Will Section IV of the 25th Amendment be used during Trump's Presidency?

Section IV has never been invoked, and the mechanism requires the vice president plus a majority of the Cabinet to formally declare the president unable to serve, with Congress potentially stepping in if the president contests it. That is an extraordinarily high bar, and it is especially difficult because it depends on a coordinated break between a president and senior members of his own administration, which historically has not happened even during acute crises.

The main argument for a meaningful chance of use is not routine policy disagreement but the possibility of a severe medical, cognitive, or crisis-driven incapacity event that makes ordinary governance untenable. The amendment was designed for precisely that kind of contingency, and the remaining presidency still leaves ample time for an unforeseen event to occur. Public calls after controversial statements or episodes show that the topic remains politically alive, but those calls are not evidence that the constitutional process has begun.

Compared with the current market price of 25%, the market looks somewhat conservative but not wildly off. A 25% implied probability likely underweights the simple fact that there is still a long remaining window and Trump is a high-variance political figure, but it may also reflect the reality that the formal trigger is so hard to satisfy that most serious incidents still would not lead to invocation.

My view is that the market is modestly underpricing the event, but the gap should not be large. Most plausible paths to Yes require a rare combination of a qualifying incapacity event and elite political defection inside the executive branch, so the base rate remains low even if the headline risk feels elevated.