Has the 25th amendment been delivered to trump
Executive summary
No — the 25th Amendment has not been invoked to remove or transfer power away from President Trump, and Section 4 of the amendment — the only subsection that allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare a president “unable to discharge the powers and duties” of the office — has never been used in U.S. history [1]. There have been recurring calls from lawmakers, commentators and scholars to invoke the amendment against Mr. Trump at several points, but those calls did not result in a formal Section 4 declaration [2] [3] [4].
1. The legal reality: Section 4 exists but is untested in removal-of-a-president cases
The constitutional mechanism that would remove power from a sitting president without impeachment is set out in Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, which requires a written declaration from the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate; that process has never been invoked [1]. Historically, presidents have used Section 3 to temporarily transfer power during medical procedures, but Section 4 — the contentious provision invoked in political debates about fitness for office — remains untested [1] [5].
2. Public and political pressure: repeated calls, never a formal delivery
Across multiple episodes in both of Mr. Trump’s administrations and afterward, political figures and commentators publicly urged use of the 25th Amendment — notably after the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack, when Democratic leaders and some Republicans urged Vice President Pence and Cabinet members to act, and when commentators and members of Congress reiterated those calls at later moments such as the Greenland letter episode and other controversies [2] [5] [6]. Credible policy voices and institutions — from Brookings scholars urging Section 4 action in January 2021 to law-review analyses considering the amendment’s use — amplified the call, but publicity and op-eds are not the same as the formal constitutional transmission required to effect a transfer of power [3] [7].
3. What “delivered” would legally mean — and why it didn’t happen
For the 25th Amendment to have been “delivered” to Mr. Trump in the sense of initiating removal, the vice president and a majority of Cabinet members would have had to send the statutorily required written declaration to congressional leaders; Congress would then have a prescribed process to resolve the dispute if the president contested the declaration [1]. Reporting and scholarly reviews show that although officials discussed the option and political pressure mounted, no such written declaration was transmitted in 2021 or afterward — meaning the constitutional trigger was never formally pulled [5] [4] [1].
4. Competing views and implicit agendas in the historical record
Analysts and advocates diverge: some legal scholars and Democratic officials argued that the amendment was the correct remedy for perceived unfitness, while many Republicans and conservative commentators dismissed such moves as partisan or illegitimate — framing calls to invoke the 25th as political weaponization rather than a sober constitutional remedy [3] [2]. Institutional treatments of the amendment — from Congress’s Constitution Annotated to academic law articles — emphasize the gravity and novelty of Section 4, implicitly warning that using it for partisan ends would carry serious institutional risks; those assessments shaped reluctance among Cabinet members and vice presidential officials to proceed [1] [8] [7].
Conclusion: the bottom line
Despite repeated public urgings, analyses and media attention across multiple episodes of controversy, there is no evidence in the record that the 25th Amendment was ever formally invoked or that any written Section 4 declaration was sent to congressional leaders to remove President Trump — the mechanism remains unused in U.S. history [1] [2] [4].