The 25th Amendment Has the Same Problem as Impeachment

The bar is set unbelievably high

So, I was browsing Truth Social the other day — I love funny cat videos! — and did you know that the president has an account on there? He does! And he recently wrote this:

I’ll bet that my reaction to that was the same as most people’s: I opened a browser tab and googled “3J93TG AMRWGSNOPPTH” because my fingers were too panicked to properly type “25th Amendment”. The president’s psychotic threats have led to calls for use of that amendment from people including J.B. Pritzker, Mahdi Hasan, and Marjorie Taylor Greene — which, by the way, happens to be the “fuck, marry, kill” you’re confronted with when you enter hell. So, could the amendment possibly be invoked?

Short answer: No, it is unbelievably unlikely. The removal process under the 25th Amendment is actually more cumbersome than plain old missionary-position impeachment.

The first step in the involuntary removal process is for the Vice President to declare the President unable to perform his duties. That means that Vance would have to turn on Trump, which is theoretically possible because Vance is a soulless vessel of pure self-interest. But Vance is also smart enough to know not to pull that ripcord too early — this is an “if you come at the king, you best not miss” situation. So — though I’m sure that Vance is capable of behind-the-scene policking that would make Machiavelli cream his jeans — he’ll be the last person to publicly get on board.

A majority of the president’s cabinet secretaries have to join the Vice President in declaring the President unfit. That strikes me extremely unlikely because the one qualification for serving in Trump’s cabinet is “loyalty”, with even “minimal competence” and “sobriety” seemingly optional. So, this group of D-level flunkies — most of whom would be Assistant Managers at Little Caesar’s if they weren’t in the cabinet — has to turn on their meal ticket. And that seems as about as likely as Morgan Freeman winning “Best Girl/Girl Scene” at the Adult Film Awards.

If the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet agree that the President can’t serve, then the President can submit a declaration to Congress that he is fit. And that — I’m sure we can agree — is by far the funniest part of this process. What happens if the president sends Congress this?

If the president asserts his fitness, then the question goes back to the VP and the cabinet (I guess this back-and-forth was designed to prevent an “I’m not dead yet!” situation). But if the executive branch holds its ground, the question goes to Congress. Congress can remove the president with a two-thirds vote in both houses. You may notice that this is a higher barrier than impeachment: Impeachment requires two-thirds in the Senate but only a simple majority in the House. So, in order to remove the president via the 25th Amendment, you need the same level of political support required for impeachment and 72 more votes in the House and a majority of the cabinet and the Vice President. The process is not a fast track.

The Amendment also has a poorly-defined and never-tested process through which Congress could create a body that would rule on the president’s fitness instead of the cabinet. It seems that the thinking was that things might boil down to a medical question, so Congress could empanel a Seal Team Six Of Doctors to make the call. That is cosmically unlikely to happen here — the filibuster would have to be overcome, and it would be ethically dodgy. It would probably lead to Republicans and Democrats becoming Mark and Jeremy in that episode of Peep Show where they keep trying to get each other committed.

So, there will be sufficient political support for impeachment before there’s support for the 25th Amendment. And if you’re thinking “but impeachment is for crimes,” okay: Pick your favorite impeachment-level Trump crime. Does pardon-selling rub you the wrong way? What about using foreign policy for personal enrichment? Abuse of power was big in the ‘70s, or Congress could litigate some of the DOJ inquiries that Trump shut down — America loves a reboot! There are endless options in the vast menagerie of Trump crimes — if enough support for removal ever emerges, impeachment is the obvious route.

One thing we’ve learned during the Trump era is that our institutions can be neutered by blind partisanship. All the processes that were designed to check a president’s power break down if enough people sacrifice all notions of fairness and objectivity. And the upshot is that only one thing can remove a president: A massive shift in the political winds.

If that ever happens to Trump, we’ll almost certainly hit the impeachment bar before we hit the 25th Amendment bar. People are talking about the 25th Amendment now because it would probably be considered in a world where our leaders care more about the country than about their party holding power. We don’t live in that world, and our system lacks remedies for blind partisanship. And anyone hoping that the 25th Amendment might be a remedy is bound to be disappointed.

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