision a Survivor-like vote to cast him off, not realizing it's actually more like impeachment but HARDER.
Arguably we don't even need the 25th Amendment for its stated purpose, but I guess it seemed like a dick move to impeach a president for being braindead after half-surviving an assassination attempt, so I'll allow it.
The President can fire his whole cabinet and VP by waving his hand in the air and declaring it, or at most, scrawling something on a napkin. The 25th against an awake and conscious President is an onanistic pipe dream for the most rabid.
Maybe they can, but they can't get a *new* cabinet without Congressional approval. So an empty cabinet would put all the power in the Vice President's hands.
That was basically my understanding too. Like yeah, the bar is higher than impeachment, but only if the president chooses to fight it. The main purpose of the 25th Amendment though is when you've got a president who can't fight it because he's so incapacitated that he isn't aware of any of this. Even if he's going senile and cracked like Trump is, that's not really what it was written for, we just weren't supposed to vote someone like that in, and if someone went that way they were supposed to be a gentleman and voluntarily step down.
This discourse reminds me so much of the Mueller probe*, Russia, the various investigations of Trump, and so on. There were all these attempts to remove Trump from office, or prevent him from returning, rather than like…beating him in an election. The idea that there was “one neat trick” or that some investigations and clever lawyering will remove him from our national conversation was exhausting. It was also what the kids call “cope.” The legal system and constitution do not work like that. There is no political system which can completely save you from yourself. Occasionally, you’ll elect someone not ideal for the job.
There was always one way to solve this problem - run a better candidate. Clearly something was amiss with the democratic candidates to lose to Donald Trump. Yet Donald Trump won 2 of 3 presidential elections in which he ran as a major party candidate! That’s an insane sentence to write. Clearly something went with wrong with those other guys!
*Trump has so many skeletons in his closet. Yet MSNBC and the anti-Trump universe spent 2 years on probably the one Trump scandal in which he was innocent of the core claim.
This is one of the reason that parliamentary systems are better than presidential ones. A PM losing parliamentary majority support is unfortunate, but quite normal. You just have new elections. It happens all the time. A president losing enough support to be removed from office after impeachment and conviction is such a huge failure that a political party could be risking complete electoral extinction if it happens. That's part of the reason it's never happened. We can look at all of American history and realize that this should have happened to at least one president in our history, but it hasn't happened. Meanwhile, a number of peer countries have sent a former leader to jail.
Which is kind of ironic, because in the parliamentary system, if you dissolve parliament and hold elections, the party in power might actually lose. If you impeach your own parties president, the VP is still from the same party and will serve for just as long, and you as a member of Congress get to continue serving your own term as normal instead of possibly losing your seat early. In theory, impeachment should be the safer bet.
I feel with the democrats not doing this to Biden (if he dropped out, why was he fit to be president thinking), the republicans will never do it to Trump. Just to be clear they should regardless of what the democrats did.
The bar for Biden not running for ANOTHER term was much lower than the bar for being declared incompetent to serve out his current term. Biden should not have tried to run for a second term and leading Democrats should have forced him not to (which I totally believe they could have done), but Biden was never in 25th Amendment territory. His brain operated more slowly, but his judgment was still good (or at least, no worse than before). He never came close to doing the crazy shit that Trump is doing now.
Well that's because he didn't get a second term. I saw The Debate. If he didn't do the crazy shit himself, it'd only be because he was letting his staffers continue to run wild on his behalf.
It's not that hard to justify finishing the term while dropping out of the re-election. It's the same as any politician announcing they're retiring at the end of their term. In theory, they're fine for a few more months but they just don't have it in them to serve out however many more years a new term would take.
I savor these articles. I sit here drinking coffee and looking at my Fred Thompson for President pin and get a small shiver of schadenfreude at the Democrat insistence Trump deserves these impeachment wet dream scenarios to be inflicted upon him. Abuse of Pardons? Blocking embarrassing investigations? Surronding youself with soulless lickspittles who will do anything to cling to the power to punish their enemies and advance their wildest partisan dreams? I endured Clinton, Obama and Biden without so much as a hint from Democrats impeachment was ever being considered for their abuses. Instead I got jokes about Gloria Steinham and her knee pads for abortion plan for the guy who cruised through the secretary and intern pool like a hungry power abusing shark.
Forget it Jake. This is Chinatown. That "the president must be held to a high standard, you must join me in my outrage" shit is as dead as friend chicken.
By all means write me three or four thousand words about how Petey H, the frat boy Secretary of War, proves Trump is impeachable and Gen. Austen and Mayorkas were just wonderful examples of chosen leaders. I want to know why you think those blanket retroactive pardons (you will be seeing those again in 2028 by the way) are just ducky as all get out but whatever Trump did is just the worse.
I have some bagels here to go with my coffee and would love some one sided outrage to go on top. That stuff is better than lox.
Convening Seal Team Six of Doctors against the currently sitting president is probably even harder than you suppose: to me, the phrase "such body as Congress may by law provide" clearly implies that they provide it by the same process as passing any other law-- so they need either the president's signature or our old pal the 2/3 majority in both houses to override the veto.
Pritzker is the obvious M in a bad crowd, and where you put the other two is mainly going to depend on whether you prefer men or women. Bisexuals, I guess, have to choose based on politics.
There has at times been the serious thought that we the people always have the power of recall. Perhaps it's time to just do that, to every member of Congress who has forgotten that they serve us. It's in here https://constitutioncenter.org/essays/the-consent-of-the-governed and I believe some related writeup as well, same site.
We don't need to wait upon their pleasure. And we shouldn't. That is a procedure for elected politicians to judge their peers, even if the voters don't mind the severe crimes. I am talking about the will of the people.
"The proponents of the new federal Constitution argued that the opponents of the Constitution had nothing to fear, for all parts of the new government, even appointed judges, were now agents or representatives of the people. The new federal government, said James Wison, was “purely democratical.” Although the new federal government outwardly resembled the traditional mixed government of the English constitution, in fact, said Wilson, “all authority of every kind is derived by REPRESENTATION from the PEOPLE and the DEMOCRATIC principle is carried into every part of the government.” Others presumed that this was true of all parts of the state governments as well.
"In America, the sovereign people were not eclipsed by representation. In Britain, once the people elected a Parliament, they ceased to exist legally or politically until the next election.
"By contrast, the American people never went out of existence. The people, the Federalists declared, always remained alive politically and legally, doling out to their various agents or representatives in the states and the federal government bits and pieces of their sovereign power, but never all of it. The consent that they loaned to their agents and representatives was always tentative, always partial, and could be taken back at any time."
Are you American? If not, please don't weigh in on this in any quelling manner whatsoever, because it's not your place and it's not possible to understand this setup from the outside. If you are, and you think you want to quell our rights, then I would like to know: did you go through college early enough to still receive the western civ/traditions course, or had your degree been Frankfurt Schooled by the time you went through? Even an Arts-Humanities-Science can recognize the negatives of that; the stereotype that all those degrees are anti-enlightenment is a Frankfurtism.
Why ask the question if you're not going to accept the answer? Ad hominem arguments are weak at the best of times; pretending the other person is in a given demographic so you can ad hom them is simply ridiculous.
I can already tell you aren't an American, only posing as one.
But answer it, because your question in its fundamentals and its face denies rights by being posed (explain yourself if you contend it doesn't, tic toc tik)
if you are, and you think you want to quell our rights, then I would like to know: did you go through college early enough to still receive the western civ/traditions course, or had your degree been Frankfurt Schooled by the time you went through?
I always thought the 25th Amendment came about because, thanks to advances in medicine, it was conceivable that a President could survive a JFK-type assassination attempt (it was proposed just over a year after the ghastliness in Dallas) but be in a constant vegetative state. Of course, given Trump's age and overall health, "constant vegetative state" may be on the menu before January 20, 2029.
otoh, toughing it out for the next 33 months might be the least bad option, because a President JD Vance scares the shit out of me.
You’re right about the history. Of course, as anyone who’s dealt with an elderly relative knows, the line between “incapacitated” and not is often blurry. I think in a sane world, we’d be having good-faith conversations about where Trump is at (and a not-to-be-dismissed counter argument is “he was brain damaged when he was elected”). I think in that same sane world, we would have had conversations about Biden, but Democrats didn’t want those conversations for obvious reasons and Republicans didn’t want them because they didn’t want to run against Harris as a sitting president.
Yes, I think you are correct. My understanding from Akhil Amar is that there were real worries after Kennedy’s assassination about what would have happened had he not been instantly killed, but instead been put into a coma or other vegetative state. Before the 25th amendment, there was no function by which a comatose president could be removed from office. Modern takes on the 25th amendment often ignore this.
The removal function is in place for a president who cannot protest. If the cabinet invoked the amendment to remove a president, but he was still conscious, he could easily reject them. That’s not something the writers of the amendment envisioned, and it would likely lead to a real constitutional crisis.
Yeah, the whole discussion around the 25th Amendment has a rather desperate "One Weird Trick to Remove an Unpopular President" air to it. I think most people envision a Survivor-like vote to cast him off, not realizing it's actually more like impeachment but HARDER.
Arguably we don't even need the 25th Amendment for its stated purpose, but I guess it seemed like a dick move to impeach a president for being braindead after half-surviving an assassination attempt, so I'll allow it.
The President can fire his whole cabinet and VP by waving his hand in the air and declaring it, or at most, scrawling something on a napkin. The 25th against an awake and conscious President is an onanistic pipe dream for the most rabid.
Maybe they can, but they can't get a *new* cabinet without Congressional approval. So an empty cabinet would put all the power in the Vice President's hands.
There are subcabinet officers, and when shoved below a quorum they wouldn't be able to do anything. There would be no majority of the empty offices.
He can’t fire his VP.
Good point. I got over my skis on that line.
That was basically my understanding too. Like yeah, the bar is higher than impeachment, but only if the president chooses to fight it. The main purpose of the 25th Amendment though is when you've got a president who can't fight it because he's so incapacitated that he isn't aware of any of this. Even if he's going senile and cracked like Trump is, that's not really what it was written for, we just weren't supposed to vote someone like that in, and if someone went that way they were supposed to be a gentleman and voluntarily step down.
This discourse reminds me so much of the Mueller probe*, Russia, the various investigations of Trump, and so on. There were all these attempts to remove Trump from office, or prevent him from returning, rather than like…beating him in an election. The idea that there was “one neat trick” or that some investigations and clever lawyering will remove him from our national conversation was exhausting. It was also what the kids call “cope.” The legal system and constitution do not work like that. There is no political system which can completely save you from yourself. Occasionally, you’ll elect someone not ideal for the job.
There was always one way to solve this problem - run a better candidate. Clearly something was amiss with the democratic candidates to lose to Donald Trump. Yet Donald Trump won 2 of 3 presidential elections in which he ran as a major party candidate! That’s an insane sentence to write. Clearly something went with wrong with those other guys!
*Trump has so many skeletons in his closet. Yet MSNBC and the anti-Trump universe spent 2 years on probably the one Trump scandal in which he was innocent of the core claim.
The bar is somewhat lower for North Korea's cabinet to remove Kim Jong Un from office.
It depends how complex you want to make the coup.
This is one of the reason that parliamentary systems are better than presidential ones. A PM losing parliamentary majority support is unfortunate, but quite normal. You just have new elections. It happens all the time. A president losing enough support to be removed from office after impeachment and conviction is such a huge failure that a political party could be risking complete electoral extinction if it happens. That's part of the reason it's never happened. We can look at all of American history and realize that this should have happened to at least one president in our history, but it hasn't happened. Meanwhile, a number of peer countries have sent a former leader to jail.
Which is kind of ironic, because in the parliamentary system, if you dissolve parliament and hold elections, the party in power might actually lose. If you impeach your own parties president, the VP is still from the same party and will serve for just as long, and you as a member of Congress get to continue serving your own term as normal instead of possibly losing your seat early. In theory, impeachment should be the safer bet.
I feel with the democrats not doing this to Biden (if he dropped out, why was he fit to be president thinking), the republicans will never do it to Trump. Just to be clear they should regardless of what the democrats did.
The bar for Biden not running for ANOTHER term was much lower than the bar for being declared incompetent to serve out his current term. Biden should not have tried to run for a second term and leading Democrats should have forced him not to (which I totally believe they could have done), but Biden was never in 25th Amendment territory. His brain operated more slowly, but his judgment was still good (or at least, no worse than before). He never came close to doing the crazy shit that Trump is doing now.
Well that's because he didn't get a second term. I saw The Debate. If he didn't do the crazy shit himself, it'd only be because he was letting his staffers continue to run wild on his behalf.
It's not that hard to justify finishing the term while dropping out of the re-election. It's the same as any politician announcing they're retiring at the end of their term. In theory, they're fine for a few more months but they just don't have it in them to serve out however many more years a new term would take.
I savor these articles. I sit here drinking coffee and looking at my Fred Thompson for President pin and get a small shiver of schadenfreude at the Democrat insistence Trump deserves these impeachment wet dream scenarios to be inflicted upon him. Abuse of Pardons? Blocking embarrassing investigations? Surronding youself with soulless lickspittles who will do anything to cling to the power to punish their enemies and advance their wildest partisan dreams? I endured Clinton, Obama and Biden without so much as a hint from Democrats impeachment was ever being considered for their abuses. Instead I got jokes about Gloria Steinham and her knee pads for abortion plan for the guy who cruised through the secretary and intern pool like a hungry power abusing shark.
Forget it Jake. This is Chinatown. That "the president must be held to a high standard, you must join me in my outrage" shit is as dead as friend chicken.
By all means write me three or four thousand words about how Petey H, the frat boy Secretary of War, proves Trump is impeachable and Gen. Austen and Mayorkas were just wonderful examples of chosen leaders. I want to know why you think those blanket retroactive pardons (you will be seeing those again in 2028 by the way) are just ducky as all get out but whatever Trump did is just the worse.
I have some bagels here to go with my coffee and would love some one sided outrage to go on top. That stuff is better than lox.
Convening Seal Team Six of Doctors against the currently sitting president is probably even harder than you suppose: to me, the phrase "such body as Congress may by law provide" clearly implies that they provide it by the same process as passing any other law-- so they need either the president's signature or our old pal the 2/3 majority in both houses to override the veto.
MTG, Pritzker, Hasan, I feel, is the objectively correct order.
Pritzker is the obvious M in a bad crowd, and where you put the other two is mainly going to depend on whether you prefer men or women. Bisexuals, I guess, have to choose based on politics.
Nice line drawing. Did your son do that? 😉
There has at times been the serious thought that we the people always have the power of recall. Perhaps it's time to just do that, to every member of Congress who has forgotten that they serve us. It's in here https://constitutioncenter.org/essays/the-consent-of-the-governed and I believe some related writeup as well, same site.
there is a procedure for that, it's called impeachment
We don't need to wait upon their pleasure. And we shouldn't. That is a procedure for elected politicians to judge their peers, even if the voters don't mind the severe crimes. I am talking about the will of the people.
"The proponents of the new federal Constitution argued that the opponents of the Constitution had nothing to fear, for all parts of the new government, even appointed judges, were now agents or representatives of the people. The new federal government, said James Wison, was “purely democratical.” Although the new federal government outwardly resembled the traditional mixed government of the English constitution, in fact, said Wilson, “all authority of every kind is derived by REPRESENTATION from the PEOPLE and the DEMOCRATIC principle is carried into every part of the government.” Others presumed that this was true of all parts of the state governments as well.
"In America, the sovereign people were not eclipsed by representation. In Britain, once the people elected a Parliament, they ceased to exist legally or politically until the next election.
"By contrast, the American people never went out of existence. The people, the Federalists declared, always remained alive politically and legally, doling out to their various agents or representatives in the states and the federal government bits and pieces of their sovereign power, but never all of it. The consent that they loaned to their agents and representatives was always tentative, always partial, and could be taken back at any time."
Are you American? If not, please don't weigh in on this in any quelling manner whatsoever, because it's not your place and it's not possible to understand this setup from the outside. If you are, and you think you want to quell our rights, then I would like to know: did you go through college early enough to still receive the western civ/traditions course, or had your degree been Frankfurt Schooled by the time you went through? Even an Arts-Humanities-Science can recognize the negatives of that; the stereotype that all those degrees are anti-enlightenment is a Frankfurtism.
i am a us citizen. please identify the actual mechanism by which you expect this to happen.
No you're not.
Why ask the question if you're not going to accept the answer? Ad hominem arguments are weak at the best of times; pretending the other person is in a given demographic so you can ad hom them is simply ridiculous.
Answer my question.
I can already tell you aren't an American, only posing as one.
But answer it, because your question in its fundamentals and its face denies rights by being posed (explain yourself if you contend it doesn't, tic toc tik)
if you are, and you think you want to quell our rights, then I would like to know: did you go through college early enough to still receive the western civ/traditions course, or had your degree been Frankfurt Schooled by the time you went through?
actually i think you're not an american. prove your citizenship, coward