Asks for President Trump
Donald Trump Trump Acknowledges Presidency End After Congress Declares Biden Winning Congress Confirms Biden Winning After Rioters Test Positive For COVID-19 By Rioters This Week.The removal of the 25th Amendment got louder on Thursday in response to the mob’s deadly attack on the Capitol by pro-Trump rioters.
The seldom invoked amendment to the 1967 constitution is the primary means of ensuring that the government continues to function if a sitting president is deemed incapable of carrying out his duties during his tenure.
Trump’s remaining time in the White House is just a matter of days, with the president elected Joe Biden
Joe Biden Trump Acknowledges End Of Presidency After Congress Declares Biden WinningThe inauguration was scheduled for January 20. But alarms at the prospect that Trump could incite more violence or plunge the country into a national security crisis in that short period of time have prompted a closer look at the amendment’s so-called “involuntary expulsion mechanism”.
While the 25th Amendment has been invoked several times as a way to temporarily transfer power to a vice president while a president is undergoing a medical procedure such as surgery, it has never been used to remove a president from office against his will. remove.
Thursday afternoon, just 24 hours after rioters stormed the Capitol, Senate leader was minorities Charles Schumer
Chuck SchumerCongress Confirms Biden Wins After Rioters Terrorist Capitol Cori Bush Introduces Legislation to Sanction Remove All House Members Who Supported Election Challenges Pelosi and Schumer Call on Trump to Demand All Protesters Leave Capitol (DN.Y.) and speaker Nancy Pelosi
Nancy PelosiCongress confirms Biden wins after Capitol Third House rioters terrorize lawmaker tests positive for COVID-19 this week West Virginia lawmaker livestreams herself to crowd in Capitol: MORE report (D-Calif.) Had both embraced the use of the constitutional mechanism to bring about an untimely end to Trump’s presidency. Democratic leaders pushed for Trump’s cabinet to remove him, or if that failed, Congress to consider doing so by impeachment.
“What happened in the Capitol yesterday was an uprising against the United States, instigated by the president,” Schumer said in a statement. “This president cannot remain in office for another day.”
Some Republicans joined the Democrats’ chorus, calling for an appeal for the 25th Amendment.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger
Adam Daniel Kinzinger Late Night Hosts Announce Plans To Discuss Capitol Violence The Memo: Trump Chaos Comes To Capitol Trump Tells Rioters To ‘Go Home’ As They Stoke Election Fury MORE (Ill.) Became the first GOP lawmaker on Thursday to call for an appeal to the Constitution’s presidential removal mechanism, placing blame for Wednesday’s uprising at the president’s feet.
“Here’s the truth: the president caused this. The president is unfit and the president is unwell. And the president must now voluntarily or involuntarily relinquish control of the executive,” Kinzinger said in a videotaped statement. “It is time to invoke the 25th Amendment and end this nightmare.”
Republican support for the effort also came from outside of Washington.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R) said on Thursday that the US would be “better off” if Trump resigned or was removed from office to allow Vice President Pence to serve the final days of the presidential term. .
The involuntary removal provision – paragraph 4 of the amendment – authorizes the Vice President and a majority of cabinet members to declare a President “incapable of fulfilling the powers and duties of office”. If used successfully against Trump, it would elevate Pence to the position of acting president.
But the statute also allows a sitting president to challenge his cabinet’s determination – a complicating factor that has led even some of Trump’s fiercest critics to dismiss the approach as impractical given the short timeframe.
To regain power, Trump only needs to declare to the leaders of Congress that he is capable of doing so. To put Trump’s challenge aside, the cabinet would have to declare him unfit again, but this time with the support of two-thirds of the votes in both the House and Senate.
Some of Trump’s staunchest opponents say it is absurd to think such a cumbersome process could succeed in stripping Trump of power before inauguration day. John Bolton
John Bolton Five foreign policy plums ripe for Biden’s pick Trump calls Bolton ‘one of the dumbest people in Washington’ after former aide saw martial law report Trump downplayed impact of hack, wonders whether Russia is MORE involvedTrump’s former national security adviser turned critic said an attempt to remove Trump at this late stage could make the country’s problems worse than worse.
“Part four of the 25th amendment, which I think is the taste du jour, is probably the worst written provision of the constitution,” Bolton told The Hill. “It’s never been used before, and the idea that you’re trying to activate it for the first time now and risk having two presidents at once. I think it’s just a silly message.”
The amendment owes its apparently esoteric set-up to its historical roots, which first came into effect after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. His shocking death, and the sense of national vulnerability it evoked, raised concerns about the adequacy of contingency plans. of the country.
The give and take of the 25th Amendment between the executive branch and Congress is designed to facilitate a smooth transfer of power in the event that a president becomes physically incapacitated and unable to perform his presidential duties.
“These proposals were influenced at the time by the feeling that if Kennedy had lived, the country would have faced the problem of presidential inability in a very tragic setting,” wrote John D. Feerick, a law professor. Fordham University. and scholar of the 25th amendment.
In that spirit, one provision of the amendment allows the president to temporarily transfer power to the vice president on his own initiative. This happened twice during George W. Bush’s presidency, who briefly handed over authority to Vice President Dick Cheney while undergoing a colonoscopy. Bush resumed his powers shortly afterwards.
However, according to legal scholars, the authors of the amendment have deliberately left the text vague to allow for flexibility, including invoking the amendment in cases where a president is simply unable to exercise his official functions.
Brett Samuels contributed.