It occurs to me that one reason for Trump to appoint all of these extreme loyalists to the cabinet is to guard against a 25th amendment invocation by Vance.
(Note: this edit is because I didn't carefully proofread what the dictation software did to my post.)
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@SteveBellovin
He looks fine to me.
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@SteveBellovin The other problem with that theory is that under the relevant clause of the 25th amendment, Trump has the right to contest removal -- in which case, Vance would somehow need to secure a 2/3 majority of both houses of Congress to kick Trump out. Even if he somehow got all the Democrats (not a foregone conclusion!), finding even a dozen Republicans willing to vote against Trump in any way whatever is a stretch.
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@rst @SteveBellovin This is the disappointing part.
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@SteveBellovin By-the-way, the US Constitution does not require cabinet members to be human or even be alive.
So if TFG really wanted 25th amendment protection perhaps he would be naming melania or steve miller.
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@SteveBellovin another is to demonstrate that the gop senate will bow to his every batshit whim.
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@SteveBellovin
Respectfully, senile Trump is probably not capable of planning anything that complex.
He is picking his appointees like a 9-year-old schoolyard bully would—on tbe basis of who kisses his аss, and who would annoy and/or threaten those who oppose him.
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@SteveBellovin , I did some checking on the mechanics and game theory surrounding 25th Amendment Section 4 (25A4, for short). For purposes of that section, which will be uppermost in whatever remains of Дональд Дж. Трамп's mind, not all of the Cabinet matters: The Cabinet isn't even a Consitutional entity; merely inferred.
The 25th would be applied by VP Vance plus the "principal officers of the executive department" [sic, should be plural], who currently number 15 (State, Treasury, Defense, AG, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, HHS, HUD, Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans, Homeland). Трамп could be benched by Vance and any 8 out of those 15. Which is one reason Трамп will appoint only bootlickers to those 15.
Last go-around, Трамп very often dealt with vacancies among those 15 by having "acting" heads in place who were not Senate-confirmed, which in a way is a second way of stacking the 25th Amendment deck, as those occupants (probably?) lack a vote in any 25th Amend. tally.
I'm actually uncertain how vacancies affect application of the phrase "the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department" in 25th Amendment, Section 4. If, say, seven of the 15 seats are held by "acting" appointees not confirmed by the Senate, then does it take 8 votes to 25th the President, or only 5?
All "principal officers of the executive departments" and all other Cabinet officials serve at the President's pleasure. So, he can kneecap the former with the stroke of a pen, filling that office with a not-confirmed placeholder.
The former phrase's scope is amendable by Congress, and the current tally of 15 is per 5 U.S.C. § 101.
A President's easiest way of avoiding being 25th, however, would be assign believed-loyal Secret Service agents -- always a pair, folloiwng the Mormon missionary principle -- with orders to call immediately if "principal officers" rendezvous iwth the VP. The president can then spend about 20 seconds firing those officers.
Legal scholars have worried before about the potential for constitutional crisis from ambiguities in 25A4, e.g., https://info.cooley.edu/blog/what-does-the-25th-amendment-mean-by-acting-cabinet-officers .
This law school journal piece thinks "majority" in 25A4 means a majority of the executive departments filled with Senate-cofirmed appointees, not a majority of all executive departments. https://lawreview.sf.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk15026/files/media/documents/54-online-Krishnamurthi_Salib1.pdf
In fact, the authors also address the edge case of a President who's fired all 15 principal officers of executive departments, replacing them with cronies (or leave them empty), suspecting he/she's about to be 25th'ed, by declaring that a "majority" of zero officers should be zero, i.e., that the Veep could then 25th the President unilaterally.
Reading history, it actually seems like what impelled 25A4 (year 1965) was, first, Eisenhower's two periods of medical incapacity in '55 and '56, and, of all things, the 1951 novel The Caine Mutiny and its 1954 film version -- e.g., fear of President Queeg.
Трамп has announced picks for 3 (so far) of the 15 "principal officers of executive departments" relevant to 25A4: Marco Rubio for State, Kristi Noem (puppy and family-goat assassin) for Homeland, and Pete Hegseth for Defense. These all look to this observer like "abject flunkie" picks, matching my hypothesis -- Hegseth being the most absurd of the lot, being a Fox News talking head and former Koch brothers tool whose military connection was limited to being a captain in the National Guard for a decade.
Random historical tidbit related to 25A but not 25A4: Kamala Harris actually was President (Acting President under 25A3) from 10:10am to 11:35am on Nov. 19, 2021, while Biden was undergoing colonoscopy.
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@unixmercenary @SteveBellovin I think the determination of which is the correct view turns on the interpretation favored by a majority of US military commanders, weighted by firepower under their control.
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@unixmercenary @SteveBellovin There's a whole second paragraph though, about what happens if Trump protests removal. Bottom line: "If the Congress... determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge ... his office, the Vice President shall continue ... as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office."
2/3 of both houses is a very high bar -- in the Senate, all Dems and a dozen from the GOP.
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@rst @unixmercenary Yes, but that's a probably embarrassing public process.
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@SteveBellovin @unixmercenary It is -- but a process which embarrasses Trump but doesn't get rid of him is probably the worst case scenario for anyone who tried to start it. Which is why I don't think Vance would.
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