Posted on 06/30/2024 3:59:01 PM PDT by scouter
It is important that we all understand how the 25th Amendment works. To this end, please read it. It is pretty easy to understand, but there are some subtleties that are not so obvious. Also, it is not bullet proof. Here's the text: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-25/
This thread is to discuss the 25th Amendment, and how it might be invoked and operate both in theory, and in the present circumstances. Please refrain from snarky remarks about President Biden's and Kamala Harris' respective mental abilities, unless it's truly funny in a way we haven't seen before. Not that they aren't warranted. It's just that I'd like to keep this thread focused on how things really work so that we all might learn something and be able to correctly inform our families and friends in the discussions that are likely to occur over the next several months.
To get the discussion going, I'd like to point out several subtleties that are not immediately obvious.
1. If there is currently no Vice President, then Section 4, the Section that addresses a Vice President and the cabinet removing the President's powers and duties, cannot be invoked. It is off the table completely.
2. It is not explicitly stated whether or not the Vice President continues to have the powers and duties of the Vice President while serving as Acting President. For example, it is not clear whether or not the Vice President can cast deciding votes in the Senate, or actively preside over the Senate while serving as Acting President.
3. The 25th Amendment does not "remove" the President. The President continues to be President, and the Vice President continues to be Vice President.
4. When the Vice President is serving as Acting President, he cannot appoint a new Vice President.
5. It is not clear at all what would happen if, while serving as Acting President, the Vice President were to die or resign, or himself become otherwise incapable of carrying out the powers and duties of the Presidency. Because in this situation the President is still alive, the Speaker of the House would NOT become President, and there is nothing to indicate that he would become Vice President or Acting President.
6. Section 4 indicates that the Vice President and "a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide" may invoke the 25th Amendment. The "principle officers of the executive departments" is the Cabinet. Congress has never by law provided for any other body to have these powers. Theoretically it could could be either house of the Congress, or both houses together. 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. So for now, at least, it would be the Vice President and the Cabinet.
7. The Amendment provides for the case where the President disagrees with the Vice President and the Cabinet. He can reclaim the powers and duties of his office by simply writing a letter to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives indicating that he is indeed capable of discharging his responsibilities. Once he does, he is back in the driver's seat. There is some disagreement on this point, where some scholars believe that he does not immediately resume his powers and duties, but rather, four days must pass to give the Vice President and Cabinet time to send another letter to the Congress removing his powers and duties. The wording is a bit ambiguous.
8. It could get really nasty. If the Vice President and Cabinet are really at odds with the President on this question, the President could re-claim the powers and duties, and the Vice President and cabinet could take them away again, and then Congress would have to decide by a 2/3 vote. If Congress does not ratify the Vice President and Cabinet's decision within 21 (or 23 calendar days, depending on whether or not Congress is in session), then the President resumes his powers and duties. However, the Vice President and Cabinet could start the whole process over and over again. Of course, if they did, once the President resumed his duties, he could fire the Cabinet and bring in more loyal Cabinet members.
Discuss.
You’re right. Bad choice of words on my part.
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.
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
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.
You are exactly right. If this is gonna happen to Biden, it’s gonna have to be done with the Cabinet.
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
The President cannot fire the VP. The VP is elected to office.
More details available via links at:
Kamala Harris Ineligible Website (downloadable PDF available via link)
Twitter Site (twitter login required to view)
I think it was LBJ who didn’t select a VP after he assumed office.
LBJ couldn’t select a VP because the 25th Amendment hadn’t yet been ratified,
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.
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.
Found the mechanism for firing the Vice President?
The President NOMINATES and a majority of both chambers of Congress must confirm the new Vice President.
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.”
Of course, it would take Republican complicity to make this happen.
-PJ
That is a most horrifying thought. All of it.
I read it the same way.
We don’t want to go there for almost any reason.
Could have been who I was thinking of.
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.
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