What is the congressional process after Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is invoked, and what vote totals are required to remove a president?

1. How the process starts and who files the papers

The process under Section 4 begins when the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet — or another body that Congress may designate — submit a written declaration to the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the presidency; upon that filing the Vice President immediately assumes the powers and duties as Acting President ^{[1] [4] [5]}.

2. The President’s immediate response and the four‑day contest window

If the President objects, he or she may transmit a written declaration to the same congressional leaders that the President is able to resume duties, at which point the Vice President and the majority who filed the initial declaration have four days to submit a counter‑declaration asserting that the President remains unable; that interplay creates a short initial contest before Congress becomes the ultimate arbiter ^{[4] [2]}.

3. Congress’s role, timing, and voting mechanics

Once the competing written declarations exist, Congress is required to assemble within 48 hours if not in session and then has up to 21 days after receipt of the Vice President and Cabinet’s counter‑declaration (or 21 days after it is required to assemble) to decide the matter; Congress must vote separately in the House and the Senate, and to sustain the determination that the President is unable to serve and thus leave the Vice President as Acting President requires a two‑thirds vote of both Houses ^{[6] [7] [2]}.

4. What the two‑thirds requirement means in practice and alternative outcomes

The constitutional text and authoritative explanations make clear that this two‑thirds threshold in each chamber is deliberately higher than the simple majority needed in the House for impeachment and the two‑thirds Senate requirement for removal following impeachment; if either chamber fails to reach the two‑thirds threshold, or if Congress declines to vote or the 21‑day window lapses without action, the President immediately resumes the powers of the office ^{[3] [6] [7]}.

5. Concrete vote totals, repetition, and practical ambiguities

In numerical terms, commentators and explainers translate the two‑thirds requirement into 288 votes in the 435‑member House and 67 votes in the 100‑member Senate to sustain a Section 4 finding — figures commonly cited in legal summaries — though the Amendment’s text ties the vote to "two‑thirds of both Houses" and not to fixed numeric totals, so the precise counts shift if membership or vacancies change ^{[8] [2]}; additionally, Section 4 has never been used in U.S. history and leaves unresolved practical questions — for example who counts as a principal officer, whether acting department heads qualify, and how repeated cycles of declarations and counters might play out — matters legal scholars and Congress have debated ^{[9] [10] [11]}.

6. The Amendment’s design, limits, and political realities

The framers of the 25th Amendment designed Section 4 to prevent a power vacuum and to funnel disputes quickly to Congress, but they also built in safeguards — the immediate transfer to the Vice President, the short initial contest window, the 21‑day congressional clock, and the high two‑thirds vote requirement — that make involuntary removals difficult and emphasize political consensus over partisan cutoff, which is why many observers view Section 4 as a narrow, rarely usable tool rather than an alternative to impeachment ^{[5] [6] [11]}.