Trump cabinet discusses 25th amendment: reports

• Members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet discuss the call for the 25th amendment to remove him from office, CBS News, ABC News, en CNN report.
• The extraordinary development comes after the president swept his supporters into madness and a crowd of them stormed the U.S. Capitol, inciting violence and forcing lawmakers and staff to evacuate.
• According to CNN’s Jim Acosta, cabinet secretaries are in the preliminary stages of discussions on the 25th amendment, and Margaret Brennan, CBS News, has reported that nothing concrete has yet been submitted to Vice President Mike Pence.
• Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee also sent a letter to Pence urging him to appeal the amendment and take the president to power.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet are in the early stages of considering the 25th amendment to remove Trump from office, several media outlets report, a move that will not be like any other since the amendment was ratified six decades ago .

CN Actor Jim Acosta report that cabinet secretaries are in the preliminary stages of discussions, and Margaret Brennan of CBS News report that nothing concrete has yet been presented to Vice President Mike Pence. ABC News also confirmed the reports, all of which were obtained anonymously.

The extraordinary development comes after Trump supporters, excited about the president’s conspiracy theories over the 2020 election, collapsed in Washington, DC and stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday when Congress convened to pick up the ballot papers and the to finalize President-elect Joe Biden’s. victory.

The process is usually pro forma and does not attract much national attention. But it came into the national spotlight this year because the president and his supporters baselessly said that Congress, and especially Vice President Mike Pence, had the legal authority to cast ballots from states where Trump said the election was “hampered. ‘is against him.

Congress and the Vice-President do not have such authority and should only pick up the votes of the Electoral College confirming the outcome of the general election. Legislators may object to the vote, but for an objection, it must be upheld by the House and Senate. Because the Democratic Party controls the House, there is virtually no chance that Republicans who signed Trump’s push to stop the election will succeed. Pence, in turn, plays no role in approving or rejecting a state’s electoral votes and his involvement in the matter is largely ceremonial.

Regardless, Trump has repeatedly claimed that Pence and the Republican Republicans are obligated to “decertify” the election votes from the battlefields he lost, because he was fraudulently executed according to their respective elections and their results were therefore illegal. As reported by Business Insider, there is no evidence that any of these claims deserve merit, and in fact, the 2020 election was the safest and most secure in U.S. history.

Wednesday’s scene in the American Capitol looks like something out of a dystopian novel when the president’s supporters broke barriers, clashed with police, broke into the Capitol building, destroyed property and stole it, and all the way to the house and the Senate’s floor came.

All the while, lawmakers, Hill staff members and reporters sheltered in their offices and behind temporary barriers before being evacuated from the building. Trump’s supporters marched through the Capitol, occupying law enforcement offices and milling around for hours after the evacuation, and photos depicting several rioters carrying Confederate flags through the building, sometimes flanked by portraits of civil war figures.

A snare was erected outside the Capitol and Trump’s loyalists attacked members of the media who covered the riots as they unfolded. Tom Winter, NBC, reported that half a dozen people were taken to the hospital, and later it was reported that one woman shot in the Capitol was killed.

Win McNamee / Getty Images

After the area and the building were secured, Congress reconvened to discuss the election challenges and pick up election votes. Several lawmakers from the Republican House and Senate have reversed their decisions to support Trump in his efforts after the riots, calling them ‘disgusting’, ‘illegal’ and ‘unacceptable’.

A number of administration officials resigned after the protests, including First Lady chief of staff Melania Trump and former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews and the social secretary of the White House, Rickie Niceta. Trump’s National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger, and Deputy Chief of Staff Chris Liddell are all believe weight thanks.

The Daily Beast reported that Trump aides and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is married to Transport Secretary Elaine Chao, personally called White House and Cabinet secretaries senior officials and asked them to stay through the night.

Appeal to the 25th Amendment

If the president’s cabinet calls for the amendment, it would be the first time in U.S. history that a sitting president is removed from office due to a non-health-related issue. The amendment contains the steps that can be taken to ensure a transfer of power if a president is deemed unfit or unable to serve.

It has been invoked three times before, but only for the physical health of the president. The first time was in July 1985, when President Ronald Reagan underwent colon cancer surgery. At the time, Reagan authorized Vice President George HW Bush to perform his duties while he was unable to do so.

The other two times the amendment was called for were during the administration of George W. Bush, in June 2002 and June 2007. In both cases, Bush temporarily transferred power to Vice President Dick Cheney while undergoing regular colonoscopies.

If Trump’s cabinet calls for the amendment to remove him from office, it will be by using Section IV, which allows the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to remove the president from office if they decide that he is unfit or unable to meet his term.

The provision reads: ‘When the Vice-President and a majority of the chief officials of the executive departments or of any other body authorized by Congress by law pass it on to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. their written declaration that the President is unable to fulfill the powers and duties of his office, the Vice-President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office of acting President. “