What if one political party decides that it can and should craft legislation that simply overrides the parts of the Constitution it doesn’t like? When it comes to invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Donald Trump from office, this is just what at least some congressional Democrats are flirting with.
The Constitution remains the one document that protects the American people from losing everything to overzealous and power-hungry lawmakers and perhaps even presidents. The restrictions on government authority and the protection of certain rights contained within it are vital to the survival of the US as the country it was intended to be.
‘Whatever It Takes’ to Oust Trump
“I have taken the position that we need to do whatever we can to get him out,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), referring to President Trump during an appearance on MS NOW. “Impeach him, invoke the 25th Amendment, push for him to resign – whatever it is.”
Unless Democrats win a two-thirds majority in the Senate, come the November midterm elections, impeachment is a waste of time because they will not get the conviction necessary to remove Trump from office. They have about as much chance of pressuring him into resigning as they do of convincing their woke progressive wing that there are only two “genders.”
That leaves removal via the 25th Amendment, and that’s where the Constitution becomes an obstacle. According to Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, a sitting president can be removed from office (against his will) if “the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide” produces a written declaration “that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
Unfortunately, the 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967, did provide Congress with the ability to legislate a body into existence that could invoke it. Unfortunate because it was always inevitable that, sooner or later, the political party opposing the president but controlling Congress would attempt to use it to remove that president.
Still, a couple of safeguards remain. The Vice President must be on board with those wishing to oust the chief executive. Also, they must show that the president “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” That is a far cry from the president pursuing an agenda they do not like.
Then, of course, there’s the inconvenient issue of succession. If a president is removed via the 25th Amendment, the vice president assumes his powers and duties.
End-Run Around 25th Amendment
Given these obstacles, then – and assuming Vice President JD Vance is not going to participate in a 25th Amendment invocation against Trump – it must be assumed that some Democrats are looking at a way to circumvent the requirements of the 25th, should they retake the House of Representatives in November. They would need to remove the vice president from the process altogether. Going on what Rep. Jayapal said on MS NOW, this appears to be just what she has in mind:
“I said that a week ago, that we should invoke the 25th Amendment. As you point out, that is something that, unfortunately, by the process we have – and there was actually a bill that was introduced, I think it was last session, by [Democrat Rep.] Jamie Raskin, to change that process, by the way, should we ever get control of the House back.”
A bill to “change that process.” A bill, then, to cancel out the requirements laid out in a constitutional amendment. In plain language, Democrats – at least some – have decided that they can simply craft legislation to give them what they want, even if they would be effectively nullifying or ignoring a part of the Constitution.
In November of 2018, Liberty Nation News, in an article titled “The Coming Tyranny of Congress,” quoted James Madison’s Federalist Papers No. 51: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judicia[l] in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
If, for entirely partisan reasons, one party can simply write laws that replace, nullify, or ignore (pick your verb) a section of or an amendment to the Constitution, then America as we know it is broken beyond repair. What if Democrats next decide to overrule the Second Amendment with legislation – or the First or the Fifth or any of them? What if Republicans adopted the same methods?
Quite apart from the fact that Democrats seem determined to totally discard the principle of democratic elections they pretend to so revere by ousting a duly elected sitting president, the mindset they have adopted is chilling. Once the party controlling Congress is allowed to simply alter the Constitution with a bill, then the whole system of a constitutional republic with three coequal branches of government – trias politica – is finished and Congress itself becomes a tyrannical body, constrained by nothing.
Dig Deeper Into the Themes Discussed in This Article!
Liberty Vault: The Constitution of the United States
Liberty Vault: The Federalist Papers
