{"id":4374,"date":"2026-04-09T17:23:05","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T17:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/4374\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T17:23:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T17:23:05","slug":"calls-to-invoke-the-25th-amendment-after-trumps-iran-threats-useless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/4374\/","title":{"rendered":"Calls to invoke the 25th Amendment\u00a0after Trump’s Iran threats ‘useless’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0is no stranger to outrage. But his\u00a0latest threat\u00a0to\u00a0destroy “a whole civilisation”<\/a>\u00a0in Iran<\/a>,\u00a0posted to Truth Social<\/a>\u00a0on Tuesday\u00a0morning, crossed a new threshold, prompting rare dissent from within his own camp.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The backlash was immediate.\u00a0Over 70 Democratic lawmakers<\/a>, questioning his mental fitness, have called for the president’s removal, with some citing the 25th Amendment\u00a0\u2013 which allows the vice president and the cabinet to declare a president is no longer able to perform the job\u00a0\u2013 and others filing articles of impeachment<\/a>.\u00a0More striking were reactions from prominent conservative voices.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Former Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene\u00a0\u2013 once one of Trump’s most outspoken supporters\u00a0\u2013\u00a0posted on X<\/a>: “25TH AMENDMENT!!! Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire\u00a0civilisation. This is evil and madness.”\u00a0Tucker Carlson, long a reliable champion of the president, accused him of threatening\u00a0“a war crime, a moral crime”<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even among Trump\u2019s strongest\u00a0allies, signs of unease have begun to\u00a0emerge. Trisha Hope, a January 6 activist and former diehard\u00a0supporter who has campaigned for those convicted over the\u00a0Capitol attack<\/a>,\u00a0broke ranks,\u00a0writing on X<\/a>\u00a0that she\u00a0felt a\u00a0\u201cdeep\u00a0sadness\u201d and that \u201cit is not MAGA that has changed, it is Trump\u2026 he has failed the mission and it is time he leave the office\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump later announced a\u00a0two-week ceasefire<\/a>,\u00a0but the political storm shows no sign of abating.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A constitutional mechanism built for incapacity\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Ratified in 1967 in the wake of president John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the\u00a025th Amendment<\/a>\u00a0established\u00a0a clear line of presidential succession\u00a0and, in its Section 4, a process to remove a president\u00a0deemed\u00a0unable to discharge his duties.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Watch moreOn Truth Social, die-hard MAGA supporters start to turn on Trump<\/a><\/p>\n

The mechanism is anything but simple, explains Mario Del Pero, a professor of US\u00a0politics\u00a0at Sciences Po Paris. The vice president and\u00a0a majority of\u00a0the cabinet must first send a written declaration to both chambers of Congress\u00a0stating\u00a0that the president cannot fulfil his role. The vice president would then\u00a0immediately\u00a0assume presidential powers. Should the president contest that decision\u00a0\u2013 which Trump\u00a0almost certainly\u00a0would \u2013 the\u00a0matter returns to Congress, where a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate would\u00a0be required\u00a0to sustain the removal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Section 4 of the 25th Amendment has never been invoked,” Del Pero told FRANCE 24. “As a broader political and public conversation, like the one we are seeing today or in January 2021 following the 6th, I don’t think it has any precedent.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

A cabinet of loyalists, a base that holds\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The closest\u00a0the amendment\u00a0came to being invoked was in the final days of Trump’s first term, in the immediate aftermath of January 6, 2021. It was not. The obstacles today are, if anything, greater.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump’s current cabinet is, as Del Pero put it, “a cabinet of ultra-loyalists and zealots”. Vice President\u00a0JD Vance<\/a>, who would be the primary actor in any invocation of Section 4, was in Budapest on Tuesday<\/a>, calling Trump by phone so the president could address a political rally in support of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. No cabinet member has publicly broken with the president over the Iran<\/a> rhetoric.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Watch more\u2018Unhinged, insane\u2019: US lawmakers call for Trump\u2019s removal via 25th Amendment<\/a><\/p>\n

Denis\u00a0Lacorne, an emeritus political scientist who has followed US presidents since the 1960s, is equally sceptical.\u00a0“It never works\u00a0unless the president is in a coma,” he\u00a0added. “There are so many restrictions. In reality, it is useless.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even within MAGA,\u00a0Lacorne\u00a0argues, the cracks\u00a0remain\u00a0superficial. The figures who have spoken out\u00a0carry real influence as pundits and public figures,\u00a0but they\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0represent\u00a0a broader collapse of the base. “The average MAGA voter follows Trump, not Tucker Carlson,”\u00a0Del Pero\u00a0added.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unprecedented language, familiar limits\u00a0 <\/p>\n

If the political mechanisms have clear limits, the rhetoric that triggered them is without precedent in US history. Writing\u00a0in The Atlantic<\/a>,\u00a0historian Barbara A. Kelly notes that all\u00a0previous\u00a0US\u00a0presidents,\u00a0however flawed in private,\u00a0sought\u00a0to appear measured and statesmanlike when addressing the nation about war.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richard Nixon<\/a>‘s profanity-laced tirades were confined to taped conversations with staff. Even during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, Jimmy Carter<\/a>, a former naval officer, chose patient diplomacy over public inflammatory speech, believing aggressive talk would endanger the 66 Americans held in Tehran.\u00a0Trump’s Easter Sunday post<\/a>,\u00a0calling Iranian leaders “crazy bastards” and warning they would be “living in Hell”,\u00a0stood, as Kelly writes, in stark contrast with “even his most profane predecessors”.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Courts,\u00a0midterms\u00a0and the long game\u00a0 <\/p>\n

With impeachment equally out of reach while Republicans control both chambers, and the 25th Amendment politically inoperable, the most effective checks on Trump’s power have come from an unexpected direction: the courts. Federal judges have blocked multiple executive orders on constitutional grounds. Even the Supreme Court<\/a>,\u00a0broadly sympathetic to the administration’s\u00a0agenda,\u00a0has\u00a0blocked some key initiatives,\u00a0including on tariffs<\/a>, in a major blow to the president.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read moreTrump\u2019s health under scrutiny: Speculation, signals and silence<\/a><\/p>\n

A Democratic victory in the November 2026 midterms could shift the calculus further. Control of the House would hand Democrats the\u00a0chairmanship\u00a0of key committees with subpoena power, opening the door to investigations into the\u00a0Trump family’s business dealings<\/a>, its cryptocurrency\u00a0ventures\u00a0and the Gulf states’ financial entanglements with the administration. “If major scandals explode,” Del Pero said, “there could be an opening for an impeachment.\u00a0But that’s in the distant future.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

For now, Trump’s political survival rests on one variable: the loyalty of the MAGA base\u00a0and his unique ability to hold it together. “Trump somehow makes MAGA,” Del Pero said. “He\u00a0absorbs even\u00a0radical U-turns in his policy. Remove Trump and those divisions within MAGA will explode. But for the moment, Trump controls MAGA.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump\u00a0is no stranger to outrage. But his\u00a0latest threat\u00a0to\u00a0destroy “a whole civilisation”\u00a0in Iran,\u00a0posted to Truth Social\u00a0on Tuesday\u00a0morning, crossed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[235,3734,195,1207,5,50,309,236],"class_list":{"0":"post-4374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-americas","9":"tag-constitution","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-features","12":"tag-france","13":"tag-iran","14":"tag-iran-war","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}