House Democrats from many states including California, Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania and many other states are trying to prove that President Donald Trump is no longer capable to led the country.
Led by Rep. Jamie Raskin and supported by 50 House Democrats, the proposal would create a congressional commission empowered to evaluate a president’s fitness for office under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, thrusting one of the Constitution’s most dramatic safeguards back into the national spotlight.
With Republicans controlling the House and Donald Trump able to veto any bill that reached his desk, the effort stands for now more as a declaration of principle than a likely legislative breakthrough.
Still, the push reflects a deeper unease that is no longer confined to the political fringe.
Former White House doctor Jonathan Reiner has argued that the current system for declaring a president unfit is so politically and practically unworkable that it leaves the country vulnerable until a crisis becomes undeniable.
His criticism has sharpened around Trump’s public fixation on passing the MoCA, a basic cognitive screening test Reiner says proves little about the judgment, memory and decision-making required in office.
The proposal and the medical criticism point to a broader reckoning now taking shape in Washington: whether the nation needs a more credible, transparent and bipartisan way to judge presidential fitness before doubt turns into danger.
However, rumors remain. And they are growing bigger.
Whispers that once lived only in private conversations are starting to spill into public view, and they paint a striking picture of unease inside the Republican Party.
According to Brian Karem, a former White House reporter and Salon columnist, several Republicans told him that if senators and House members could vote on Donald Trump’s future by secret ballot, the outcome could be devastating for the president.
The suggestion was not merely that he has critics inside his own party, but that he could face impeachment, conviction and removal if lawmakers were freed from the political cost of saying so out loud.
That remains, for now, a hypothetical.
Karem reported that a source connected to Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s office said such a vote is not currently realistic, though the door was not fully closed.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” the source told him. “But let’s see what happens tomorrow.”
That comment captured the uncertainty hanging over the moment: open rebellion may still be unlikely, but the fact that Republicans are even speaking this way suggests the ground beneath Trump is not as firm as it once appeared.
Karem argued that the more probable window for any serious internal revolt would come after the midterm elections.
He described a presidency that entered a second term with confidence, leaning on a Supreme Court ruling that Trump viewed as a broad shield of protection.
But Karem’s reporting suggested that strategy has not produced stability. Instead, he wrote that events have unraveled so badly that, with just over 1,000 days left in Trump’s term, the president now appears more erratic and less contained than he did during his first time in office. One former White House staffer told Karem that prospect was “frightening to consider.”
The concern, in this account, is not limited to anonymous insiders.
Marc Racicot, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, a former Montana governor and an Army JAG officer, has also spoken sharply about Trump’s recent conduct.
Racicot singled out Trump’s posting of an artificially generated image depicting himself as Jesus, a move that drew fresh outrage and deepened questions about his judgment.
He also pointed to later remarks from Trump and Vice President JD Vance as part of a broader pattern that, in his view, has only worsened the political and constitutional strain.
Racicot’s criticism was blunt and unusually severe for a longtime Republican figure.
He said Trump had shown contempt for constitutional norms and described him as unfit to manage the government.
In one of his harshest assessments, Racicot said, “He’s gone so far as to try and intimidate the pope, for God’s sake. This guy has no respect for any part of the Constitution.” He went even further, saying Trump was “incompetent in terms of managing the government of the United States.”
Yet even as he discussed removal, Racicot made clear that the path forward is far from simple. He suggested that impeachment could move too slowly to meet the urgency of the moment, raising instead the possibility of the 25th Amendment as a faster route.
“The 25th is fast and involves fewer people from a convenience perspective and speed perspective,” he said.
But he also acknowledged the central obstacle: any such effort would have to begin from within the administration itself, and he said he has seen no sign that such a move is underway.
That leaves Republicans in a familiar but increasingly uncomfortable place, privately critical, publicly cautious, and still tethered to a president some now seem to view as a growing liability.
For the moment, Trump remains in office, and talk of removal is still more conversation than action. But the significance of Karem’s reporting lies in what it reveals beneath the surface: not a party united in confidence, but one wrestling with doubt, fear and the possibility that its most powerful figure may also be its most dangerous burden.
