АҚШ Конституциясының 25-ші түзетуі: Президенттік тізбек және өкілеттіктерді беру тәртібі

1967 amendment enumerating presidential succession

The Twenty fifth Amendment (Amendment XXV) to the United States Constitution deals with presidential succession and disability. It clarifies that the vice president becomes president if the president dies, resigns, or is removed from office through impeachment, and establishes how a vacancy in the office of the vice president can be filled. It also provides for the temporary transfer of the president's powers and duties to the vice president, either on the initiative of the president alone or on the initiative of the vice president together with a majority of the president's cabinet. In either case, the vice president becomes acting president until the presidential powers and duties are returned to the president. The amendment was submitted to the states on July 6, 1965, by the 89th Congress, and was adopted on February 10, 1967, the day that the requisite number of states (38) had ratified it.

Nebraska was the first state to ratify, on July12, 1965, and ratification became complete when Nevada became the 38th state to ratify, on February10, 1967. When President Lyndon B. Johnson underwent planned surgery in 1965, he was unable to temporarily transfer power to Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey because ratification remained incomplete. On February23, 1967, at the White House ceremony certifying the ratification, Johnson said:

On October 10, 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned; two days later President Richard Nixon nominated Representative Gerald Ford to replace Agnew as new vice president pursuant to Section2. Ford was confirmed by the Senate and the House on November27 and December6 respectively, and sworn in December6. On August 9, 1974 Nixon resigned and Ford became president under Section1; Ford is the only president to have never been elected to either the presidency or the vice presidency. The office of vice president was thus again vacant, and on August20 President Ford nominated former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller. Rockefeller was confirmed by the Senate and the House on December 10 and 19 respectively, and sworn in December 19. Feerick writes that the Twenty fifth Amendment helped pave the way for Nixon's resignation during the Watergate scandal. Nixon and Agnew were Republicans, and in the months immediately following Agnew's resignation, with the vice presidency empty, removal or resignation of Nixon would have transferred the presidential powers to House Speaker Carl Albert, a Democrat. But once Ford (a Republican) became vice president under Section 2, removal of Nixon became more palatable because it would, now, not result in a change in the party holding the presidency, and therefore "the momentum for exposing the truth about Nixon's involvement in Watergate increased."

On December 22, 1978, President Jimmy Carter considered invoking Section3 in advance of hemorrhoid surgery. Since then, presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump also contemplated invoking Section3 at various times without doing so. Trump, according to Stephanie Grisham, underwent a colonoscopy without anesthesia in November 2019, likely in order to avoid having to invoke Section3.

On July 12, 1985, President Ronald Reagan underwent a colonoscopy and was diagnosed with bowel cancer. He elected to have the lesion removed immediately, and consulted with White House counsel Fred Fielding about whether to invoke Section3, and in particular about whether doing so would set an undesirable precedent. Fielding and White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan recommended that Reagan transfer power, and two letters were drafted: one specifically invoking Section3, the other mentioning only that Reagan was mindful of its provisions. On July 13, Reagan signed the second letter before being placed under general anesthesia for a colectomy, and Vice President George H. W. Bush was acting president from 11:28 a. m. until 7:22 p. m., when Reagan transmitted a letter declaring himself able to resume his duties. In the Fordham Law Review, commentator John Feerick asserted that although Reagan disclaimed any use of the Twenty fifth Amendment in his letter (likely out of "fear of the reaction of the country and the world to a 'President' who admitted to being disabled, and concern [over] set[ting] a harmful precedent"), he followed the process set forth in Section3. Furthermore, Feerick noted that "no constitutional provision except the Twenty Fifth Amendment would have allowed" him to designate the vice president as acting president. Reagan later stated in a memoir that he had, in fact, invoked the Twenty fifth Amendment.

On June 29, 2002, President George W. Bush explicitly invoked Section3 in temporarily transferring his powers to Vice President Dick Cheney before undergoing a colonoscopy, which began at 7:09 a. m. Bush awoke about forty minutes later, but did not resume his presidential powers until 9:24 a. m. to ensure any aftereffects had cleared. According to his staff, Vice President Cheney (as acting president) held his regular national security and homeland security meetings with aides at the White House, but made no appearances and took no recorded actions while being acting president.

On November 19, 2021, President Joe Biden temporarily transferred his powers and duties to Vice President Kamala Harris before undergoing a colonoscopy, making her acting president from 10:10 a. m. until 11:35 a. m. Harris is the first woman to hold the powers and duties of the U. S. presidency.

Section 4 has never been invoked, though on several occasions its use was considered.

Following the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan on March30, 1981, Vice President George H. W. Bush did not assume the presidential powers and duties as acting president. Reagan had been rushed into surgery with no opportunity to invoke Section3; Bush did not invoke Section4 because he was on a plane at the time of the shooting, and Reagan was out of surgery by the time Bush landed in Washington. In 1995, Birch Bayh, the primary sponsor of the amendment in the Senate, wrote that Section4 should have been invoked. Physician to the President Daniel Ruge, who supervised Reagan's treatment immediately after the shooting, said he had erred by not having Reagan invoke Section3 because the president needed general anesthesia and was in an intensive care unit.

From the end of the 1980s onwards, Reagan's political opponents alleged that he showed signs of dementia. According to Reagan biographer Edmund Morris, staffers to White House chief of staff Howard Baker intended to use their first meeting with Reagan in 1987 to evaluate whether he was "losing his mental grip". However, Reagan "came in stimulated by the press of all these new people and performed splendidly". Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1994, five years after leaving office. The president told neurosurgeon Daniel Ruge, according to Ruge in 1980, that he expected doctors to test his memory, and promised to resign if it deteriorated. After the 1994 diagnosis, Ruge said he never found any sign of Alzheimer's while talking to him almost every day from 1981 to 1985.

After President Donald Trump dismissed FBI director James Comey in May 2017, acting FBI director Andrew McCabe claimed that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein held high level discussions within the Justice Department about approaching Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet about possibly invoking Section4. Miles Taylor, who anonymously authored "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration" and A Warning, also wrote that he and other aides considered approaching Pence to invoke the Twenty fifth Amendment. A spokesperson later said that Rosenstein denied pursuing the Twenty fifth Amendment, and Pence strongly denied considering invoking Section4. On March 15, 2019, Senator Lindsey Graham stated the Senate Judiciary Committee would investigate the discussions and seek related documents.

After the January 6 United States Capitol attack, President Trump was accused of having incited the incident, leading to several calls for Section4 to be invoked. Proponents included Representatives Ted Lieu and Charlie Crist, former Defense Secretary William Cohen, and the National Association of Manufacturers (which asked Vice President Pence to "seriously consider" invoking the amendment). By evening, some of Trump's Cabinet members were also reportedly considering invoking Section4. In a New York magazine article, law professor Paul Campos also supported using Section4 "immediately" and "for the good of the nation." On January 7, incoming Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi also called for Section4 to be invoked.