Maryland’s Raskin Leads 25th Amendment Push — But His Own Record Undermines the Case

By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews

Rep. Jamie Raskin introduced legislation this week to establish a congressional commission empowered to evaluate the president’s mental fitness and trigger removal under the 25th Amendment. The Maryland Democrat, who serves as Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, brought the bill Tuesday with 50 House co-sponsors, framing it as fulfilling a constitutional duty Congress has neglected since 1967.

The proximate cause was a pair of Truth Social posts from President Trump during the Iran standoff earlier this month. Trump threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran failed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and demanded Iran open the strait in a profanity-laced Easter Sunday post. Democrats called the rhetoric evidence of cognitive decline. Trump called it negotiating — and within hours, Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire.

There is a legitimate constitutional argument buried in Raskin’s bill. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment explicitly authorizes Congress to create a body alongside the vice president and Cabinet to declare a president unable to discharge the duties of office — and Congress has never actually created it in the nearly 60 years since the amendment was ratified. Raskin didn’t invent that authority. It’s there in the text.

The problem isn’t the constitutional mechanism. It’s the messenger.

Video from 2024 shows Raskin vigorously defending Biden’s mental state — even as voters watched the president struggle through speeches, interviews, and public appearances. When special counsel Robert Hur released a report accurately describing Biden’s cognitive issues, Raskin dismissed the findings as “ridiculous cheap shots.”

Now Raskin’s letter to Trump’s White House physician describes a president whose public statements have become “increasingly incoherent, volatile, profane, deranged, and threatening” — citing the Iran posts and an Easter Egg Roll appearance as evidence of “profound medical difficulty.”

The same posts that Raskin says demonstrate cognitive decline came from a president who had just secured a ceasefire agreement with a hostile regional power. Whether Trump’s style is presidential is a fair debate. Whether it constitutes dementia is a different question — and one Raskin declined to apply with anything like consistency when his own party held the White House.

Raskin’s letter did attempt to invoke Republican precedent, noting that House Oversight Chairman James Comer called Biden’s mental acuity “one of the greatest scandals in our nation’s history” and that Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan declared a cognitively unfit president “isn’t fit for office.” Raskin wrote that he trusted “both Chairmen will stand by this important principle today.” It was a clever rhetorical move. It was also an implicit admission that the standard is being applied selectively by both sides.

The practical reality is that the bill faces long odds. Republicans control Congress, Trump could veto it outright, and even if it somehow cleared both hurdles, Vice President Vance — a Trump loyalist — would still have to concur with any finding of incapacity before removal could proceed.

Even Democratic leadership is skeptical of the broader push. One member close to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries privately called another Trump impeachment effort “a waste of time,” and a senior Democrat warned it would be “a huge mistake” that could cost the party its best shot at the White House in 2028. Jeffries himself told CNN that impeachment “is not an issue that often comes up” when he’s out in the country — that voters raise costs of living, housing, groceries, and health care instead.

That candid assessment from within Democratic ranks raises a question Raskin’s bill doesn’t answer: if the goal is accountability, what does filing long-shot legislation that everyone acknowledges won’t pass actually accomplish?

It’s worth noting this isn’t a new posture for Raskin. He first called for Trump’s removal via the 25th Amendment in 2017, the opening year of Trump’s first term. The Iran posts are the latest entry in a nearly decade-long pattern of treating every Trump controversy as a removal-worthy constitutional crisis.

Maryland voters have watched this playbook run for nine straight years. Every Trump social media post becomes a constitutional emergency. Every unorthodox negotiating tactic becomes evidence of incapacity. The effect isn’t accountability — it’s noise. And when everything is disqualifying, nothing is. Raskin’s bill may be constitutionally grounded. His party’s credibility in pressing it is not — and that’s a problem Democrats created entirely on their own.

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Sources: House Judiciary Committee Democrats press release, April 14, 2026; Axios, April 14, 2026; The Hill, April 10, 2026; CNN Politics, April 10, 2026; Gateway Pundit/archived video, April 2026; Connecticut Public/Fox News, April 7-8, 2026; CNN Politics, January 20, 2026

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