Thread by @studentactivism

Folks who are worried about a 25th Amendment coup against Trump should read the 25th Amendment.

It's short, and most of it can be passed over. Section One deals with the removal of the president from office by impeachment and conviction, death, or resignation. Not relevant here. Section Two deals with the replacement of the veep. Also skippable.

Section Three talks about how the President can go about VOLUNTARILY AND TEMPORARILY turning the powers of his or her office over to the Vice President. Voluntarily. Temporarily. His call.

Section Four is the part that deals with the stripping of the Presidents powers when "the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office," but doesn't voluntarily step aside. But wait! What does it say?

It says that the President can only be sidelined by the Vice President and the majority of the cabinet, and THEN only until the President declares that he or she is fit to resume his or her duties.

(At that point, the veep and cabinet can issue another declaration, and send it to Congress to resolve. But still, the call remains with the Vice President and the cabinet.)

I have no idea what Pelosi is planning, but unless she's got Pence on board, it's not a removal of Trump from office.

Ah, here we are. I didn't discuss this above, for reasons I'll get to in a sec, but Section Four provides that Congress can establish an alternate path for invoking the 25th.

What Pelosi's gonna do tomorrow is announce proposed legislation for the creation of such an alternate path. But that proposal has no practical significance, for two reasons.

First, you can't pass legislation without passing it through the Senate, and Mitch McConnell isn't gonna consider any 25th Amendment legislation Pelosi proposes. (And Trump would veto anything passed by the new Senate in January.)

(This is why I didn't mention the legislation angle in the original thread.)

Second, even if such legislation were in place now, it wouldn't have any practical effect on Trump's power. Because if he were declared incompetent, all he'd have to so is sign a piece of paper that said "am not," and he'd get his powers back.

That would trigger a Congressional vote on his fitness, but you'd need 2/3 of both the House and the Senate to declare him unfit—and that's in the Constitution, not subject to alteration through legislation.

So this is a messaging bill—can't pass the Senate, may not even be brought up for a vote in the House. Not necessarily BAD messaging, but not an actual attempt to remove Trump from office, despite Trump's eleventy-seven tweets to the contrary this afternoon.