Calls to invoke the 25th Amendment have become a kind of political reflex — trotted out whenever opponents of a sitting president decide that sharp rhetoric, unconventional behavior, or controversial decision-making must somehow amount to incapacity. With Donald Trump, this refrain has reached predictable levels: he’s “unfit” or “unstable,” critics say, and therefore should be removed not through elections or even impeachment, but via the Constitution’s emergency mechanism for presidential disability. That argument fundamentally misunderstands what the 25th Amendment is and why it exists.
Ratified in 1967 in the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the 25th Amendment was designed to address a narrow but serious problem: what happens when a president is incapable of exercising the powers of the office? Section 4, the most discussed (and most misunderstood) provision — and one that has never been invoked — allows the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to declare that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Upon transmitting that declaration to Congress, the vice president immediately assumes the role of acting president.
Crucially, the amendment anticipates disagreement. If the president contests the declaration, Congress must decide the issue, requiring a two-thirds vote in both houses to sustain the vice president’s judgment. That’s an extraordinarily high bar, reflecting the gravity of sidelining a duly elected president without impeachment.
The text is clear: the concern is inability and incapacity, not unpopularity or controversy. It’s a mechanism for dealing with presidents who cannot function, not those whose personalities provoke opposition.
Historical practice reinforces this understanding. The 25th Amendment has been invoked several times — under Section 3, which allows voluntary delegation of authority — in cases involving clear, temporary incapacity. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan had surgery for colon cancer and transferred power to Vice President George H.W. Bush for about eight hours. President George W. Bush invoked Section 3 twice, in 2002 and 2007, when he underwent colonoscopies requiring anesthesia. President Joe Biden did the same thing in 2021. In these cases, the respective vice presidents briefly served as “acting” president. They were textbook examples of the 25th Amendment’s purpose: a president temporarily unable to perform his duties due to a known, concrete medical condition.
Even outside formal invocation, the amendment’s logic reflects lessons from earlier constitutional crises. Woodrow Wilson, after suffering a debilitating stroke in 1919, remained president in name only while his wife and aides effectively ran the executive branch. That episode — along with concerns raised after President Dwight Eisenhower’s heart attack — led to calls for constitutional reform, which Kennedy’s assassination finally triggered.
In other words, this provision exists precisely because there have been presidents who were genuinely unable to govern due to physical or cognitive impairment. It’s not a catch-all remedy for political dissatisfaction.
Which brings us to Donald Trump. One can oppose his policies, criticize his rhetoric, or argue that he shouldn’t be president. The Constitution provides a mechanism for that: elections. It also provides another mechanism for serious misconduct: impeachment. But outrage over a president’s behavior can’t magically transform into constitutional “inability.”
Trump’s critics often claim that he’s erratic or mentally unstable. But these are political assertions, not medical diagnoses. More importantly, they’re not evidence of incapacity as the 25th Amendment contemplates it. There’s no indication that Trump is unable to understand his role, make decisions, or carry out the basic functions of the presidency. Indeed, whatever one thinks of his style, he’s behaving much as he did during his first term — hardly evidence of a sudden, disqualifying decline.
The contrast with genuinely incapacitated presidents is stark. Wilson was physically and neurologically impaired to the point of being unable to govern. More recently, Biden’s cognitive decline prompted debate precisely because it raised questions about whether he could perform the job’s demands. Those are the kinds of situations the 25th Amendment is meant to address: actual inability, not partisan disgust.
To stretch the amendment to cover unconventional leadership would be to weaponize it, turning a safeguard for emergencies into a tool for political maneuvering. That would not only distort the Constitution but also set a dangerous precedent, inviting future cabinets and vice presidents to attempt end-runs around elections whenever tensions run high.
Trump’s opponents are entirely within their rights to argue that he is unfit for office. They can make that case to Congress and ultimately to voters. They can even continue to deploy the language of “craziness” in the rough-and-tumble of political debate. But they shouldn’t pretend that such rhetoric satisfies the legal standard for removing a president under the 25th Amendment.
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Ilya Shapiro is director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor of City Journal, senior counsel to Burke Law Group, PLLC, and author, most recently, of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites. He also writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter.
