Roosevelt; Dwight D. The 25th Amendment has four sections, three of which have to do with presidential succession and the filling of the vice presidency in the event of a death or resignation. Section 3, under which a President can temporarily transfer authority if he, for instance, undergoes surgery, was invoked by Ronald Reagan in and by George W.
George H. Bush, who suffered from a thyroid condition, was ready to invoke Section 3, giving Vice President Dan Quayle temporary power if he was seriously felled by illness, but it never came to that. Section 4 is where things really get interesting. That provision, wrote John D. The drafters took pains to make clear that this was not an option to be taken in ordinary times.
The most contentious issue, then, would be psychological ability, not physical. And the context would likely be some kind of standoff in which a President, in the overwhelming opinion of one elected official the Vice President and of officials confirmed by the Senate a majority of the Cabinet , appeared unfit to execute his duties.
In , Representative Richard H. After his stroke early in his second term, Eisenhower drafted an understanding with Vice President Richard Nixon that authorized him to step in for a time if Eisenhower were incapacitated. But what if the incapacity had not, in fact, been overcome?
What if the President believed himself to be fit but was not? This was the issue the drafters wrestled with in Section 4. The questions for Section 4 involved trickier scenarios in which the President suffered, for instance, from some kind of mental-health issue that he might not recognize but others around him did. So in an emergency, neither consent nor confidentiality requirements hold. Safety comes first. What we do in the case of danger is we contain the person, we remove them from access to weapons, and we do an urgent evaluation.
This is what we have been calling for with the president based on basic medical standards of care. Surprisingly, many lawyer groups have actually volunteered, on their own, to file for a court paper to ensure that the security staff will cooperate with us. Yes — at first I was keeping this confidential and was horrified when it first leaked out to the press sometime over the summer, but [the lawmakers] seem surprisingly okay about it, and so I will tell you. Those are the basics of being an expert consultant.
They can make it one, but we ourselves cannot be politically motivated or invested in a certain outcome. This is always the case, from the most basic courtroom consult to being called to testify before the different branches of government. We are expected to be professional in this way. Medical ethics encourage us to be of public service by consulting with the government. So when Congress members reach out to us, we are open to consulting with them, no matter what party.
A half-dozen of them got in touch after the Duty to Warn conference at Yale in April. Then an influential former Congress member started making arrangements for me to testify before all of Congress. That kept getting postponed while the Mueller investigation advanced. That was when a former assistant US attorney stepped in and used her contacts to arrange for meetings with a dozen key Congress members [including Rep.
James Gilligan of NYU, one of the foremost experts on violence in the country, and I went and spoke to them about medical matters only, to share our medical knowledge and concern.
They received us enthusiastically! Their level of concern was surprisingly high. From the dozen we have met with, it seemed they were already convinced of the dangerousness of the president and the need for an evaluation. Another thing that has been happening on the side is that a clinic at Yale Law School recommended that we be ready to respond emergently, within an hour or two of being called. So we have been doing both: A DC-based psychiatrist has been collecting names of colleagues would be willing to respond in an emergency, and members of the National Academy of Medicine have been recruited for helping us to select candidates for an independent expert panel.
This month, I will be meeting with additional lawmakers to discuss what else we need to do. Now, the president is undergoing a physical exam on January The usual physical exam does not usually entail a thorough exam of mental fitness for duty, but we are hoping that some form of capacity exam will be included. A capacity exam is an independent evaluation of the ability of someone to carry out a certain function, such as to stand trial or to make medical decisions for oneself, or in a more everyday setting, to carry out a job.
It is a standard process that involves an interview, various tests, and information from outside sources. We are saying this is a glaring omission. Do you know the physicians who will be doing the January 12 exam? Have you been in touch with them? But I could help educate the public and let it be known it would be desirable for the person in the office of the presidency to get a capacity exam. Our role is not to intervene in his care, or to interfere in any way in the usual political process.
We are just giving medical input as witnessing professionals who can see signs that point to danger as a public health threat that the public or lawmakers may not be aware of or see to its full extent. The concern is that if we are not deliberate in our ethics, we will easily fall into complicity and compliance with political pressures, especially if they are likely to subject us to the very dangers we are warning about, just for issuing the warning.
It was directly in response to Nazism that the World Medical Association issued its Geneva Declaration to clarify the humanitarian goals of medicine. These goals echo the principles underlying the APA code of ethics, the ethical code of American Medical Association, and the Hippocratic oath. How do you get around that? This is the troubling question. We have seen how everything can be turned political, even a strictly rule-bound criminal investigation by an independent special counsel!
Woodrow Wilson nearly died of the flu pandemic during sensitive negotiations with world leaders at the Paris Peace Talks. Ultimately, Wilson relinquished his demands on French leader Georges Clemenceau , accepting the demilitarization of the Rhineland and French occupation of it for at least 15 years.
The United States' longest-serving president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt , hid the severity of his polio from the American public, fearing he would be perceived as weak. The press was forbidden from taking pictures of him walking—an offense the Secret Service was tasked with preventing. President Eisenhower poses for first pictures since he was stricken with a heart attack, During Dwight D. In it, he named Nixon as the person responsible for determining whether or not Eisenhower could perform his presidential duties.
Bush to perform his duties while he underwent surgery for colon cancer. Bush became acting president when Reagan was administered general anesthesia. After just under eight hours, Reagan notified the Senate that he was ready to resume his presidential duties. During his two-term presidency, George W. Bush invoked the 25th Amendment twice.
On June 29, , Bush invoked Section 3 of the 25th Amendment prior to going under anesthesia for a colonoscopy and briefly made Vice President Dick Cheney the acting president.
He did the same again when he had another colonoscopy in But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
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