What is the amendment to remove the cabinet?
Executive summary
The amendment referenced is the Twenty‑Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and its most contested provision—Section 4—creates a procedure by which the vice president together with a majority of the Cabinet (or another body Congress may specify) can declare the president “unable” to discharge the powers and duties of office, temporarily transferring authority to the vice president; if the president contests that declaration, Congress must decide by two‑thirds of both houses to sustain the transfer [1] [2] [3]. Scholars and official commentaries stress that the Cabinet cannot simply “vote out” a president in isolation: the mechanism is legally complex, untested in full, and politically fraught [4] [5] [6].
1. What the text actually authorizes: Section 3 vs. Section 4
The amendment contains two distinct paths: Section 3 permits a president to voluntarily declare a temporary inability and transfer power to the vice president for a defined period (commonly used for medical procedures), while Section 4 authorizes the vice president and a majority of principal officers of executive departments to declare the president incapacitated and immediately make the vice president acting president pending resolution—language spelled out in the amendment itself and summarized in multiple legal resources [7] [1] [2].
2. The process and the Congress backstop
Under Section 4, once the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet transmit a written declaration to congressional leaders, the vice president becomes acting president; the president may then send a written declaration that no inability exists and resume duties, but if the vice president and Cabinet—or anyone else Congress provides—again declare incapacity, Congress must convene and decide within a fixed period, requiring a two‑thirds vote in both the House and Senate to keep the vice president in control [2] [3] [4].
3. What Cabinet “removal” does—and does not—mean
The Cabinet’s role is an initiating one, not an absolute removal power: a majority of Cabinet secretaries can trigger the transfer of authority but cannot permanently eject a president without the Congressional supermajority the amendment demands; commentators emphasize that this is a higher political and numerical threshold than ordinary impeachment and conviction processes in practice [3] [4] [8].
4. Legal ambiguities and practical obstacles
Key terms and technicalities—such as what counts as “principal officers,” whether acting or non‑Senate‑confirmed officials count, and how “unable” is defined—are unresolved, and the Supreme Court has not definitively interpreted the amendment’s contested provisions, leaving functional gaps that scholars warn could create chaos in a contested transfer of power [5] [6] [8]. Legal scholars also note that the amendment was designed to preserve continuity, not to serve as a political tool for removal, and that structural and cultural norms influence whether actors will invoke it [6] [4].
5. Historical use and political context
Sections 1–3 of the Amendment have been used in routine succession and temporary transfers of power, and Section 2 has been used to fill vice‑presidential vacancies, but Section 4—the involuntary mechanism that would involve the Cabinet and Congress—has never been successfully invoked to remove an unwilling president, and political commentary during high‑tension periods has repeatedly highlighted its novelty and risk [5] [2] [9].
6. Competing views and the implications for practice
Advocates for preserving Section 4 argue it safeguards the republic against an incapacitated president and provides an extra constitutional remedy beyond impeachment, while critics warn it invites political manipulation, ambiguous standards, and potential institutional standoffs that courts or Congress may be ill‑prepared to resolve quickly; therefore, many scholars urge legislative clarification or institutional reforms rather than casual reliance on the Cabinet “removal” narrative [6] [3] [4].