How To Remove A Sitting President | EXPLAINER

Sources

Benen, Steve. “Republicans Ignore Democrats’ War Powers Resolution, Embracing Their Own Irrelevance.” MS NOW, April 9, 2026. https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/against-a-backdrop-of-war-congressional-republican-embrace-their-own-irrelevance.

Finck, James. “Presidential Assassination Attempts Tend to Backfire Even When Would-Be Assassins Strike Their Target | Southwest Ledger.” August 6, 2024. https://www.southwestledger.news/opinion/presidential-assassination-attempts-tend-backfire-even-when-would-be-assassins-strike-their.

Fowler, Stephen. “Democrats Keep Doing Better in Elections since Trump Returned to Office.” Elections. NPR, April 8, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/04/08/nx-s1-5770114/democrats-wisconsin-georgia-election-shift-overperformance-trump.

Gedeon, Joseph. “Republicans Block Democrats’ Push to Curb Trump’s War Powers over Iran.” US News. The Guardian, April 9, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/09/house-democrats-trump-war-powers-resolution-iran.

Kalt, Brian, and David Pozen. “Interpretation: The Twenty-Fifth Amendment | Constitution Center.” National Constitution Center. Accessed April 10, 2026. https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xxv/interpretations/159.

“Overview of Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Presidential Vacancy and Disability | Constitution Annotated | Congress.Gov | Library of Congress.” Accessed April 10, 2026. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt25-1/ALDE_00013871/.

Philbrick, Ian Prasad. “Democrats Can’t Actually Do Much About Trump and Iran.” Politics. Slate, April 8, 2026. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/04/democrats-doing-nothing-iran-war-trump-why.html.

Transcript

Hi it’s Friday, April 10, 2026, you’re tuned in to Why, America? I’m your lawyer friend Leeja Miller. Today the question on everyone’s mind: what the fuck do you do when your President has completely lost his mind? What can we do? What can Congress do? What’s this about the 25th Amendment? What does Article 2 section 4 say? There has been a shift this week. The President of the United States threatened to genocide an entire country of 90 million people. That caused terror not only for Iranians and everyone in the region but also for Americans who had to sit holding their breath all day on Tuesday waiting to see if our President was going to use our tax dollars to start a nuclear war, something we have all been taught our entire lives would lead to mutually assured destruction. The Trump regime has made a big show of being incredibly concerned with terrorism, both abroad and supported by the Iranian regime and also at home in the form of so called “domestic terrorism.” And yet it is the President of the United States who is terrorizing literally the entire world, including the people of the United States. Because if you’re paying attention you likely were not okay on Tuesday, and we’re all still processing what happened and the danger has not passed. It can be so easy to write off the things he says and does, the posts he puts up on Truth Social, as just the ravings of a mad king, but this mad king has access to the nuclear codes, and he’s getting backed into a fucking corner in this war that he chose to start and has no way of getting out of. So it’s impossible to know what he’ll do next because he’s not acting rationally, not only because he’s a narcissist but he also seems to be completely losing his mental faculties. So what do you do with a President who’s unfit to lead and an entire cabinet and majority in Congress seemingly willing to continue backing him up?

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A quick update on where we’re at with the Iranian war–a tenuous ceasefire was reached on Tuesday. Today, Friday, JD Vance is headed for Pakistan as is a delegation from Iran in order to continue negotiations. Iran has called for a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel has continued hitting targets and killing civilians even after Tuesday’s ceasefire was announced. It’s possible these negotiations could fall through if the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon doesn’t let up. Trump has claimed that US warships are being reloaded and readied to continue striking Iran if the talks in Pakistan don’t reach a permanent ceasefire deal. It’s unclear when that deal might be reached or what it could look like at this point.

Alright when you have a President who’s unfit for office, there are typically two broad methods by which to remove him: impeachment or the 25th Amendment. And I think it’s important to go back to what the Constitution says because even though no one in our government seems to be following it anymore, it does still matter, it did keep this country more or less together in one piece for 250 years, and through Trump we are discovering its weaknesses and the places where it can be exploited and it gives us an opportunity to strengthen it once the fascist experiment in America inevitably burns itself out, which fascist experiments always do. So some armchair constitutional commentators love to write me off in my own comments section by saying that none of this matters because no one cares about what the constitution says anymore the whole system is broken but I say actually a LOT of people do still care and as long as you look upon the constitution not as a sacred untouchable document but instead like a really good draft that needs to be edited and improved upon continuously, there’s always a way to rebuild. There’s always improvements to be made. And the document will outlive all of us, so best to learn from what we’re going through. OKAY? The constitution still matters!! The second we decide it doesn’t then they’ve won, they’ve convinced us to quit caring. Let’s not, shall we?

Okay so Article 2, section 4 of the US constitution says “The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” In the history of our country, 3 presidents, 1 senator, 2 cabinet officers, and 15 judges have been impeached, and of those only 8 of the judges have actually been convicted and removed from office. Because of this limited history, we actually don’t have much precedent or understanding of what counts as an impeachable offense. We have a good understanding of treason–it’s where a person attempts to wage war against the United States or aid the United States’ enemies. Bribery is also pretty clear–the Wex legal dictionary defines it generally as “corrupt solicitation, acceptance, or transfer of value in exchange for official action.” I don’t think it would be hard to dig up pretty solid evidence of both of those activities by Trump, Jack Smith was working on it until Trump won the 2024 election and the amount of clear and flagrant bribery happening during this second Trump term indicates it would be frankly an easy case under different circumstances where people who actually adhered to logic and reasoning were running the show. High crimes and misdemeanors are less defined and there’s not a lot of precedent to give us a list of what that could mean. But frankly we wouldn’t even have to get that far with Trump, treason and bribery SHOULD get us all the way to impeachment, again if facts or evidence were even remotely relevant to this Congress.

The way the process works is that it must be initiated in the House of Representatives, where typically the Judiciary Committee decides whether to pursue articles of impeachment and then reports them to the full House of Representatives. Then the House votes and a majority vote is needed to impeach the official. Then the case goes to the Senate where they hold what is essentially a little trial, we saw that play out twice during Trump’s first term, where there are lawyers on both sides arguing the case. For the government, a committee of Representatives or impeachment managers act as prosecutors. Pam Bondi was one of Trump’s impeachment defense attorneys back then. If two-thirds of the Senate votes to convict the official, then the official is removed from office. The Senate can further vote to disqualify that official from ever holding office again.

Okay so for those of you keeping track at home, that means that 50% of Representatives would need to be on board just to get articles of impeachment passed, and then another TWO THIRDS of the Senate in order to get him actually removed from office. That is a level of consensus and functioning that our Congress is not capable of. Because as a country we have drifted so far in opposite directions that we no longer can even agree on facts anymore, let alone on morality or questions of sanity of the President. And of course there’s a major midterm election coming up in November this year. It has the potential to flip both the House and the Senate back to Democrats. This last Tuesday there was a great indication that Democrats could handily win a number of elections that could give them a majority in Congress. In Wisconsin, liberals expanded their majority in the Wisconsin Supreme Court to 5 to 2. The liberal judge Chris Taylor beat the conservative judge Maria Lazar 60% to 40%. Not even close. In Georgia’s 14th Congressional district, which is one of the most conservative districts in the Country, the Conservative candidate on Tuesday won with only 56% of the vote. Trump won that district by 40 percentage points in 2024. And in elections across the country so far in 2026, there have been record high levels of voter turnout for Democrats, indicating that people are chomping at the bit to show up and vote Republicans out of office in much higher numbers. That doesn’t necessarily mean certain victory for Democrats in November, and it doesn’t guarantee Democrat majorities in either the house or the senate and even IF the Democrats win majorities in either or both houses of Congress, they will be slim, likely unable to overcome filibusters or votes that require 2/3rds of anyone to agree on anything. So while Trump was right a few months ago when he publicly said we can’t let Democrats win in November otherwise I’ll be impeached–that’s likely true, because it takes a bare majority to impeach him, but the likelihood of him then being removed from office by the Senate is slim to none. Because again that requires a 2/3rd vote to remove an official from office, something that’s never happened for a President.

Okay so the other provision available to get Trump out of office is the 25th Amendment. The 25th Amendment was adopted in 1967, two years after it was introduced by Congress and submitted to the states for ratification. That’s notable because it’s a fucking pain in the ass to add an amendment to the US constitution. We haven’t managed to do it in 34 years, I was 4 months old the last time we managed to come together as a country and amend the constitution. So the fact that they got one through in a couple years indicates a level of consensus we simply haven’t known in this country in my entire lifetime. And the reason for the consensus was the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963. Okay but the idea of planning for the succession if the President can’t serve has been around since the founding of the country, but no one bothered to write it down or create any actual plan for it. According to the Constitution Center for most of the country’s history, if a President didn’t seem fit to serve quote “power was never transferred and presidential inner circles typically concealed the President’s condition.” But then during the Cold War we had the whole nuclear weapons thing and people started I guess realizing the fallibility and mortality of presidents. In 1958 Dwight Eisenhower entered into a gentleman’s agreement with his Vice President at the time, Richard Nixon, wherein Nixon would act as President if Eisenhower proved unable to do so. And then of course in 1963, Kennedy was assassinated, which made the question of what happens when a President is incapacitated, especially in a cold war world where the US must show constant strength to fight off the bad bad commies, that question was now front and center. So the 25th Amendment was passed. Some of it is straightforward, the parts we’re concerned about are less so.

Section one confirms that the Vice President becomes President if the actual president dies or resigns or is removed from office. This was first used during the Nixon administration when Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford became President. Section two requires the President to nominate a new Vice President if that seat becomes vacant. Again, Nixon was the first to use this when he fired Spiro Agnew and replaced him with Gerald Ford. Section three empowers the president to voluntarily transfer authority to the Vice President temporarily by submitting a written declaration saying he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and then he can reclaim those powers by submitting a second declaration. This is used relatively frequently by presidents if they have routine surgeries for which they have to undergo anesthesia or something. And then of course there’s section 4 and that’s what we’re concerned about here. And guess what section 4 has never been used so we don’t fully understand how it would be done in practice, but it’s a long section and quite detailed. It requires the Vice President AND EITHER the majority of the cabinet OR such other body as Congress may by law provide to send a written declaration to congress that the President is unable to fulfill the powers and duties of his office, which then immediately puts the VP in place as Acting President. THEN the president can send his own written declaration to Congress that in fact he does NOT have this inability, at which point he’d take the presidency back. THEN the Vice President and the cabinet or the other body identified by Congress has 4 days to submit ANOTHER written declaration confirming that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Once THAT happens, then CONGRESS must assemble within 48 hours to decide whether to remove the President. Then they have 21 days to reach a 2/3rds supermajority consensus that the president truly cannot execute his duties, THEN the Vice President will become Acting President. So this is a multi-step process and we wouldn’t even be able to get past step one. While I do think that JD Vance’s ultimate loyalty lies with himself and himself only, that he is willing to say and do whatever it takes to amass as much power for himself as possible, I don’t think there’s any chance in hell that he would step forward and say I think Donald Trump is unfit to hold office UNLESS he knew FOR CERTAIN that there was a high likelihood that the rest of the steps would be met and he would be placed in power. On top of that Trump has filled his cabinet with yes men and sycophants so loyal that they would absolutely NEVER come together and determine he was unfit for office. They don’t mind puppeting him around, weekend at berniesing him around town, cleaning up after his messes when he inevitably says something beyond the pale. Because he’s allowing them to continue enacting their own twisted white christian nationalist project behind the scenes. The relationship is symbiotic, why would they ruin that? And to get around the cabinet, Congress would have to pass a law to create a separate body to determine whether the President was fit to serve, but the Congress can’t even pass the most basic of laws, how would they come together to pass something like that? And even still, the Vice President’s determination is still a necessary precursor here so whether it’s a Congressional body or the cabinet, it’s just never going to happen.

And I think the central issue we’re seeing here in both the impeachment route and the 25th amendment route is that the constitution of the United States is written in a way that assumes a level of functioning that is simply non-existent in this country and has been non-existent for decades as this country has diverged further and further to different ends of the political spectrum. So then I guess the next question would be what can we do, if these two avenues are unavailable? And I know what you’re thinking, but if we stop to think for a bit actually assassination never works the way the assassin probably hopes for. Both Lincoln and Kennedy are top of the list when people think of which US Presidents they can actually name as well as which Presidents were the best. Some of this is warranted, much of it is the build up in reputation that comes from being assassinated. For better or for worse, an assassinated president becomes a martyr whose human qualities, imperfections, and scandals are often forgotten or fail to fully play out because of their assassination. There was also of course the lesser known assassinations of President James Garfield and William McKinley, neither of which led to any political change. There was the attempted assassination of Teddy Roosevelt as he was running for office in 1912, an election he lost. An attempted assassination against Reagan in 1981 mainly just gave him an opportunity to look really good when he walked himself into the hospital afterwards and the attempt on Trump’s life resulted in some pictures that did really well in his campaign ads and a new uniform for everyone to wear at the Republican National Convention when everyone donned giant white ear bandages in solidarity. So whether it was a hit or a miss, an assassination attempt on Trump would likely either backfire or do nothing to move this country in a positive direction so as cathartic as it seems let’s just cross that one off the list.

And in all of this, it’s really easy to get furious that Democrats are doing nothing, and they certainly have a horrible messaging problem, the fact that most of them just came out with limp dick tweets about how bad it was the Trump was threatening to genocide a whole country did nothing more than infuriate a lot of leftists and Democratic voters, and I think there’s a lot the democrats could be doing from a PR standpoint to at least make it LOOK like they are championing the voice of the people and of the working class, something they are completely incapable of doing, at the same time there ISN’T a lot they can do. Articles of impeachment at this point go nowhere, they’ve tried numerous times to at least pass a war powers resolution to stop Trump and even that Republicans are unwilling to do. They won’t even let it reach the floor for a vote in some cases. They won’t even heed Democrats calls for hearings or investigations. Congress hasn’t held a single hearing yet to even ask questions of the executive branch about this month-long war that’s costing us billions of dollars, that Trump is asking for over a TRILLION more dollars to fund in his 2027 military budget proposal. Not one question. So while I think it’s deeply important to continue pointing out the absolute limp dick energy that most Democrats are bringing to the table when it comes to messaging despite the fact that Trump is lobbing them the easiest softball setups imaginable to run with, despite this it is the Republicans who have the control and who aren’t even like going along with Trump or helping him with the wrecking ball he’s taking to our country, but instead are literally just lying down and doing absolutely nothing. It would be one thing if the elected representatives of half the country that we the people voted for were saying hey yes I endorse this I support the President I want this war I love this war this is what I want this is what my constituents want. Instead they’re doing fucking nothing. They’re ignoring it. They’re completely abdicating their duty of service to this country and to their constituents. They are making themselves completely irrelevant. And of course in effect many of them are tacitly supporting the president, by doing nothing, but the fact that they’re not explicit about it. That they’re just rolling over. Makes it very clear that this is not democracy at work. This is half the people whose job it is to run the Congress of this country simply not showing up to work. Sometimes literally, this Congress is so rarely in session and so quick to just end session to avoid addressing anything that like in any normal job situation most of these people would have been fired months ago. But even when they show up they’re not doing their fucking job of representing their people. And it’s infuriating to watch. Because it’s something their constituents likely care deeply about. Reports are coming out of Congressional offices that their phones are ringing off the fucking hook, FAR more than normal, ever since Trump issued his threat of genocide on Tuesday. And this isn’t some concerted effort, there isn’t a large movement organization telling people to call and giving them scripts and coordinating it. It is organic interest from the people who want to call their representatives and say hey what the actual fuck is going on, what’s going to happen, and what are you going to do about it? The people are paying attention and on our watch our elected officials are doing fucking nothing. That in itself should be an absolute indictment of any of these Republicans being able to get re-elected in November. Even people who are Republican who support Republicans should be able to see that their elected officials are doing nothing. That not only is Donald Trump breaking all of his campaign promises but that their elected officials are unwilling to do anything about it. We are paying their pay checks every month. We are funding this war most of us didn’t want to get involved with. Our government is now completely and totally out of line with the will of the people, and in a democratic society, which the US technically still is even if it’s not functioning as such, the power of the government is derived from the will and consent of the people. At least in theory.

Unfortunately there isn’t a mechanism beyond voting that allows us to forcibly take our power back. And armed uprisings, much like assassinations, often tend to backfire and not actually achieve what the organizers hope to achieve. So some sort of leftist January 6th style coup attempt is also not advisable. It seems like a romantic notion but alas there are many many mechanisms by which the government can forcibly put down any sort of uprising and those have been on display repeatedly throughout our history. So unfortunately the reality is that we the people have to take back our power slowly through very unsexy and uninspiring actions. Some of them can be big and feel really meaningful, like the No Kings Rallies which are less about overthrow and more about solidarity, making connections, showing people in your community that there are huge numbers of us who do not support what’s happening in the government. It’s amazing to see when 100,000 people turn out in Minneapolis but it’s also amazing to see when 1,000 people turn out in a red rural area. We are reminded of the power in our numbers. But it’s also in other acts, in voting, in registering others to vote, in contacting your elected officials and asking them questions, telling them what you think, in paying attention to local races, municipal elections, local judges, state-wide elections, your school board, your election board, it’s running for office yourself, it’s speaking out on your social media–you have far more influence than you think you do. The more people in a person’s immediate or peripheral social circle that say or believe in something, the more likely that person is to at least consider the position. You can be a voice for change in your social circle, in your family, in your community, and yes posting on social media counts. It’s deciding to go to law school or get involved in non profit work or organizing mutual aid or organizing your local buy nothing group or organizing a neighborhood council or making art, it’s a million little ways of showing up everyday and working on making a world you want to see. It’s not glamorous, it’s not always fun, though it absolutely can be, and very importantly it is not quick, there is no immediate gratification. Y’all always ask me how do we get retribution, how do we remove these people from power and punish them, how do we stop them. And I encourage you, as I would frankly encourage the Democratic party and other opposition parties, to reframe it not around them and stopping them but around what can I actively do to push for what I want to see change. To envision a better world. Mamdani didn’t win in New York City because he ran a successful campaign around how bad Trump or his competition was. He ran a successful campaign because he was able to get New Yorkers excited about a new vision of what living in New York could be like. And he was convincing enough that enough New Yorkers believed in his vision to vote him in. THAT is the kind of work that needs to be happening now. Working towards what we WANT instead of wallowing in how bad it is right now. I mean feel free to wallow sometimes LORD knows I definitely do, but remember to also step back and dream of something better and get the people around you in your own community on board too. Pick the thing that makes you excited–you can’t do it all–and do something about it. The antidote to anxiety is action, and positive action will help to make the world better when a lot of the big picture stuff is out of our control. If you are doing something like this to move the world towards your vision of a better future, please comment it in the comments, I want to hear what you’re doing and it will give others some ideas for what they can do, too.

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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like my episode from Tuesday about how Trump is criminalizing journalists.