WASHINGTON (AP) – House Democrats released a law on Friday that sets regulations for the presidential succession, bringing up President Donald Trump’s recent COVID-19 diagnosis and epidemic among senior management officials.
The law would identify a bipartisan commission of 16 members of doctors and former managers to conduct a medical examination of the president and assess the president’s suitability for office.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters that the procedure was not aimed at Trump and aimed to clarify the procedure for long-term presidents.
“This is President Trump. I will face the trial of voters, yet it shows the desire for us to create a procedure for long-term presidents,” he said.
The Democratic law would address a 25th Amendment provision that allows the vice president and a majority of “any other framework that Congress can legally provide” for the president to be “unable to fulfill the powers and tasks of office. ArrayArray” Congress has never acted on this provision.
The 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967, established a legal mechanism for appointing a head of state if the president is disabled or deceased, and also formalized the line of succession for the vice president to assume office if the president dies or resigns.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat for Maryland, a former constitutional law professor who introduced a similar law in 2017, said trump’s case and the option for the president to come into a coma or under a respirator had “focused everyone on the desire to follow through this suggestion on the 25th Amendment that Congress has created its own body. And I’m thinking once about the COVID-19 era, where many of the government actors who have been affected through it will have to act. “
When asked if Trump had reached the threshold to hand over to the vice president under the 25th Amendment, Pelosi said, “It’s our decision. “
More: ‘Changed State’: Pelosi says the Amendment will be discussed, describing the line of presidential succession
Legislation will be available. The House is out of consultation until Election Day, and the Republican-controlled Senate is likely to oppose any action on the bill.
When asked on one occasion in Kentucky about Pelosi’s comments Thursday on the 25th Amendment, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Republican for Ky. , said Pelosi’s comments were “absurd” and “discarded” in the last few weeks before the election.
She intensified her verbal attacks on Trump last week from her positive COVID-19 test, arguing that the president was in a “deteriorated condition” and possibly would have affected her trial due to her diagnosis of COVID-19 or medical treatment.
Trump won the steroid dexamethasone over the weekend after an unknown drop in oxygen levels.
“It is transparent that (Trump) is taking medication, all of us who are taking drugs of this severity are in a state of disrepair. He bragged about the drugs he was taking,” Pelosi said Friday, mentioning “articles from fitness professionals. . it could be “an effect on judgment”.
When asked if the bill is similar to his comments on the president’s intellectual status or past political judgment, Pelosi said the bill is not about “none of us dressed in a judgment about the president’s welfare” and involves the long-term movement of Power.
Contribution: Maureen Groppe, Savannah Behrmann