Which historical episodes involved temporary transfers of presidential power under the 25th Amendment and how were they documented?
Executive summary
The Twenty‑Fifth Amendment’s Section 3 — the president’s voluntary, written transfer of powers to the vice president — has been used a handful of times for planned medical procedures, most notably by Ronald Reagan in 1985, George W. Bush in 2002 and 2007, and Joe Biden in 2021; Section 4, which allows the vice president and a Cabinet majority to declare the president unable to serve, has never been formally invoked [1] [2] [3]. Those episodes are documented in contemporaneous presidential letters, official statements, administration memoirs and later legal and congressional annotations that catalogue the transfers and the legal debates around them [4] [1].
1. Reagan’s 1985 transfer: an ambiguous invocation recorded in memoirs and official files
President Ronald Reagan relinquished presidential duties during surgery in July 1985 and contemporaneous White House practice and later archival descriptions treat that episode as a Section 3 transfer to Vice President George H.W. Bush, but reporting records a degree of ambiguity — Reagan himself later wrote that he had invoked the Twenty‑Fifth, while some contemporaneous statements framed the move as mindful of Section 3 though not a formal, prolonged invocation; historians and the Reagan Library place the transfer in the amendment’s early usage context [5] [3] [2].
2. George W. Bush : clear written notices for brief medical incapacities
President George W. Bush is the first president documented to have explicitly used Section 3 on the public record, sending letters to congressional leaders before colonoscopy procedures in June 2002 and again in 2007, formally handing authority to Vice President Dick Cheney for the minutes or hours during which he was under anesthesia; those letters and presidential communications are preserved in the Am Presidency Project and cited in constitutional commentaries [6] [4] [2].
3. Joe Biden, 2021: the first woman to serve as acting president and straightforward documentation
On November 19, 2021, President Joe Biden transmitted the written declaration required by Section 3 to the congressional leaders before a colonoscopy, making Vice President Kamala Harris acting president from 10:10 a.m. until 11:35 a.m.; the transfer was widely reported and is catalogued in encyclopedic and constitutional sources noting it as the first time a woman discharged the powers and duties of the presidency [3] [1].
4. How these transfers are documented — letters, public statements and archival records
Section 3’s operation requires a written declaration to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House, and the historical episodes above are documented by those letters and by White House statements that have been archived and annotated by the Library of Congress, legal repositories and presidential archives; congressionally maintained “Constitution Annotated” essays and the Am Presidency Project collect the actual letters and contemporaneous legal memos that confirm the transfers [2] [4] [1].
5. Section 4’s shadow: debate after January 6 and the amendment’s political implications
Although Section 4 — the vice president plus a Cabinet majority declaring presidential inability — has never been used, it drew public attention after the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack when members of then‑President Trump’s Cabinet and congressional leaders reportedly discussed the option and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly considered it as an alternative to impeachment; the episode exposed not only the amendment’s constitutional gravity but also political reluctance and procedural hurdles that make Section 4 fraught and politically charged [3].
6. What the record shows and what it leaves uncertain
The documentary record is strongest for the routine medical invocations under Section 3 — explicit letters, timestamps and archival citations — while broader claims about near‑invocations or political machinations (for instance, what conversations did or did not occur in private Cabinet meetings) are reported by news and secondary sources but are not the same as formal, transmitted Section 4 declarations; the authoritative legal histories and congressional annotations underline that Section 4 remains unused even where administrations came close or where officials contemplated it [2] [1] [4].