Congress Members Call For Invocation of the 25th Amendment

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, along with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, have called upon Vice President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove President Trump from office just 13 days before the new administration moves in. Pelosi and Schumer feel this move to impeach President Trump is urgent after he incited a riot at the capitol just yesterday.

Invoking the 25th Amendment would require the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to vote to remove Trump from office. When written, the amendment was intended to be used if a president were unable to discharge the office due to serious illness or injury, in which case, the vice president would step in.

The 25th Amendment has never been used in practice and is difficult to execute. It was intended as a legal mechanism for a crisis involving the president’s physical condition and not as a political tool such as impeachment. Should Congress chose to move towards impeachment, it would be the first time in history that a U.S. president is impeached twice.

“I join the Senate Democratic leader [Schumer] in calling on the vice president to remove this president by immediately invoking the 25th Amendment,” Pelosi said at a news conference Thursday. “If the vice president and Cabinet do not act, the Congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment.”

Several White House staffers and one cabinet-level official have either stepped down or resigned following the attack on the capitol yesterday, including:

• Matt Pottinger, deputy national security adviser
• Stephanie Grisham, chief of staff to first lady Melania Trump
• Sarah Matthews, deputy press secretary
• Rickie Niceta, White House social secretary
• Mick Mulvaney, special envoy to Northern Ireland and former White House chief of staff
• Ryan Tully, senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council
• John Costello, deputy assistant secretary of commerce
• Elaine Chao, Transportation secretary, and wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

“As someone who worked in the halls of Congress, I was deeply disturbed by what I saw today,” Matthews said in a statement. “I’ll be stepping down from my role, effective immediately. Our nation needs a peaceful transfer of power.”

Early Thursday morning, two months after Election Day and the day after the first attack on the U.S. capitol since the war of 1812, Trump appeared to commit to an orderly transition to the Biden administration.

“Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th,” the president said in a statement.