It's Time for the 25th Amendment

here are two kinds of emergencies in Washington.

There’s the kind where everyone runs around screaming, cameras rolling, sirens blaring, and a thousand Very Serious People hold forth on cable news about “uncharted territory.” How very 2017 of us.

And there’s the kind we’re in now, the slow-motion emergency, where everyone in Washington (and I mean, everyone, in both parties) knows what’s happening, everyone sees the smoke, and the people closest to the fire keep insisting it’s nothing. Move on, people, totally standard operating procedure from a totally normal President.

This is the second kind of emergency.

Because what we’re watching with Donald Trump isn’t one scandal, or one bad day, or one dumb executive order. It’s the grinding, daily normalization of instability, mental illness, medical coverup, personal sadism, and the Republican Party’s deliberate decision to treat that instability like it’s a brief, Spring political sun shower they can ride out.

They can’t. And they won’t.

So here we are, back at the constitutional tool Republicans pretend doesn’t exist:

The 25th Amendment. And it’s time.

Not because it’s fun. Not because it’s “political.” Not because it’s revenge.

Because it is literally the mechanism the Framers’ successors built for the moment when the President of the United States is unable to do the job.

And the question is no longer whether we’re allowed to ask it.

The question is: if not now, when?...