House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday clarified her plans to pursue a 25th Amendment approach to strip President Trump of his presidential powers.
Pelosi and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said in a press release that they will introduce a bill creating a commission to evaluate presidential mental and physical fitness.
The bill would establish a Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office that would “enable Congress to help ensure effective and uninterrupted leadership in the highest office in the Executive Branch of government,” the release said.
The proposed composition of the commission was not immediately clear.
Pelosi (D-Calif.) teased at a Thursday morning press conference that she and her fellow Democrats are considering invoking the constitutional provision on presidential succession — a seemingly fantastical yearning among Trump opponents.
“Tomorrow. Come here tomorrow. We’re going to be talking about the 25th Amendment,” she said.
Trump is back at the White House after a three-night hospitalization for COVID-19 treatment.
The 25th Amendment grants a role to the House in cases of presidential succession or temporary incapacitation. It allows either the vice president and Cabinet — or some other entity designated by Congress — to declare the president unable to perform his duties. Congress never created an entity to supplant the Cabinet in making that decision.
The amendment says: “Whenever 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, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”
Pelosi’s legislation is almost certain to die in the Republican-held Senate. If a commission ever were to be established, and if a vice president were to agree that a president was unable to serve, the 25th Amendment requires 2/3 of each chamber of Congress to affirm that finding within 25 days.
Spokespeople for Vice President Mike Pence did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but it’s unlikely that Pence and a majority of Trump’s Cabinet would strip him of power as they campaign together ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
But the threat served to taunt Trump, who tweeted, “Crazy Nancy is the one who should be under observation. They don’t call her Crazy for nothing!”
At the morning press conference, Pelosi mocked Trump’s Thursday morning declaration in a TV interview that he’s “a perfect physical specimen” and “extremely young.”
“He’s a perfect physical specimen, did he say? Specimen, maybe I could agree with that. And young, he said he was young. His disassociation from reality would be funny if it weren’t so deadly,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi on Wednesday said on “The View” that Trump’s use of the steroid dexamethasone to combat the virus may impede his judgment.