Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen revealed Tuesday that Cabinet members have not talked about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Biden during the national reckoning over his cognitive state.
Yellen, 77 — speaking before the House Financial Services Committee — suggested they don’t need to.
While several prominent Republicans including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have publicly nudged the Cabinet to consider the move, Yellen was asked whether it had occurred and replied simply, “No.”
She also was asked about the last time she had a meeting with the 81-year-old president and whether she observed any “cognitive decline” in him, as she gave her annual testimony on “the state of the international financial system.”
The treasury chief wouldn’t say the last time the pair met but added, “The president is extremely effective in the meetings that I’ve been in with him.
“That includes many international meetings that are multi-hour.”
In addition to Yellen, Vice President Kamala Harris has publicly stood by Biden, even as some top Democrats have called for him to exit the race after last month’s gaffe-ridden debate in which he mumbled, appeared to lose his train of thought and stare off blankly into space at times.
Under the 25th Amendment, the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet could deem the president incapable of discharging his duties and replace him or her with the vice president.
A sitting president enjoys the right to challenge the move before Congress, where he or she would have to win over a two-thirds majority in both chambers to retain power.
Since its ratification, the 25th Amendment has never been invoked to remove a sitting US president, though it has been dangled from time to time by critics of a commander in chief.
For example, Dem ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested former President Donald Trump’s Cabinet invoke the 25th in 2021, a suggested overthrow that ultimately never took place.
What to know about the fallout from President Biden’s debate performance:
- President Biden’s poor performance in the first 2024 presidential debate has left even some Democrats unsure of his fitness for office and future as the party’s candidate.
- Former President Barack Obama admitted that Biden had a “bad” debate, while his rival former President Donald Trump suggested that he was in a “trance” and “choked.”
- Biden told a crowd at a North Carolina rally the day after the debate that he doesn’t “debate as well as I used to” — but insisted that he can still “do this job.”
- The New York Times editorial board called on the president to serve the country by dropping out of the race. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a similar editorial a day later.
- Biden gathered with his family at Camp David to assess the campaign’s future, with his son Hunter reportedly pushing for him to stay in the race. Family members questioned whether the president’s top advisers should be fired after the disastrous debate.
- In a pre-taped interview with ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, Biden claimed that his “bad episode” at the debate was the result of a cold and not any cognitive issues.
- Biden has rejected calls for him to step down from fellow Democrats, insisting to Stephanopoulos that he is the most qualified to win the election. At a Wisconsin rally, he declared that he is “running and going to win again.”
Earlier in the day Tuesday, Johnson argued that Biden’s cabinet should consider the 25th.
“I would ask the Cabinet members to search their hearts,” Johnson said during a press conference. “And we hope that they will do their duty, as we all seek to do our duty to do best by the American people. These are fateful moments.
“I would be having that discussion with my colleagues at the Cabinet level,” he went on. “We’ll see what action they take. It’s a serious situation.”
Johnson’s press conference had an atypical sparse attendance from the press, which was mostly assembled about half a mile up the road outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters building where House Democrats met to discuss the president.
Half a dozen House Democrats have publicly come forward and urged Biden to pass on his presumptive presidential standard bearer status to someone else in the aftermath of the debate.
During the meeting, Democrats voiced their misgivings about the situation and tried to downplay the drama when swarmed by reporters afterward.
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Biden sent a letter to congressional Democrats on Monday stating that he’s not going anywhere.
“The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now,” Biden wrote in the letter. “It’s time for it to end. We have one job. And that is to beat Donald Trump.”
In a subsequent interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” which is reportedly one of his favorite shows, Biden dared dismayed Democrats to challenge him at the Democratic National Convention.
Biden has publicly contended that he was “exhausted” during the debate and maintained that he wouldn’t be running if he didn’t believe with all his “heart and soul” that he could do the job.