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What is the 25th Amendment and why is Pence under pressure to invoke it?
The amendment was first proposed by Congress in the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and was ratified by the states on February 10, 1967.
The US House of Representatives is set to issue an ultimatum to vice president Mike Pence to remove President Donald Trump by invoking the 25th Amendment of the Constitution. On Monday, House Republicans blocked the resolution that called on Pence to invoke 25th Amendment in order to convene the cabinet and declare Trump unfit for the office after he incited a mob that stormed the US Capitol. The House with Democratic majority will now vote on the resolution to put pressure on the vice president.
What is the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution?
The amendment was proposed by Congress in the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and was ratified by the states on February 10, 1967. The amendment contains four sections that lay out the provisions for presidential succession, owing to different reasons.
The first section states that if the president dies, or undergoes medical treatment, or is incapacitated, the vice president takes over as the president. The second section addresses the vacancies in the office of the vice president. The third section enables the president to declare himself or herself unable to discharge the duties and resign from the office.
“The Watergate scandal of the 1970s saw the application of these procedures, first when Gerald Ford replaced Spiro Agnew as Vice President, then when he replaced Richard Nixon as President, and then when Nelson Rockefeller filled the resulting vacancy to become the Vice President,” according to Cornell Law School.
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In the ongoing scenario, Congressional Democrats want Pence to invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. Under Section 4, a president can be removed from the office if he/she is deemed incapable to “discharge the powers and duties” of the office, empowering the vice president to discharge those power and duties as acting president. The fourth section of the 25th amendment has never been invoked in the history of the United States.
Is it likely to get invoked?
Though the resolution to call on the vice president to invoke the 25th Amendment is likely to pass in a Democrats-controlled House, Pence has not shown any intention to act on it. The resolution is mostly a symbolic gesture by Democrats to show that they have exhausted all options before moving to the impeachment proceedings.
