President Donald Trump’s threat to wipe out “a whole civilization” in Iran has prompted growing calls from Democrats to remove him through a constitutional mechanism that has never been used to end a presidency: The 25th Amendment.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday morning. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
He continued, saying with a “different, smarter, and less radicalized” regime in Iran, he hoped Tehran would come to a deal on the Strait of Hormuz. But he left it open that the United States would strike Iran on Tuesday night if a deal was not reached.
“WHO KNOWS?” Trump asked.
The post came just 12 hours before the president’s previously announced deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or risk the U.S. attacking bridges and power plants. Or, as the president put it in an expletive-laced Easter morning social media post, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.”
In response to Trump’s threats, Democrats started a new trend on Tuesday that put the onus for Trump’s removal on some of the president’s most obsequious officials, calling on Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and declare the president unfit for office. Doing so would, in effect, remove Trump from the White House and replace him with Vice President JD Vance.
In a social media post, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., called for “this unhinged lunatic” to “be removed from office.” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said, “Threatening war crimes is a blatant violation of our constitution and the Geneva Conventions.” And Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., wrote, “In the last 48 hours alone, the rhetoric has crossed every line.”
“Donald Trump’s instability is more clear and dangerous than ever,” said former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
As of early Tuesday evening, more than four dozen Democrats had called on Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, including Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.; Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif.; Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.; Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y.; Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y.; and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M.
Of course, these calls are unlikely to do much of anything.
To actually remove Trump from office, the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet would have to agree that the president “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” If the president were to dispute that assessment, as he almost certainly would, at least two-thirds of the House and Senate would have to agree that the president is unfit to serve to remove him from office.
The threshold in Congress is actually higher than what is required through a straight impeachment and conviction.
The bar, said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., is too high to clear at this moment, as Republicans on Capitol Hill and in Trump’s Cabinet remain in lockstep with the president.
“We’re going to have to buckle down and win this the old-fashioned way,” Whitehouse added in another post.
Some Democrats, such as Rep. Diane DeGette, D-Col., were clear that, if the Cabinet refused to invoke the 25th Amendment, then Congress should begin impeachment proceedings, an unlikely endeavor on its own in the GOP-controlled Congress.
But Democrats have increasingly argued that Trump’s war with Iran, coupled with what they have described as bellicose and progressively unhinged rhetoric, have crossed the line. (Some of the MAGA faithful, such as former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and conservative commentators Alex Jones and Candace Owens, have also called on Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment.)
Still, almost every Republican in Congress has stood by Trump. In fact, rather than pushing back on the president, some criticized Greene on Tuesday.
“The TRUE madness is calling for the 25th to be used against one of the greatest presidents our nation has ever seen! @POTUS is making the entire planet safer,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., wrote on X, adding that Greene is “starting to sound like” Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Tucker Carlson.
Most other Republicans have remained silent on Trump’s threats. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., made two posts Tuesday, one touting the “no tax on tips” from the GOP’s reconciliation bill and one cheering the International Olympic Committee for recognizing that “women’s sports are meant for biological women.”
Johnson, like Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has remained silent on Trump’s escalating rhetoric.
Notably, however, some Republicans have started to offer indirect criticism.
During an appearance on conservative journalist and commentator John Solomon’s podcast on Monday, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said he is “hoping and praying” that Trump’s threat against Iran “really is bluster.”
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“I do not want to see us start blowing up civilian infrastructure,” Johnson said. “I do not want to see that.”
Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, also posted online that he does not support “the destruction of a ‘whole civilization.’”
“That is not who we are, and it is not consistent with the principles that have long guided America,” he said.
And Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told MS NOW on Tuesday that while the president’s words about eliminating “a whole civilization” are “reckless,” he argued it is the president “negotiating Trump-style.”
“I do want to see the regime buckle and make a true peace,” Bacon said in a statement.
Democratic leaders in Congress have also been predictably critical of Trump’s threats, though they have stopped short of immediately calling for the 25th Amendment.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.; Majority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass.; and leading Democrats have instead called for the House to “come back into session immediately and vote to end this reckless war of choice in the Middle East before Donald Trump plunges our country into World War III.”
And top Senate Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., in a statement condemned the president’s message, saying it is “not strength.”
“Intentionally destroying the power, water, or basic infrastructure upon which tens of millions of civilians depend to punish the very civilians who suffer at the hands of the Iranian regime would constitute a war crime, a betrayal of the values this nation was founded on, and a moral failure,” they wrote.
While calls have grown for the invocation of the 25th Amendment, some Democrats have targeted others in the administration, such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
On Monday, Ansari said she planned to introduce articles of impeachment against Hegseth “for repeatedly violating his oath of office and his duty to the Constitution.”
“Only Congress has the power to declare war, not a rogue president or his lackeys. Hegseth’s reckless endangerment of U.S. servicemembers and repeated war crimes, including bombing a girls’ school in Minab, Iran and willfully targeting civilian infrastructure, are grounds for impeachment and removal from office,” she said.
For months now, Democrats have wrestled with the question of presidential accountability — namely, how much to focus on it as part of their party’s midterm messaging and potential governing agenda.
The fear among some Democrats is that focusing too much on anti-Trump sentiment could distract from a positive, kitchen-table agenda.
But as the second year of Trump’s presidency careens from domestic crises to an escalating overseas conflict, the president may be forcing Democrats’ hand. And depending on what happens Tuesday night, the entire political landscape could change with his military actions — and the debate over accountability could shift from theoretical to immediate very quickly.
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.