begin quote from:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/06/politics/25th-amendment-explainer/index.html
What's the 25th Amendment and how does it work?
(CNN)President Donald Trump only has two weeks left in office, but after he fomented an assault by rioters on the US Capitol, some Republicans are actively considering whether to remove him in these final throes of his administration.
Impeaching
Trump might be the appropriate remedy and using impeachment to remove
him from office would bar him from running for President again. But
there's likely no time to impeach and try the President again in the
next two weeks. (Reminder: Trump was already impeached by the House over his Ukraine activities, but was not removed from office by the Senate.)
A
second option is invoking the 25th Amendment, which has periodically
been discussed as a means of last resort to remove a rogue or
incapacitated president.
Some
Cabinet members held preliminary discussions about invoking the 25th
Amendment to force Trump's removal from office, a GOP source told CNN's
Jim Acosta Wednesday night.
But the bar it sets is incredibly high.
What would it require?
To
forcibly wrest power from Trump, Vice President Mike Pence would have
to be on board, according to the text of the amendment. Read the full language here.
Pence would also need either a majority of Trump's Cabinet officials to
agree the President is unfit for office and temporarily seize power
from him.
Trump
could dispute their move with a letter to Congress. Pence and the
Cabinet would then have four days to dispute him, Congress would then
vote -- it requires a two-thirds supermajority, usually 67 senators and
290 House members to permanently remove him.
Congress could also appoint its own body to review the President's fitness instead of the Cabinet. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, during the last Congress, introduced a bill to create a congressional body for this purpose, but it was not signed into law.
Why do we have the 25th Amendment?
The
25th Amendment was enacted in the wake of the assassination of John F.
Kennedy, whose predecessor Dwight Eisenhower suffered major heart
attacks. It was meant to create a clear line of succession and prepare
for urgent contingencies.
Eisenhower
suffered a debilitating heart attack while in office in the 1950s. That
was before the 25th Amendment, so there was no constitutional rule.
Instead he came to an agreement with Vice President Richard Nixon about
handing over power.
The
portion of the 25th Amendment that allows the vice president and
Cabinet to remove the president had in mind a leader who was in a coma
or suffered a stroke.
The
Reagan administration drafted, but did not sign or transmit, letters to
the Senate that would have taken power from Reagan after he was shot in
1981. You can see them at the Reagan Library's website.
The
storming of the Capitol by rioters at the request of the President may
end up being the first such contingency in the nation's history.
Appearing
on CNN as rioters were being cleared from the Capitol, the presidential
historian Douglas Brinkley said he never thought he'd seriously be
discussing ousting a president who posed a danger to the Republic.
"Our
country's being held hostage right now by Donald Trump," he said.
"Mitch McConnell and Speaker Pelosi cannot even meet in the Capitol
today ... so I think we now have to go into our constitutional kit bag
and find what we can do to control Donald Trump and certainly the 25th
Amendment is there."
No comments:
Post a Comment