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Stop Waiting on the 25th Amendment to Save Us From Trump
Trump is not in office despite being out of his fucking mind—he occupies the seat of supreme power precisely because he is off the charts berserk and the only people who matter in the Crumbling States of America are making bank on it.
Jun 08, 2026
In a famous fable a group of mice discuss the catastrophic death toll from the local cat. One mouse has an epiphany—“We simply have to put a collar with a bell on the cat, and we’ll be warned every time she draws near.” The mice erupt in celebration. But suddenly one doleful rodent interrupts the celebrants with a shy question: "Who’s going to bell the cat?"
As an avid reader of lefty alternative media essays, I would venture that “bell the cat” polemics have become a prominent strategy employed by far too many writers. We bell cats in our daydreams, and then write about it with a triumphant brushing of the hands. How many pieces have we all read that call for removing President Donald Trump via the 25th Amendment?
I, personally, am easily convinced that Donald J Trump is... uh... unfit. His twitchy little evil finger on the so-called nuclear button defines a new plateau of dystopian absurdity that no past writer of dark fiction could have ever imagined. Do we need to clarify just how close to the stroke of doomsday this vapid monster brings us daily? His genocidal intent; his criminal impulses; his senseless drivel; his delusional narcissism; his racism; his sexism; and his urge to brag, attack, and threaten ought to make him a prime candidate for a golden sunset behind bars.
Most of the calls for the 25th Amendment rather coalesce around the aesthetics of Trump’s alleged mental decline—his malapropisms; his stumbling gait; his ridiculous boasting about “acing” a dementia screening exam; his late-night posting binges of misspelled, all-caps incoherent rage; his nodding off to sleep in meetings; and the sheer sight of his grotesque, sneering, confused, melting jowls seem to be enough of an argument.
In the Numbed States of America we have gravely limited capacity to respond to extinction threats. Some atavistic fantasy of reprieve keeps people mutely indoors.
Some calls for the 25th Amendment solution merely focus on Trump’s dwindling physical health—his mysterious hospital visits; his bruises; his enormously swollen ankles; his tiny eye slits peering in a senile, comatose manner from the drooping folds of a face that precariously hovers somewhere between a living visage and a death mask.
It seems odd, however, to argue that Trump ought to be seen as a broken shell of a man, eaten from the inside by diseases associated with aging. Do we really want him removed from office because of illness, or because he has spearheaded an assault against the environment, a new age of unregulated capitalist plunder, a total commitment to eviscerate human rights, and the intent to wage war as a matter of reflexive masculinist expression? Where have US bombs fallen, and where will they imminently rain down on hapless civilians?
Are Mogadishu and Copenhagen on the list? Havana? Have we blown Cuba up yet, or is that just a coming attraction scheduled for August or November? Donald J Trump’s trembling, tiny phallic finger nuzzling the button of eternal extinction seems like a surefire image to summon massive levels of public panic, to send hysterical crowds into the streets as if the Chicxulub Meteor had been scheduled for an encore. But in the Numbed States of America we have gravely limited capacity to respond to extinction threats. Some atavistic fantasy of reprieve keeps people mutely indoors. We have guardrails, constitutional guarantees—like the oft mentioned 25th Amendment. Why go crazy in an existential panic, when the Constitution has our back?
The 25th Amendment is not some hoary remnant of our overly esteemed Founding Fathers. No such Revolutionary War icons stared wisely into the crystal ball of future contingencies, and asked the question, “What do we do when a batshit lunatic captures the presidency?” No, the Founding Fathers had not imagined a president as being anything other than a generic advocate for the interests of the wealthy—a role that carried an implicit assumption of sanity in their constitutional eyes. The 25th Amendment was passed by congress in 1965, and ratified in 1967, perhaps inspired by the unraveling, warmongering man of the moment, Lyndon Baines Johnson. But more likely, the amendment shuffled itself into the Constitution as a matter of legislative busywork, a footnote barely acknowledged at the time. The 25th gives some clarity as to when the vice president steps into a presidential role, usually for a day or two when a presidential colonoscopy creates a window of momentary confusion. Congress voted on the amendment only two years after JFK’s assassination—fearful politicians had, one imagines, a lurking sense of unpredictable events.
The 25th Amendment, however, also creates a new protocol for the permanent removal of an unfit president—the vice-president along with the members of the Cabinet must vote to toss the leader out of office with a simple majority. From there, the decision to remove an unfit president passes to both houses of Congress where a two-thirds majority of each chamber must vote to remove the spiraling executive. In other words (at least in Trump’s case), a collection of morally deformed misfits must pool their distaste for the unravelling psychopath who appointed them. And then a collection of party sycophants must rise up against the leader who fills their trembling hearts with utter terror.
Maybe you believe that Trump should be removed because he is: 1) corrupt, 2) demented, 3) insane, 4) stupid, and 5) evil. Obviously, while all of these allegations rest on mountains of evidence; none of it resonates with a single cabinet member. The 25th Amendment is not a public plebiscite. You and I might easily agree that tearing up the White House to build a ballroom-bomb-shelter for a nuclear fetishizing war criminal might be an awful idea. But so what? The 25th Amendment is a private matter, a means of protection for the ruling class. If a president goes cuckoo for coco-puffs, the oligarchs can set things right. One might aptly assume that none of Trump’s shenanigans trouble the billionaire class.
So you and I do not get a vote according to 25th Amendment protocol. Here is an abbreviated list of those authorized to vote: 1) RFK Jr., 2) Linda McMahon, 3) Howard Lutnick, 4) Doug Burgum, 5) Chris Wright, 6) Pete Hegseth, 7) Marco Rubio... and so forth. If you believe that any of these names might vote to remove Trump, I suggest that you hurry (if you still have medical insurance) to take The Montreal Cognitive Assessment.
Trump is not in office despite being out of his fucking mind—he occupies the seat of supreme power precisely because he is off the charts berserk. The only people who matter in the Crumbling States of America make bank on Trump’s presidency. The oil executives, nuclear weapons manufacturers, planet destroying Big Tech moguls, insurance profiteers, and chemical poisoners are carving up the Earth like famished vultures alighting on a putrid carcass. If these predators don’t care about Trump’s decaying brain, it really doesn’t matter what you and I believe.
There is a means of removal—a real one, not a self-indulgent fantasy. It is called The 3.5% Rule, a theory that argues that regime change requires massive resistance involving 3.5% of the population taking to the streets until a resolution has been reached. It involves daily mobilization, not a two hour street festival every two months. In the US that means at least 11 million angry, undeterred resistors willing to endure a measure of personal inconvenience. It involves blocking traffic, getting arrested, boycotts, strikes, and international connections. We should be calling for foreign nationals to boycott and divest from US corporations. Or we can day dream about the 25th Amendment until Trump dies and hands over the throne to JD Vance.
As a general theme, we US citizens have far too much faith in alleged democratic process, and far too little passion for collective agency.
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States Have Found a Way to Fight Back Against Citizens United
Federal attempts to overturn the ruling by amending the US Constitution or legislating against corporate spending have repeatedly failed. But now several states are experimenting with new ways to get this flood of corporate money out of politics.
Jun 05, 2026
More than 15 years ago, the Supreme Court removed limits on corporate political spending in its notorious Citizens United decision, ushering in an era of unprecedented influence by moneyed interests.
As a result, a small group of ultra-wealthy donors have skewed the political system to their advantage—and today, social scientists link the growing gap between rich and poor to that seminal 2010 decision.
Federal attempts to overturn the ruling by amending the US Constitution or legislating against corporate spending have repeatedly failed. But now several states are experimenting with new ways to get this flood of corporate money out of politics.
The state of Hawaii just passed a first-of-its-kind law redefining corporations as entities that aren’t allowed to spend money in elections anywhere within the state. The effort could kick off a powerful state-by-state pushback that succeeds where federal efforts failed.
Curtailing corporate influence on the political system is essential at a time when corporations are thriving while ordinary Americans struggle to make ends meet.
This simple idea is the brainchild of Tom Moore, senior fellow for democracy policy at the Center for American Progress. “It’s not regulation; it’s redefinition,” Moore told me. “States create corporations, and they give powers to all the corporations that operate within their states.”
So if the federal government and the Supreme Court enable corporations to influence elections, states can counter that merely by changing the definition of a corporation. And that’s precisely what Hawaii did. Effective starting July 2027, corporations doing business in the state are redefined to “not include the power to spend money or contribute anything of value to influence elections or ballot measures.”
The novel approach is well-protected against legal challenges. Moore explained, “The Supreme Court has said consistently for 200 years that [the power to define corporations] is a matter of state law, that the federal courts don’t have anything to do with that.”
The impact of this on Hawaii’s politics are likely to be monumental. “Basically, in Hawaii politics, local, state, and federal, every dollar that’s spent will be from an individual human being,” said Moore. “It’ll be disclosed, it’ll be voluntary. And that is a gigantic difference from what we have right now.”
Hawaii’s law doesn’t overturn Citizens United—it makes the 2010 ruling meaningless within its borders.
Residents of Montana are pushing a similar effort. Activists there are gathering signatures to place a measure on the November ballot to similarly redefine corporations so they can’t spend money in elections. If the measure passes, it will go into effect in January 2027, six months before Hawaii’s law takes effect.
In fact, according to Moore, Hawaii’s legislators borrowed the language for their bill from Montana’s ballot measure and sped it through their legislative process, pleasantly surprising advocates. Moore is confident the Montana effort will succeed. “They’re in very, very good shape, they’re incredibly well-organized,” he said.
At least 14 states, including New York and California, are currently considering similar bills, and Hawaii’s new law prompted interested lawmakers from two other states to contact Moore. “We’ve had outreach from folks in almost every state,” he said. Given the fact that it’s been less than a year since Moore first published his idea, the speed at which it’s caught on has been remarkable.
Curtailing corporate influence on the political system is essential at a time when corporations are thriving while ordinary Americans struggle to make ends meet. “At the end of the day, corporations don’t actually work for their shareholders, they work for us because we create them through our legislatures, through our laws,” said Moore.
“And if corporations are doing something in our state that we don’t like, we have the power as citizens and working through our legislators to do something about that."
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The 14th Amendment Is 160 Years Old Today—And We Are in Serious Trouble
From the courageous radicalism of Thaddeus Stevens to the tragic depths Donald Trump has brought us, our nation has become horribly lost on what it means to be a citizen and why this democratic republican was created in the first.
May 06, 2026
On May 6, 1866, exactly one hundred and sixty years ago today, Thaddeus Stevens, US Congressman from Pennsylvania and the leading Radical Republican in the House of Representatives, rose to introduce the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution on the floor of the. Stevens, chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, was also co-chair of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction set up by Congress, in late 1865, to promote a radical Reconstruction, a program advanced over the consistent objections of President Andrew Johnson.
Here is how Stevens introduced the Amendment:
Congress tasked the committee with reconstructing the nation and setting new constitutional baselines for post-Civil War America; this is difficult work; above all, we are trying to write the Declaration of Independence’s promise of freedom and equality into the Constitution. But I beg gentlemen to consider the magnitude of the task which was imposed upon the committee. They were expected to suggest a plan for rebuilding a shattered nation—a nation which though not dissevered was yet shaken and riven by the gigantic and persistent efforts of six million able and ardent men; of bitter rebels striving through four years of bloody war. It cannot be denied that this terrible struggle sprang from the vicious principles incorporated into the institutions of our country. Our fathers had been compelled to postpone the principles of their great Declaration, and wait for the full establishment till a more propitious time. That time ought to be present now. But the public mind has been educated in error for a century. How difficult in a day to unlearn it. In rebuilding, it is necessary to clear away the rotten and defective portions of the old foundations, and to sink deep and found the repaired edifice upon the firm foundation of eternal justice. If, perchance, the accumulated quicksands render it impossible to reach in every part so firm a basis, then it becomes our duty to drive deep and solid the substituted piles on which to build. It would not be wise to prevent the raising of the structure because some corner of it might be founded upon materials subject to the inevitable laws of mortal decay. It were better to shelter the household and trust to the advancing progress of a higher morality and a purer and more intelligent principle to underpin the defective corner.
The Amendment passed in the House on June 13, by a vote of 138 in favor and 36 opposed, having passed in the Senate five days earlier, on June 8, by a vote of 33 in favor and 11 opposed. In other words, roughly a quarter of US Representatives and Senators, serving in houses of Congress that did not include representatives from the seceded Confederate states, voted against the amendment.
It is tempting to imagine that the establishment of egalitarian citizenship in the aftermath of a bloody Civil War fought in its name proceeded as a matter of course. But it did not. It was bitterly contested, by everyone aligned with the Confederacy, but also by many Northern Democrats, who rallied behind Andrew Johnson’s efforts to quickly reincorporate the eleven defeated Southern states without substantially empowering emancipated formerly enslaved people or enforcing any form of retributive justice. And it is been bitterly contested ever since.
Stevens and his Radical Republican allies in Congress understood the strength of the opposition to their vision of a multi-racial and non-racist democracy, and they fought a decade-long battle on its behalf, centered on both enforceable legal and civic equality and land reform designed to empower formerly-enslaved agricultural laborers. They succeeded in many ways, passing numerous bills designed to support the civil rights and economic opportunities of emancipated Blacks, and securing passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Yet the gains were short-lived, betrayed by the infamous Compromise of 1877 that placed Republican Rutherford Hayes in the White House and ending the final remnants of the Union’s military occupation of the South, leading in short order to the reinstitution of Black subordination via the new Jim Crow system of racial segregation and extortionate share-cropping. (While there have been many fine histories of this period, to my mind the best is Eric Foner’s award-winning Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.)
The Fourteenth Amendment was the cornerstone of the effort to truly reconstruct the postwar nation on the foundations of non-racial citizenship. In the words of historian T.J. Stiles, it was “The Constitutional Amendment That Reinvented Freedom”: “It established birthright citizenship, required ‘due process’ and ‘equal protection’ of the law for everyone, and put the federal government in the business of policing liberty. It removed race and ethnicity from the legal definition of American identity.”
Stevens was one of the principal legislative proponents of the Amendment. And, as President Johnson consistently sought to obstruct such efforts, he was one of the ring leaders of the 1868 effort to impeach Johnson. Indeed, he succeeded in this effort—Johnson was famously impeached by the House on February 24, 1868, by a vote of 126-47-- though Johnson was eventually acquitted in the Senate by the narrow margin of 35-19, one short of the 2/3 majority necessary to convict.
As Bruce Levine notes in his terrific 2021 political biography, Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice, Stevens was reviled and calumnied by opponents of Reconstruction, both in his lifetime and long into the 20th century. William A. Dunning, the dean of “Lost Cause” historians, described Stevens in 1907 as “truculent, vindictive, and cynical.” Writing in 1931, James Truslow Adams called Stevens “the most despicable, malevolent and morally deformed character who has ever risen to power in America.” James G, Randall, writing in his influential 1937 The Civil War and Reconstruction, similarly described him as “filled with ‘vindictive ugliness, unfairness, intolerance, and hatefulness,’” a view carried over into the 1969 edition of the book, co-edited with David Donald, the textbook assigned in the Civil War class I took at Queens College in 1976. The most enduring image of Stevens was produced not in a book but in a film, D.W. Griffith’s 1915 “Birth of a Nation,” one of whose chief protagonists, Austin Stoneman—an ugly, club-footed, lecherous hypocrite—was clearly modeled on Stevens.
Woodrow Wilson was only slightly less harsh, writing on “The Reconstruction of the Southern States” in The Atlantic in 1901: “He had no timidity, no scruples about keeping to constitutional lines of policy, no regard or thought for the sensibilities of the minority, — being rough-hewn and without embarrassing sensibilities himself, — an ideal radical for the service of the moment.”
It is true that Stevens seemed to have little timidity, and appears to have been something of a pit bull in his refusal to let the cause of Reconstruction go. It is also true that he had “no scruples about keeping to constitutional lines of policy,” but only in this sense: he sought, with his colleagues, to revolutionize the “constitutional lines of policy” that had already been decimated by a Civil War, and to use the Constitution’s own Article V process to amend the Constitution. Stevens was a constitutional revolutionary—the point of Levine’s brilliant book--and thus “an ideal radical for the service of the moment.”
Like everything about the Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment was hardly self-enforcing. This was understood by its drafters, which is why they included the language of Section 5: “Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article” (both the Thirteen and the Fifteenth Amendments contain similar language). Every aspect of the Amendment remained hotly contested for a century after its passage. But in the 1960’s, after decades of intense struggle by a civil rights movement that faced daily attacks on life and limb, Congress finally passed two pieces of legislation designed to enforce the 14th and the 15th Amendments—the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Like the above-mentioned amendments, these landmark pieces of legislation faced strong opposition, and did not pass without legislative battle. The first passed in the House by a vote of 290-130 and in the Senate by a vote of 73-27; the second passed the House by a vote of 328-74 and the Senate by a vote of 79-18. And as is well known, the passage of these laws helped to generate a powerful backlash against any form of racial liberalism.
That said, both the basic intent behind the acts, and the federal bureaucracies established to enforce them, became more or less settled features of US law for the past half-century—until now.
To be fair, the Voting Rights Act has been besieged ever since the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision. The Court’s 6-3 decision this week in Louisiana v. Callais further eviscerated the Act.
At the same time, we are currently witnessing a wholesale assault on the 14th Amendment, and the entire legal system established to enforce it, by the Trump administration. The examples are loud and clear: the outright attack on birthright citizenship, which is currently before the Court; the obvious suspension of due process by the DHS-ICE regime of arrest, detention, and deportation that in the past year has swept up well over 500,000 Americans; and the use of the Justice Department—first established in 1870 to oversee the rule of law in the formerly-Confederate states—to threaten and punish “political enemies.”
Perhaps nothing better symbolizes this Trumpist rejection of the 14th Amendment than the second Trump presidency itself. We should not forget that very powerful arguments were advanced, by numerous reputable conservative legal scholars, including J. Michael Luttig, to justify keeping Trump off several state ballots in 2024, on the grounds that his incitement of the January 6, 2021 insurrection violated the 14th Amendment’s Section 3. In spite of these arguments, the Supreme Court ruled against such moves in March 2024, holding that only Congress could attempt such a maneuver. Trump, his candidacy bolstered, went on to win the 2024 election, and then proceeded, on day one of his second term, to pardon or commute the sentences of every one of the over 1200 people who had been convicted of crimes on for their role in the January 6 insurrection.
Under Trump 20.0, even the barest lip service to the notion of equal justice under the law has been abandoned with contempt.
It is a sad irony of history that this is all happening as the nation prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and that Trump goes about the task of destroying constitutional democracy even as he makes extravagant plans to celebrate “America 250.”
And it is simply sad, and outrageous, that 160 years after Thaddeus Stevens announced the intention “to write the Declaration of Independence’s promise of freedom and equality into the Constitution,” Donald Trump is doing his best to trample on the Declaration, the Constitution, and the very idea of liberal democracy.
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