When it comes to getting rid of President Donald Trump, it’s important to keep all our options open. The 25th Amendment exists for just the situation we find ourselves in now, but unfortunately it relies entirely upon Trump’s closest cronies doing the right thing.
The 25th Amendment is a wee babe by constitutional amendment standards, having been proposed and ratified only after the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy. Before that, we just had the Succession Clause. It was intended to expand and codify what happens if a president is incapacitated, either temporarily or permanently.
President Donald Trump speaks during a press briefing on Jan. 20.
Calls to invoke the 25th Amendment are really just about Section 4, which allows a president to be removed without consent if the vice president and a majority of cabinet secretaries decide to trigger the involuntary removal process. The remaining sections have all been invoked at least once and are much less controversial.
Section 1 just firmed up what was already signaled by the Succession Clause: The vice president replaces the president when they are removed from office, dying, or resigning. Section 1 gave us President Gerald Ford after President Richard Nixon resigned.
Section 2 is about what happens if the vice president’s office becomes vacant. It requires the president to nominate a vice presidential candidate who then must be confirmed by a majority vote in both chambers. Section 2 gave us Vice President Gerald Ford after Agnew resigned. Then, after Ford became president, his ascension left a vacancy that required Ford’s use of Section 2 to nominate Nelson Rockefeller to the job he’d just vacated.
Section 3 is about a president voluntarily transmitting to the Senate and the House that they are unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office, requiring the vice president to become acting president until the president transmits a new written declaration saying that they are now able to do the job again.
It sounds dramatic, but what it’s used for is fairly anodyne: if the president is under general anesthesia for a medical treatment, they kind of by definition can’t discharge their duties. President Ronald Reagan did it for his cancer surgery, and President George W. Bush used it twice in 2002 and 2007 for routine procedures, as did President Joe Biden in 2021.
Section 4 has never been invoked, but is usually explained as a majority of the cabinet heads voting to remove the president. While that’s true, the 25th Amendment has more requirements. A lot more.
First, the vice president and a majority of the “principal officers of the executive departments” have to send the Senate majority leader and the House speaker a written declaration that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
Vice President JD Vance hosts an episode of "The Charlie Kirk Show" at the White House, following the assassination Charlie Kirk in September 2025.
Once that is sent, the vice president immediately becomes the acting president and assumes all presidential duties.
“Principal officers of the executive departments” is usually understood to mean the secretaries of the 15 executive departments listed in federal statutes. That would include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and so on.
It doesn’t include people like FBI Director Kash Patel or others who are directors of subparts of an executive department. It also doesn’t include the heads of independent agencies, such as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
But the law is never that simple, of course, so no one knows if, say, acting secretaries count as principal officers or what to do with people who participate in Trump’s Cabinet but do not head a department named in the statute. So even the first step under the 25th Amendment would likely involve a fight over who gets to vote on removing Trump.
But if they actually get it together and tell Congress that Trump is in no way fit to continue as president, under the 25th Amendment, Trump gets his own chance to send a written declaration to Congress saying that “no inability exists,” and then he gets to be president again.
Well, unless the vice president and a majority of the cabinet heads say “did we stutter?” and send another written declaration to the majority leader and speaker within four days saying that no, really, the president is unable to do his job.
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Then comes Congress, which has to assemble within 48 hours if it is not already in session. It then has 21 days to vote, and two-thirds of each chamber must vote in favor of a determination that the president is unable to discharge his duties.
If that passes, the vice president stays in the acting role and presumably ascends to the presidency, getting to choose a vice president of their own. If Congress wimps out, the president gets to return to the job.
So this is the problem with the 25th Amendment. It doesn’t just require Vice President JD Vance and eight Cabinet members to do the right thing. It also requires a supermajority of both chambers of Congress.
By contrast, impeachment requires only a simple majority in the House and a two-thirds majority in the Senate.
A cartoon by Clay Jones.
Impeachment also doesn’t require Vance or Trump’s Cabinet members to come to their senses. But the 25th Amendment does, and it also requires a hefty two-thirds in each chamber. But if a measure has that level of support in both chambers, there’s no need to bring Trump’s appointees in at all. And if a measure doesn’t have that support, it doesn’t matter if every Cabinet member agrees.
Scholars have pointed out that you can impeach a president for reasons having nothing to do with whether they’re unable to do the job and that the 25th Amendment is intended for actual incapacity—though there’s no guidance whatsoever on what it means to be “unable” to do the job, but by almost any metric one can think of, Trump is not able.
However, the framing of “inability” might prove more appealing for Trump’s Cabinet and congressional Republicans. That can be framed as failing health or issues with cognition, whereas impeachment requires acknowledging that Trump is committing pretty much every high crime and misdemeanor imaginable.
Trump’s Cabinet secretaries making a move might act as a permission slip for Congress to do the same, but it’s an awful lot of moving parts that, sadly, even if successful, just get us President JD Vance.
