The 25th Amendment talk is back.
Lawmakers have repeatedly floated the method for removing a president, as laid out in the Constitution, in recent years. And Donald Trump’s Cabinet apparently discussed the option more earnestly than many initially realized after the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
To successfully remove Trump, a majority of his Cabinet and his vice president would have to be supportive. And there are no indications any Cabinet officials are considering it right now, or that Vice President JD Vance would be on board. But Trump’s comment Tuesday morning that a “whole civilization will die tonight” unless Iran makes a deal spurred increasing calls — among a somewhat odd amalgamation of voices — to invoke the amendment.
Less than two hours before his 8 p.m. deadline for Iran, Trump announced he’d agreed to a two-week ceasefire, conditional on Tehran opening the Strait of Hormuz.
Democratic lawmakers and right-wing voices had spent the previous 24 hours expressing concerns about just how far the president was willing to take things in the Iran war. His threats to strike power plants and other civilian infrastructure have been decried as war crimes, and some even said they feared the administration’s threats alluded to the potential use of nuclear weapons (which the White House has denied considering).
It’s mostly Democrats who have called to invoke the amendment — dozens of them, in fact. That includes potential presidential hopefuls like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. (Of course, they have little to no power at the moment to initiate removal proceedings.)
But notably, some conservatives and other recent Trump allies have taken up the call, as well.
“How do we 25th Amendment his ass?” conspiracy theorist Alex Jones asked his guest on Monday’s show.
By Tuesday morning, right-leaning advocates for the step spanned from more-extreme influencers to former Trump White House official Anthony Scaramucci to more-moderate Never Trumpers.
“25TH AMENDMENT!!!” former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, posted on X about an hour after Trump’s post about Iran’s civilization dying. She called it “evil and madness.”
Some congressional Democrats re-posted Greene’s words.
“The 25th amendment needs to be invoked,” right-wing podcaster Candace Owens added later in the morning.
Scaramucci, who served briefly as Trump’s communications director during his first term, advocated for Trump’s removal and claimed Trump was threatening to use nukes.
“Wake up: he is calling for A NUCLEAR STRIKE,” Scaramucci said. “Seek his removal immediately.”
When others suggested online that Vance had implied Tuesday morning that Trump could order a nuclear strike, the White House denied he was saying anything of the sort. The vice president had talked about using “tools in our toolkit that we so far haven’t decided to use.”
Some Never Trump conservatives like New York Times columnist David French were also calling for the 25th Amendment.
“This is obvious 25th Amendment territory, but people are so desensitized that they can’t see it,” French said.
Others didn’t go quite so far, but have begun raising new levels of concern about Trump’s intentions.
One of them is former Trump ally Tucker Carlson, who on his show Monday criticized Trump like never before. The former Fox News host said Trump was threatening to commit “a war crime, a moral crime” in Iran by attacking infrastructure in ways that would lead to mass death, and he even seemed to suggest Trump might be the antichrist.
Also on Tuesday, GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who has been a loyal Trump ally in Congress, told the Wall Street Journal that Trump “loses me if he attacks civilian targets” like infrastructure. Johnson signaled he saw such attacks as indeed illegal.
None of it means the 25th Amendment is around the corner. The option is difficult to invoke, requiring those closest to Trump to determine he is unfit for office and opt to remove him against his will. Vance happened to be in Hungary on Tuesday, and he called Trump on the phone so the president could address a political rally.
But it’s significant even as a brushback pitch from some erstwhile Trump allies and from Democrats. They seem to be saying that Trump had better think carefully about his next actions in the war.
It’s also worth reflecting on where things stand now.
When this was floated in Trump’s first term, it was almost universally the domain of Democrats. When some in his Cabinet apparently considered it after January 6, they did so quietly. The public didn’t find out until much later how seriously they’d been weighing it.
Today, even some recent former Trump allies have apparently been so fearful of what he might do that they’re publicly calling to oust him.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
