I’m not a lawyer, but anyone saying “it’s time for the 25th amendment” doesn’t know shit about the 25th amendment. Here’s the text of section 4, which is the part that allows the president to be
removed from officedisempowered (I guess technically he’d still hold the office, I already said I’m not a lawyer):Section 4.
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, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
If you’re illiterate or allergic to Constitution-speak, that means that the VP and a bunch of Cabinet members can get together and say “he can’t do the job, he’s not the President anymore”, but the President can just say “yes I can and yes I am” and it doesn’t count. If they really want to fight over it, it goes to Congress to decide, and if Congress wanted to get rid of Trump they would have already.
It’s not a viable option, and anyone telling you it is is badly misinformed at best.
How will transferring power to the JVance help?
No one gives a shit about Vance.
He’s not demented. Trump is not planing beyond the next week. Soon he will start threatening countries will nukes and demanding payment directly to his personal bank account. Vance will be equally evil but you avoid the risk of him nuking someone in the middle of the night because of what he read on Truth Social.
What we need is the complete eradication of all government staff appointed by or associated with the Trump administration. Every Republican who voted with him, every Democrat who did the same.
Once that is done, a Manhattan Project sized initiative of judicial reprisal is enacted towards every single person who enabled the Trump administration. The Heritage Foundation is raided and staff is brought up on charges of insurrection. Fox News and the entirety of the right wing noise machine starts facing hard legal, financially devastating consequences for deliberately lying to the public. They, and all other news outlets are kept on a short leash until the heat death of the fucking universe. Corporate personhood is revoked, corporate lobbying is made illegal, and billionaires are taxed until they are brought to heel.
None of this will matter until the people responsible are fleeing for their lives.
Yeah, that isn’t going to happen. The billionaires are getting exactly what they want. The Christians are getting a lot of what they want. They’re going to keep him in power for as long as possible.
Oh, yeah. There won’t be an election. Or if there is, the fix is in.
We’ve been here before so many times. France is the only country with any mettle. The rest of Europe is going to wail about “not escalating things” and there will go Greenland, and effectively NATO, which is just what… huh which country wants that gone again? Surely not a country that has been shown to manipulate Trump.
Problem is that if it would get to war, trump and his loonies stay in power because of a ongoing war and crisis state. Not escalating things is very important to do.
However, that does not mean we can not support greenland if it would come to him invading. We just shouldnt push him to go there.
Also, if anything, its america that should fix america. Not the rest of the world
Will never happen, the Republicans would have to admit all his executive orders are tainted. They kept Reagan’s dementia quiet for 2 years.
Just post the archive link ffs
With a mortar launcher
If they ever remove this ass from office, it will probably just be the final compromise to somehow still not release the epstein files.
Paywall 👎
Just use anti-paywal filter in ublock or adguard or brave or adblock plus.
Ad Blocker
I use ad blocking dns and it doesn’t prevent paywalls.
Please consider including an archive or similar link with no paywall next time.
uBlock, dawg
Nah, non-paywalled links should be mandatory rule.
Sure, so nothing then. Got it. 🙄
Yep, you shouldn’t post if you cannot provide a link that is accessible to everyone.
Take a look at the internet archive and other services that remove paywalls.
Maybe… In 2027 👀
Blah, blah, blah.
Just like last time, no one did anything and this time will be no different.
The blind allegiance to power is too strong.
Dude defunded NPR and they still bootlick nonstop. The indoctrination is deep.
The problem is the world became to reliant on one country. I hope this means it won’t happen again. But it well cause money consolidates.
Correct. Also permanent removal via 25th is actual harder than impeachment and removal because you will eventually need 2/3rds of each house of Congress. The 25th amendment is not a short circuit to impeachment.
What we need is Congress to signal to Trump a real, actual threat of impeachment. He would have to change course, and if he didn’t then he should be removed
So true, now undress yourself, get on all 4s and wait at the front door for you master.
Sigh. I keep reminding people that the 25th Amendment was not meant for this. It was meant for when a President is physically incapacitated. Like, if a President was shot in the head, and is still alive, but in a coma. Because all the President has to do is say “Naw, I’m good”, and he gets his office back. If the VP and Cabinet still agree, it takes a 2/3 majority of both Houses to make the expulsion stick. And even then, the VP carries in as “Acting President”, which is not formally defined anywhere.
Impeachment is the way to handle this. It has a lower threshold. It doesn’t require the VP or Cabinet to sign off first, and only needs 1/2 the House to start the process. And once the President is removed from office by 2/3 of the Senate, the VP becomes the actual President, no “acting” involved.
Because all the President has to do is say “Naw, I’m good”
Or, historically, his wife claims he’s good, but can’t speak to anyone directly, so she would talk with him away from everyone and come back with his feedback.
I predict Stephen Miller would be the one to assume that role this time.
I’m certain Stephen Miller has already assumed other wifely duties for Trump, so this wouldn’t be a stretch.
I like you’re assumption that’s not already happening. Trump doesn’t have the capacity to orchestrate what’s currently going on, there is definitely multiple people using him for their own interests.
Sure, but as yet he remains the mouthpiece.
If he either falls apart or even worse, somehow grows a conscience, then they will isolate him and speak on his behalf.
What is impeachment usually meant to do? Because he’s been impeached twice and here he is.
Colloquially it is also meant to include conviction by the Senate. Impeach + convict. But yes, Republicans have been assholes for many decades. It still needs to happen though, so it is what continues to get demanded.
Impeachment is meant as a check on an Imperial Presidency. In the Constitution, it is supposed to be triggered in response to “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”. It leaves to Congress what that means. So it does not have to be a chargeable crime. The President is supposed to uphold the Constitution, and Treaties like the NATO treaty are supposed to have the same force as the Constitution. Threatening to attack our allies should count as impeachable.
However, he has been impeached twice and failed because Republicans in Congress have his back. In particular, the second time around McConnell said that Trump deserved punishment, but it was better done in the courts. Then Surprise! the Courts said the only way to hold a sitting President to account was through impeachment. It was an ouroborous of letting him off the hook.
We may have to live with the fact that there is no way to fix this, other than voters (or God Himself) intervening, as long as Republicans are too chickenshit to stand up to Trump.
It would lead to his removal, but it got cockblocked by the Senate. As intended.
For those that don’t know. The Senate purely represents old money. They were created as a check/balance to keep citizens from taking away wealth, privilege, and power from the ruling class.
The British House of Lords used to hold the same sort of power with their ability to veto anything passed by the House of Commons. The House of Commons took this veto power away, but unfortunately they were only able to do this by getting the King to threaten to ennoble hundreds of new people and overwhelm the power of the traditional Lords. Our (US) current King would of course never agree to any such thing.
That’s a fascinating historical nugget. I wonder if he would have actually gone through with it? That would have been hilarious. How would they get picked?
He (King George V) would have done it (in 1911). Asquith (the Prime Minister) told him that his father (King Edward VII) had promised to do it before his death in 1910 and King George assented. Asquith actually prepared lists with hundreds of names on them.
Which is why the House is often called “the People’s House”.
For what I know, impeaching him means the house will vote to send him home. If the vote doesn’t pass, he won’t go home.
Impeachment is the House voting to put the President on trial in the Senate. The Senate is then to hear the evidence and vote whether or not to remove the President from office. Trump was impeached twice but the Senate voted partisanly to keep him in office both times.
It was meant for when a President is physically incapacitated.
Dementia is physical incapacitation.
It never says physically incapacitated at all. It says:
“unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”
If the president has a stroke and becomes a psychotic menace. Nervous breakdown and won’t leave his room…all sorts of things.
That’s the text all right, but the text also says that all the President has to do is present Congress with a “written declaration that no inability exists” to get his job back. So as long as the President has the mental acuity to write a letter, he gets his job back. Not a high bar at all, and your “psychotic menace” or “nervous breakdown” Presidents can still write a letter.
If the president objects, the matter goes before Congress, which can decide with a two-thirds vote to permanently remove the president and install the vice president.
Yes, and that process involves a higher threshold (2/3 of both houses) than impeachment (1/2 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate). It also needs the VP to agree.
So if impeachment won’t work, then this won’t work either.
Except for the 25th you have his cabinet turning on him first, and that’s a big deal. If his cabinet doesn’t have faith in him, I would suspect that the house and senate would see that as a big deal.
If his condition is in decline and this is not the last stupid thing he does it might become more likely.
Right, because that’s possible.
You’re 100% right on the mechanics of it, but only 90% right overall. There is one small thing you might not be considering: Republicans might be more supportive of removing an “incapacitated” president than impeaching a tyrannical one because of the less damaging connotation of it.
Doubt it. Reagan likely had Alzheimer’s while President, nobody cared.
And he was 77 when he left office, a year younger than Trump was when he started this term!
Did Reagan threaten war with NATO?
No, but he did declare war on an island
Impeachment was attempted after the Jan. 6th Insurrection, if it didn’t work when he was trying to monkeywrench the levers of power by subverting the confirmation of the vote, and it won’t work now. He’s been shooting his stupid mouth off for decades, being old doesn’t necessarily make him demented despite very obvious signs of aging poorly.
You’re absolutely correct. But people need to realize that the 25th amendment is not a viable option. The threshold for action via the 25th Amendment is higher. If impeachment won’t work, the 25th amendment won’t either.
dude makes enemies everywhere. bonkers.
American democracy is a sham. Too many influencers and voters that are too easily influenced.
Just like every other country on the planet…
I think its time for the second ammendment if you ask me.
