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On Friday Congressional Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, raised the threat of the 25th Amendment. That amendment holds that a president who is deemed unfit for the duties of the office can be temporarily relieved of duty and the next person in the line of succession can take control of the president’s duties.
This suggestion came following speculation that President Donald Trump is in poorer health than the White House has publicly let on.
In the House of Representatives, Pelosi’s Democrats introduced legislation that would map out the exact presidential succession in the event of an invocation of the 25th Amendment.
The legislation suggests the creation of a 16-member, bipartisan panel that could evaluate the health of a president and call upon the 25th Amendment to sideline that president in the event that they’re medically unfit for their duties.
“This is not about President Trump,” the Speaker of the House told reporters. “He will face the judgment of the voters, but he shows the need for us to create a process for future presidents,” Pelosi continued.
In truth, there are several aspects of US law surrounding the succession of the presidency that are somewhat vague. However, this didn’t stop many in the media from noting that Pelosi’s legislation was assuredly aimed squarely at the sitting president.
The 25th Amendment isn’t entirely clear on the process to succeed the president in the event that they are indisposed. It states that the vice president and “such other body as Congress may by law provide” can determine whether the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”. In such a case, the president would be relieved of those duties, and they’d fall naturally to the vice president.
Historically, the 25th Amendment has never been invoked via this provision. It’s an option in the Constitution, though President Trump is the first president to face such a life-threatening illness as COVID in the modern era. As amendments to the Constitution go, the 25th is quite new: it was ratified in 1967.
Irrespective of political beliefs, the need to keep there from being a leadership vacuum in the event of a medical emergency is clear. President Trump’s health appears to be sound at the time of this writing, but things can change quickly with a disease like COVID-19.
Should he fall into a coma or require the use of a ventilator, there could be political chaos as representatives and executive branch officials scramble to keep the country running.
Hopefully things won’t come to that, but the government needs to be prepared for that contingency.
