Donald Trump

is best not thrown out because of the 25th Amendment. The chief complaint against him is that he is undermining the norms. Thus, efforts to remove him should be especially careful to abide by those very norms.

The main reason not to use it is that the chief complaint against Trump is that he threatens U.S. democracy not (chiefly) by breaking laws, but by undermining the norms that are just as important to democratic governance as the laws and constitutional provisions. Therefore, efforts to remove him should be especially careful to abide by those norms. The 25th Amendment is for use in Wilson-like cases in which the president is truly incapacitated. While mental illness could qualify, the many armchair diagnoses we've seen of Trump simply do not clear the constitutional bar.

Jonathan Bernstein

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