What Is the 25th Amendment?

With some reports questioning the American president's mental stability, some pundits have asked whether the 25th Amendment might be enacted to remove him. But what does this Amendment say, and what can it really do?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hi, brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogel bomb here. If you've been through in American
history or government class, some constitutional facts probably left a
lasting impression. For example, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, and
the nineteenth Amendment afforded women the right to vote. But
there are twenty seven amendments to the Constitution, and you

(00:23):
may not have ever had a reason to ruminate on.
The twenty five. Twenty Amendment has received special attention as
news stories regarding President Donald Trump's fitness for office have emerged.
The amendment was created during the Cold War following President
Dwight D. Eisenhower's three serious illnesses and President John F.
Kennedy's nine sixty three assassination. Proposed by Congress and ratified

(00:45):
by the States following it provides the procedures for replacing
the president or vice president in case of death, removal, resignation,
or incapacitation. Eisenhower originally entered into a letter agreement that
stated if his health impeded his ability to run the country,
power would be transferred to his vice president, Richard Nixon.
This led to the official amendment that clarified the rules

(01:07):
around transfer of power in the event of an incapacitated president.
After numerous congressional hearings, the final version passed the House
and Senate in nineteen sixty five and was ratified on
February ninety seven. There are four sections to the twenty Amendment.
Section one stipulates that the vice president will assume the
role of president in case of death or resignation. Section

(01:28):
two covers the event of a vacancy in the office
of the vice president. In such case, the president is
responsible for nominating a candidate, who must be confirmed by
a majority vote of both houses of Congress. The history
of section to ensures that there is both the president
and vice president at all times. Section three states that
the president has the discretion to declare his own inability

(01:49):
to carry out the job and allows him to temporarily
ceed power to the vice president. It makes it clear, however,
that the vice president does not assume the office or
title of president. Action for to date has never been implemented,
but it's the peace of the amendment currently receiving media attention.
The language empowers the vice president and the cabinet to
declare a president incapacitated to quote the Amendment, whenever the

(02:13):
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, transmit to the President pro
Tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House
of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable
to discharge the powers and duties of his office. The
vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of

(02:35):
the office as acting president. Section four addresses the problem
of a president who is unable or unwilling to acknowledge
his or her inability to discharge the powers and duties
of the presidency. It would be used most likely if
a president falls unexpectedly unconscious, though it also clearly applies
when a president is incapacitated because of some other mental
or physical inability. You may recall the invocation of the

(02:58):
twenty five Amendment as a result of the Watergate scandal
in the nineteen seventies. President Nixon invoked it to replace
resigning Vice President Spiro Agnew with General Ford. Then, when
Ford replaced Nixon as President, Ford invoked it to appoint
Nelson Rockefeller to succeed him as vice president. However, in
order for Section four to be implemented, the vice president
and a majority of the cabinet must declare the president

(03:20):
incapacitated in a written statement to the Speaker of the
House of Representatives and the President pro tem of the Senate.
Once that happens, presidential powers are automatically transferred to the
vice president. In order for Congress to successfully declare President disabled,
two thirds in each chamber must conclude that he is
unable to handle the office. The disability clause of the

(03:41):
twenty five Amendment has been invoked multiple times since ratification.
Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan invoked
it during medical procedures, though it was never used when
Reagan was shot in However, section four has never been
invoked to remove a president from office. John Hoodak, Deputy
director for the Center for Effective Public Management and Senior

(04:02):
Fellow for Governance Studies at the Briggings Institute, writes that
the process is more difficult than impeachment and is reserved
only for truly unique and dire circumstances. So could Section
four possibly be applied to President Trump because the vast
majority of Trump's cabinet would need to support the president's removal.
Many speculate that the invocation of the amendment during the

(04:23):
Trump presidency is not realistic. At Politico, journalist and Karney wrote,
the amendment is purposefully set up to require a high
burden of proof, and there's no evidence that Vice President
Mike Pence or the majority of Trump's cabinet have turned
on him. Unprecedented events, from Michael Wolfe's book detailing turmoil
inside the White House to the President's taunts of other

(04:44):
world leaders via Twitter, have the potential to lead to
unprecedented action. The bottom line, however, is that for now,
it's all simply speculation. Former Harvard Law School professor Alan
Derschwitz told Politico the twenty Amendment would require, for mental capacity,
a major psychotic break. This is hope over reality. If
we don't like someone's politics, we rail against him, we

(05:07):
campaign against him. We don't use the psychiatric system against him.
That's just dangerous. Today's episode was written by Michelle Konstantinovski
and produced by Tristan McNeil. For more on this and
lots of other political topics, visit our poem planet how
Stuff Works dot com.