What is The 25th Amendment? Anonymous NYT Op-Ed Reports Trump Cabinet Whispering About Invoking Rule (Source newsweek.com) In a scathing anonymous op-ed written by a senior official inside the Trump administration, the author wrote that the president’s cabinet has whispered about invoking the 25th Amendment, which would jumpstart the lengthy process of removing Donald Trump from the Oval Office. “Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president,” the author wrote in the piece, which was published on Wednesday by The New York Times.

The source goes on to write that “no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until—one way or another—it’s over.”

The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that if the people in the president’s innermost circle, the cabinet, believe that the commander-in-chief is unfit to hold office something can be quickly done to legally remove them from office. The amendment, proposed by Congress and ratified by the states after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, details the procedure for replacing a president or vice president in the event of death, resignation, removal or incapacitation. The amendment can be carried out whenever the vice president and a majority of the sitting cabinet members decide that the president is declared “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”