25th Amendment: What is it and how does it work? - CNNPolitics - 0 views
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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.
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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.
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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.
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To forcibly wrest power from Trump, Vice President Mike Pence would have to be on board, according to the text of the amendment
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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"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."