What was the significance of the 25th Amendment?
1 Answer
The 25th Amendment deals with the succession of the Presidency during times of incapacity and death.
Explanation:
The first clause neatly lays out that the Vice-President will take over for the President if the President is removed or dies in office.
Clause two gives instruction on getting a new Vice-President into office.
Clause three gives instructions to the President on how to notify the rest of the government that he is temporarily transferring power (something that happens more than you'd think - every time a President goes in for surgery, for example, power gets transferred during the time s/he is under anesthesia).
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I'll just stop here and note that you would have thought that the Founding Fathers would have thought about this and put instructions into the body of the Constitution on what to do in the event of a dead or incapacitated President. But they didn't. The history behind the passing of this Amendment reveals what a chaotic mess came of the process when it first happened and there weren't well laid-out instructions. Here are a couple of links where there's more information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
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Of particular interest nowadays is the fourth clause. This is the clause that states that if the Vice President and a majority of the Secretaries in the President's cabinet feel the President is unable to carry out the duties of the Presidency, then they can start a process to relieve the President of his office and instead put in place the Vice President. There has been a lot of press around this option of removing President Trump from office using this clause. Here's a link that gives more information:
http://www.businessinsider.com/25th-amendment-how-can-you-remove-president-from-office-2017-3
