Article 25 against Trump
Executive summary
The 25th Amendment can, in theory, be used to remove a sitting president from power — Section 4 allows the vice president together with a majority of the Cabinet to declare the president “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” immediately making the vice president acting president — but it has never been used to permanently oust a president and faces steep legal and political hurdles [1] [2] [3].
1. How the mechanism actually works: legal text and procedure
Section 4 starts with a written declaration from the vice president and a majority of Cabinet members to Congress that the president is unable to perform the office’s duties, at which point the vice president assumes acting authority; the president can then send a counter-declaration and regain power unless the vice president and Cabinet reassert incapacity, triggering a congressional process in which a two‑thirds Senate vote is required to keep the vice president in charge — the amendment was designed to fill gaps in succession and disability but leaves key definitions and thresholds deliberately imprecise [4] [5] [2].
2. Historical practice and precedent: rarely used, never for permanent removal
Practical use of the 25th has been limited to temporary transfers of power for medical procedures; no president has been permanently removed under Section 4, and the amendment’s permanent-removal route remains untested in American history, which deepens legal uncertainty about how courts and Congress would handle an acute, politically fraught invocation [3] [5].
3. Political reality: why calls to invoke it against Trump recur but falter
Calls to invoke the amendment against Donald Trump resurfaced after high‑profile incidents — notably the January 6 Capitol attack and later episodes prompting public demands from some Democrats and commentators — yet those calls repeatedly ran into a core political obstacle: only the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet can initiate Section 4, making the tool harder to deploy than impeachment because it requires inside support that is rarely forthcoming [2] [1] [6].
4. Standards and ambiguity: “unable” but who decides?
The amendment deliberately avoids a precise medical or cognitive definition of “inability,” a gap commentators and legal experts have flagged; that vagueness gives Section 4 flexibility but also fuels partisan disputes about motive, evidence, and whether public missteps or unpopularity qualify as constitutional inability, an ambiguity emphasized in historical accounts of the amendment’s adoption and later commentary [5] [7].
5. Consequences and limits: removal, future office, and political fallout
An invocation of the 25th Amendment would transfer power temporarily but would not itself bar a removed president from running again; disqualification from future office is a remedy tied to conviction in an impeachment proceeding, not to Section 4 alone, which means political actors seeking both removal and a permanent bar still rely on impeachment and conviction in the Senate [8] [9].
6. Bottom line: possible but unlikely without internal fractures
Legally available and invoked in temporary medical contexts, the 25th Amendment’s Section 4 is nevertheless a high‑friction, institutionally awkward route to remove a president — it requires a vice president willing to act, a majority of Cabinet members to join, and, to sustain the removal, a two‑thirds Senate vote after a contested exchange with the president — making it a last‑resort option that has been advocated publicly by opponents at moments of crisis but that remains hard to translate into action in practice [2] [1] [3].