Rahul Sharma's AP Govt Blog 3.2
If the vice president and a majority of sitting Cabinet secretaries decide that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” they put that down in writing and send it to both the speaker of the House and the Senate’s president pro tem. It takes 9 people to make the vice president the acting president: the vice president and eight cabinet members.
If the president disagrees with the VP & cabinet, he can. If he/she does, it would be up to Congress to settle the matter with a vote. A two-thirds majority in both houses would be necessary to keep the vice president in charge.
The chaos that followed John F. Kennedy’s assassination spurred Congress to quickly pass the 25th Amendment in 1965 and winning its ratification in the states by 1967. Prior to the 25th Amendment, the VP office was vacant. The original interpretation says you basically can't fill the VP vacancy.
The first part of Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is still open to interpretation. There is zero elaboration on what it would mean for the president to be “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."
If the vice president and Cabinet secretaries truly concluded that the president could not remain in office, they would need to document everything that led them to that conclusion and assemble an airtight public case. It would feel like a coup, but a lot of documentation and preparation for the sitting president to resist would be required. It is technically legal, but unprecedented.
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