Time for another 25th Amendment § 4 thread (being that my book is now available for pre-order: tinyurl.com/y4r3xlhy). I'm seeing some tweets saying Trump wants acting secretaries in his Cabinet b/c they can't participate in a 25A4 vote. This is off-base for a few reasons. 1/7
First up, this wouldn't make sense as a presidential strategy. If acting secretaries can't vote to invoke 25A4, they also can't vote against invoking it. Without knowing how they'd vote, their non-participation is as likely to hurt Trump as it is to help him. 2/7
If the two current acting secretaries can't vote on 25A4, they aren't in the numerator but they also aren't in the denominator. In other words, if they can't vote, invoking 25A4 requires support of 7/13 from the confirmed Cabinet members instead of 8/15. No less doable. 3/7
If anything, presidents would want acting secretaries to be able to vote in 25A4 cases, because presidents can handpick acting secretaries and ensure their loyal presence more simply and directly than they can Senate-confirmed secretaries. 4/7
Finally, the very premise of the theory about Trump's supposed strategy is flawed. There is no basis to assume, as these tweeters have, that acting secretaries can't vote in 25A4 cases. The scholarly consensus for decades has been that they can vote. 5/7
In my book on 25A4 (tinyurl.com/y4r3xlhy) I call that consensus into question--it is, at best, uncertain whether acting secretaries can vote. But there are a lot of other reasons why 25A4 won't be used in the current situation. 6/7
25A4 isn't realistic now b/c the president can contest it. He has more than enough votes to win a 25A4 fight in Congress. To have any sort of chance against him, practically speaking, the Cabinet would need to be unanimous or close to it. Acting secretaries don't alter that. 7/7
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