President Joe Biden's stumbling performance at Thursday’s debate has prompted concerns from both Democrats and Republicans over whether the president is capable of performing the duties of the highest office.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said Friday that he plans to introduce a resolution calling on Vice President Kamala Harris to convene the Cabinet and declare Biden unfit to perform his presidential duties, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said the president’s Cabinet should discuss the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment.
The 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967 following the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy, establishes procedures to deal with the transfer of presidential power and provides a means for the president to be removed from office if he is incapable of serving.
How does the 25th Amendment work?
The amendment has four sections.
Section 1 dictates that the vice president is to assume the presidency if the president dies, steps down, or is removed from office.
Section 2 declares that if the office of the vice president becomes vacant, the president is to nominate a new vice president, who is to be confirmed by the House and Senate.
Section 3 establishes that if the president declares himself unable to carry out his official duties, the vice president is to do so in his place as acting president until the president declares himself able again.
Finally, Section 4 lays out the process by which a president may be removed from office if he is deemed unfit to serve.
Under Section 4, the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet may notify the president pro tempore of the Senate and the speaker of the House that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office,” in which case the vice president becomes acting president.
If the president then declares that he is, in fact, capable of holding office, he resumes his presidential duties unless the vice president and Cabinet majority declare otherwise within four days.
Then the matter goes to Congress: If two-thirds of both the House and Senate agree the president is unfit to serve, the vice president continues to serve as acting president.
Has the amendment ever been invoked?
Sections 1 through 3 of the 25th Amendment have all been invoked at some point throughout history, but Section 4 has never been used.
Section 1 has been used once, when former President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974, and his vice president, Gerald Ford, took his place.
Section 2 was used when Nixon appointed Ford as vice president in 1973 after Spiro Agnew’s, his former vice president, resignation, and again when Nelson Rockefeller became Ford’s vice president in 1974.
Section 3 has been used four times, all temporarily while the president underwent a medical procedure. Biden used Section 3 of the amendment in November 2021, transferring power to Vice President Kamala Harris for 85 minutes while he underwent a colonoscopy.
When has the 25th Amendment been suggested?
The 25th Amendment has never been used to remove a president from office, and doing so would be a difficult and drastic step.
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However, Democrats pushed for the amendment to be invoked in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Republican lawmakers also called for Harris to invoke the amendment in February after a special counsel report described the president as a “well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
