How many times has the 25th Amendment been invoked in US history?
Executive summary
The Twenty-Fifth Amendment has been formally invoked in several distinct ways since its ratification in 1967: its temporary-transfer clause (Section 3) has been used three times, its vacancy-filling clause (Section 2) has been used twice, and its most drastic removal mechanism (Section 4) has never been used; by that accounting the Amendment has been invoked five times in total [1] [2] [3] [4]. Some reporting counts different categories of “use” (for example including ordinary succession under Section 1), which explains occasional higher totals in public coverage [5] [6].
1. What “invoked” means — parsing the Amendment’s parts
The 25th Amendment contains four separate mechanisms: Section 1 makes the vice president the president upon death, removal, or resignation; Section 2 lays out how a vacancy in the vice presidency is filled; Section 3 allows a president to voluntarily transfer power to the vice president for a period of incapacity; and Section 4 allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare the president unable to discharge duties and transfer power without the president’s consent [6] [1]. Counting “invocations” therefore requires a choice: whether to count automatic successions under Section 1, the nomination-and-confirmation steps under Section 2, the voluntary temporary transfers under Section 3, or attempted or theoretical uses of Section 4 — and major sources separate those categories explicitly [1] [2].
2. Section 3 — the short, voluntary transfers that have happened
Section 3 has been expressly used three times in modern practice: President Ronald Reagan formally transferred power to Vice President George H.W. Bush during a planned medical procedure on July 13, 1985; President George W. Bush transferred power to Vice President Dick Cheney for brief colonoscopy procedures on June 29, 2002 and again on July 21, 2007 [4] [7]. These are the clear, documented instances when presidents transmitted written declarations to congressional leaders that they were temporarily unable to discharge the office, and the vice president served as Acting President until the president’s written declaration that he had resumed duties [2].
3. Section 2 — filling a vice-presidential vacancy
Section 2’s process of nominating and confirming a new vice president has been used twice: after Vice President Spiro Agnew’s resignation in 1973, Richard Nixon nominated Gerald Ford to be vice president; then when Ford became president in 1974, President Ford nominated Nelson Rockefeller to be vice president and the Congress confirmed him — both of those post-ratification vice-presidential appointments relied on Section 2’s procedure [3] [2]. Those uses are routinely counted as formal applications of the Amendment because they directly invoke its text to fill vacancies [3].
4. Section 4 — never used, despite political talk
The most politically explosive provision, Section 4 — under which the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet could declare the president incapacitated and install the vice president as Acting President over the president’s objection — has never been invoked in U.S. history [1] [8]. That absence has been a recurring theme in news cycles whenever commentators or lawmakers contemplate extraordinary measures; analysts point out both the legal ambiguity and the intense political consequences that help explain why Section 4 remains unused [8] [9].
5. Why counts sometimes differ in public reporting
Some outlets report that the 25th Amendment has been used “six times,” a figure that reflects different counting choices — for example including Section 1 successions (when a vice president becomes president upon death or resignation), or counting all letters and notifications that presidents have sent regarding transfers of power even when they did not follow the formal Section 3 process precisely [5] [9]. Authoritative legal summaries and compilations such as the Library of Congress’s Constitution Annotated and the American Presidency Project list and separate uses by section, and they emphasize that Section 4 has never been applied [1] [2].
6. Bottom line: the tally that aligns with most legal summaries
Reading the Amendment and the official compilations together yields a clear, conservative tally: Section 3 (temporary voluntary transfers) — 3 uses; Section 2 (filling the vice-presidential vacancy) — 2 uses; Section 4 — 0 uses; Section 1 (succession on death/resignation) operates when applicable but is often treated separately from “invocations.” That produces five formal invocations of the 25th Amendment’s non-automatic provisions since ratification, and no instance of the removal-for-incapacity mechanism ever being applied [2] [1] [3]. Where sources disagree, the difference springs from how “invoked” is defined, not from a hidden trove of undisclosed episodes [9] [5].