Dozens of congressional Democrats are calling for President Donald Trump's removal from office under the 25th Amendment after his latest warning to Iran, but at least one Democratic senator is telling his own party the push has no chance of succeeding.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island posted on X that he has been flooded with messages about invoking the amendment. He did not mince words about what he thinks of the president's conduct. But he was equally blunt about the math.
The episode captures a recurring pattern in Democratic politics since Trump's return to office: loud calls for dramatic constitutional remedies that have zero prospect of clearing the procedural hurdles required to work. It is theater dressed up as governance, and even some Democrats now admit it.
The latest round of removal talk followed a Trump post on Truth Social in which the president declared that a "whole civilization will die tonight" unless Iran reopened the Strait of Hormuz. He set an 8 p.m. ET deadline on Tuesday, warning of strikes against Iranian power plants and bridges if the demand was not met.
That post sent Democratic senators to their phones. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut wrote on X:
"If I were in Trump's Cabinet, I would spend Easter calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment. This is completely, utterly unhinged. He's already killed thousands. He's going to kill thousands more."
Murphy offered no evidence for his claim that "thousands" have already been killed. Fox News Digital noted that it reached out to the White House for comment and had not received a reply at the time of publication.
The broader Democratic caucus joined the chorus. Fox News Digital reported that "dozens" of congressional Democrats demanded Republicans act to remove the president, a demand that would require cooperation from Vice President JD Vance and a majority of Trump's own Cabinet, followed by a declaration sent to Congress.
What made Whitehouse's response notable was not his diagnosis of the president, he agreed with the Democratic line, but his prescription. Or rather, his refusal to prescribe the remedy his colleagues were demanding.
Whitehouse posted on X:
"I'm getting a lot of traffic about the 25th Amendment after Trump's mad rants. The president is facing serious mental decline; I'm with you on that. But unfortunately, invoking the 25th is not realistic right now, given his oddball Cabinet of sycophants and eccentrics, and Republican 'spines of foam.'"
He followed up with a line that amounted to a cold shower for the activist base: "We're going to have to buckle down and win this the old-fashioned way."
That concession, that the 25th Amendment route is a fantasy under current conditions, is worth pausing on. Whitehouse is not a moderate. He is a reliable progressive vote. And yet he looked at the same set of facts his colleagues were using to demand immediate removal and concluded the effort was pointless.
The reason is straightforward. The 25th Amendment requires the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to initiate the process. If the president disputes the declaration, Congress must then vote by a two-thirds margin in both chambers to complete the removal. In a government where Republicans hold the Senate and the House, and where Vance and every Cabinet member were chosen by Trump, the arithmetic is not close.
The 25th Amendment, ratified in the 1960s, has been invoked only a handful of times, and never to remove a sitting president against his will. Its uses have been limited to brief, voluntary transfers of power during medical procedures requiring anesthesia, and to fill vacancies in the vice presidency.
Democrats know this history. They also know that some in their caucus have floated impeachment as an alternative path, contingent on winning back the House. The 25th Amendment push and the impeachment talk share a common feature: neither has the votes to succeed today.
That hasn't stopped Democrats from treating both as serious proposals rather than messaging exercises. The gap between the rhetoric and the reality tells you something about who the intended audience is. It is not the vice president. It is not the Cabinet. It is the Democratic donor base and the social-media grassroots.
Congressional Republicans, for their part, are not biting. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa was asked whether the administration would be committing a war crime by targeting Iran's power supply and bridges. Her answer was a flat "No."
Ernst added context that the Democratic critics largely ignored:
"It's an ongoing operation, and if he needs leverage, he's using that leverage."
Democrats pushing the 25th Amendment against Trump might recall that congressional Republicans made similar calls against former President Joe Biden toward the end of his presidency, particularly after his debate performance against Trump in the summer of 2024. Democrats dismissed those calls as partisan overreach at the time.
The symmetry is uncomfortable. When Republicans raised fitness-for-office concerns about Biden, Democrats insisted the 25th Amendment was not designed for political disagreements. Now the same party is reaching for the same tool, and one of their own senators is telling them it won't work.
The difference, of course, is that Biden's party eventually persuaded him to step aside from the 2024 race through internal pressure, not constitutional machinery. Democrats have no comparable lever with Trump, who commands overwhelming loyalty from his Cabinet and his party's congressional majorities.
That reality has produced visible frustration within Democratic leadership circles, where questions about strategy and direction have been mounting for months.
The substantive question underneath the removal talk, whether Trump's Iran threat was reckless or strategic, is one that reasonable people can debate. Ernst's framing of the post as leverage in an ongoing operation reflects the view inside the administration and among its allies: that maximum-pressure language is a negotiating tool, not a literal battle plan.
Democrats, by contrast, treated the Truth Social post as self-evident proof of unfitness. Murphy's claim that Trump "has already killed thousands" and "is going to kill thousands more" was offered without supporting evidence in his post.
The broader Democratic approach to Trump's Iran posture has grown increasingly aggressive. Some members have gone so far as to urge military personnel to defy orders, a position that raises its own serious constitutional questions about civilian control of the armed forces.
What none of these Democratic responses have produced is a viable path to changing policy. The 25th Amendment push won't clear the Cabinet. Impeachment won't clear the Senate. Calls for military insubordination won't survive contact with the chain of command. Each gambit generates headlines and social-media engagement, but none changes the balance of power in Washington.
Whitehouse, to his credit, said the quiet part out loud. "We're going to have to buckle down and win this the old-fashioned way." That means elections, not constitutional emergency mechanisms repurposed as partisan tools.
Whether his party listens is another matter. The incentive structure in Democratic politics right now rewards escalation, not realism. Top Democratic recruits for 2026 are already navigating internal tensions over leadership and direction, and the base is hungry for confrontation.
But confrontation without a plausible mechanism is not opposition. It is performance. And when even Sheldon Whitehouse, no friend of this administration, tells his own side to stop chasing constitutional shortcuts, the rest of the party might consider listening.
The 25th Amendment was written for genuine emergencies, not for losing elections. Democrats tried impeachment twice. They tried the 25th Amendment talk under Biden's presidency from the other side of the aisle. Now they're recycling the same playbook with even less chance of success.
At some point, a party has to decide whether it wants to govern or just perform outrage on social media. Whitehouse, at least, seems to know the difference, even if his colleagues haven't caught up.
