VANITY: The Subtle Ins and Outs of the 25th Amendment

Self | 6/30/2024 | Scouter

[scouter]

You’re right. Bad choice of words on my part.

[scouter]

No question it’s a risk. But if they can pull it off, Team Obama remains the power behind the scenes. I do think they could make a lot of hay out of electing the first woman president.

[Political Junkie Too]

Congress has extremely wide latitude to decide which other body this could be, but they have not done so. It would require a law to be passed in the same manner as all other laws.

Here's the kink in the timing of this.

If this "other body as Congress may by law provide" is created (but not yet formed for a 25th amendment invocation), it must be done a law signed by the President.

If the Vice President does not have the support of the Cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment and appeals to the Congress to pass a law creating some other body by law, only Biden can sign that bill because Harris is not Acting President yet.

This law would have to be passed to be applied to a future President. Pelosi floated the idea of passing a law defining an alternative 25th amendment body during President Trump's administration, but that went nowhere.

-PJ

[Robert DeLong]

I stand corrected. 🙂👍

I don't even remember that, mainly because I had left the D.C. area shorty before Nixon was removed in that soft coup.

I kind of turned my back on politics until Reagan ran.

[scouter]

You are exactly right. If this is gonna happen to Biden, it’s gonna have to be done with the Cabinet.

[Political Junkie Too]

Yes. My last sentence got deleted by my fat fingers.

I closed by saying that Biden would never sign a bill that would be used against him to declare him unable "to discharge the powers and duties of his office."

-PJ

[Alberta's Child]

The President cannot fire the VP. The VP is elected to office.

[KamalaKancel]

Will a 25th Amendment action provoke a Constitutional Crisis (based on the ineligibility of Kamala Harris to assume the Presidency)?

More details available via links at:

Kamala Harris Ineligible Website (downloadable PDF available via link)

Twitter Site (twitter login required to view)

[Alberta's Child]

I think it was LBJ who didn’t select a VP after he assumed office.

[Publius]

LBJ couldn’t select a VP because the 25th Amendment hadn’t yet been ratified,

[Campion]

He couldn’t. The 25th amendment wasn’t ratified until 1967. Until that time, when a VP took office as President, the office of Vice President remained vacant until the next election.

[scouter]

Before the 25th Amendment there was no provision for a Vice President, who succeeded to the Presidency on the death of the President, to nominate a new Vice President. The 25th Amendment was submitted to the states on July 6, 1965, several years after Lyndon Johnson succeeded to the Presidency. It was adopted on February 10, 1967, the day that the required thirty-eight (38) states had ratified it.

Lyndon Johnson, therefore, did not have a Vice President until the start of his own term in January, 1965. It was Hubert H. Humphrey.

[lepton]

Found the mechanism for firing the Vice President?

[lepton]

The President NOMINATES and a majority of both chambers of Congress must confirm the new Vice President.

---

Yep, and Hillary was accused of advocating playing games with that in the case of the Nixon inquiry.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Reasonable thoughts.
More frightening.

Harris is shot - by a MAGA hat wearing white male racist redneck Christian pig carrying AR15 when she arrives outside an abortion clinic to make a pro-Lqwerty speech She resigns - “for her health”
Newsome is crowned VP.
Biden resigns “because of his health.”

[Political Junkie Too]

Newsome is crowned VP.

Of course, it would take Republican complicity to make this happen.

-PJ

[scouter]

That is a most horrifying thought. All of it.

[Zathras]

I read it the same way.
We don’t want to go there for almost any reason.

[Robert DeLong]

Could have been who I was thinking of.

[oldskoolwargamer2]

Late to this thread but my reading of the history of the 25A indicates it was primarily driven by the aftermath of the JFK asassination, when there was confusion about how exactly the transition from JFK to LBJ was to happen.

I think this is the primary reasoning behind the 25A, to clarify what happens following the death of the president and how a new Vice President is named.

My thinking is despite his obvious issues it is clear that removal of Biden via the 25A would be a heavy lift. The Dems could probably threaten removal via the 25A but if Joe correctly reads this threat than it gets ugly really quickly.

To me it still boils down to Joe has to decide to step down himself and whatever threats the rest of the Democrats make against him and his campaign are pretty empty.

I think the old bastard is just too damn stubborn (and full of poor judgement) and he is going to stay in.