Trio of N.J. House Dems call for invoking 25th Amendment over Trump’s Iran threats

With President Donald Trump ramping up his threats against Iran, three New Jersey House Democrats are calling for the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to be invoked and the president to be removed from power entirely.

Earlier today, Trump posted on social media that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” a vague but alarming escalation of the ongoing Iran conflict. The post led many Democrats, New Jersey Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), and LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) among them, to say he is no longer constitutionally fit to serve.

“If the President refuses to de-escalate the situation, the Vice President and the Cabinet must act to invoke the 25th Amendment. That is where we are, and there is no way around it,” Menendez said in a video posted to social media. “We cannot sit idly by while we watch an unhinged, erratic President drag us deeper into wars and conflicts that do not serve the interests of the American people.”

“In just 48 hours, the president has gone from threatening war crimes to threatening genocide,” Watson Coleman concurred. “He is clearly unstable and must be set aside.”

Under the 25th Amendment, the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet (or “such other body as Congress may by law provide”) may determine that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and replace him with the vice president, who becomes the acting president until the president regains fitness.

In the current political reality, where both Vice President JD Vance and every member of the Cabinet are staunch Trump loyalists, such a scenario seems unlikely to take place. But as Democrats continue to look for ways to voice their opposition to the war in Iran – their efforts to curtail the conflict via congressional resolution have been repeatedly shot down by Republicans – invoking the 25th Amendment is a new frontier.

“It is absolutely time to use the 25th Amendment,” McIver said. “The president is talking openly about committing war crimes. His cabinet must remove him. He’s not stable.”

Watson Coleman, Menendez, and McIver are the only New Jersey representatives to reference the amendment thus far, but other state Democrats have condemned Trump’s post and called on the House and Senate, both of which are currently out of session, to return at once. (New Jersey’s three Republican congressmen have yet to comment publicly on the post.)

“Congress must convene immediately to condemn Trump’s horrific threats against tens of millions of people and stop this unconstitutional war,” Senator Andy Kim said. “We must prevent Trump from unleashing the catastrophic and illegal violence he is touting.”

This story was updated at 3:26 p.m. with comment from McIver.