Newsom demands 25th Amendment for Trump — and conservatives remind him about Biden

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called President Donald Trump's Thursday evening speech on election integrity a "legitimate 25th Amendment moment," demanding the constitutional mechanism be used to remove a sitting president from office. Within hours, Republicans had turned the charge back on him with a single, devastating question: Where was this concern when Joe Biden was in the White House?

The exchange, reported by Fox News Digital, laid bare a contradiction that Democrats have never adequately answered. For years, prominent party figures, Newsom among them, dismissed mounting evidence of Biden's cognitive struggles. Now, four months before the November midterms, those same voices want the 25th Amendment weaponized against a Republican president who just delivered a policy speech they didn't like.

The Republican National Committee's official X account captured the mood on the right in blunt terms:

"You literally propped up a vegetable and lied to the American people about his cognitive decline for four years and never mentioned the 25th amendment once."

What Trump actually said

Trump addressed the nation Thursday evening on the subject of election integrity. He said his administration had discovered a series of weaknesses in the nation's election systems and that newly declassified documents, released by the White House, would reveal foreign data theft carried out by China. He said members of the U.S. government had known about these vulnerabilities for years and that the American people had been misled about them.

Fox News Digital noted it could not independently verify the content of the declassified documents. But the substance of the speech, election security, foreign interference, government transparency, falls squarely within the president's constitutional authority. Nothing about it suggests the kind of incapacity the 25th Amendment was designed to address.

Newsom saw it differently. He characterized Trump's remarks as evidence of cognitive impairment and framed the speech as a political scheme rather than a policy address.

"The only thing missing in Donald Trump's speech was tin foil. This was a legitimate 25th Amendment moment, the rambling of a mad king."

He went further, alleging the president's real motive was election manipulation. "He wants to rig the election in 2026. He knows he is going to lose. That's what that whole thing was about," Newsom said.

The Biden problem Democrats can't escape

The governor's sudden interest in presidential fitness would carry more weight if he hadn't spent years defending Biden against the very same concerns. Fox News contributor Joe Concha pointed to Newsom's record on the subject in a post on X:

"Given Newsom's defense to this day of President Biden, calling him one of the greatest presidents ever, there's a saying around sitting this one out that applies here..."

The contrast is hard to miss. Biden, now in his eighties, left office after a presidency marked by persistent questions about his mental acuity, questions that Democrats and allied media outlets aggressively dismissed as partisan attacks. Former first lady Dr. Jill Biden recently gave an update on the former president's health, saying he will live with cancer for the rest of his life and that while he maintains a busy schedule, he has slowed down.

Newsom never called for the 25th Amendment during any of that. Neither did the Democratic lawmakers now lining up behind the idea. The selective application of constitutional concern is the point, and it's the reason the RNC's response landed so hard.

Newsom's political positioning has drawn scrutiny on multiple fronts in recent months. His office recently conceded it wants faster vote counts after Trump called out California's chronic delays, an admission that undercut years of dismissing those complaints.

House Democrats push a formal removal bill

Newsom's rhetoric didn't emerge in a vacuum. Earlier this year, House Democrats unveiled legislation that would use the 25th Amendment's provision allowing Congress to establish an independent body to evaluate presidential fitness. The bill, associated with Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., would create a panel of past presidents, physicians, and other experts empowered to review the cognitive state of any president.

The 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967, provides two paths for declaring a president unable to serve. The Cabinet can make that determination, or Congress can establish an independent body to do so. Democrats are pursuing the second route, a legislative mechanism that, if enacted, would hand enormous power to an unelected panel.

Ansari, a former Phoenix vice mayor elected to Congress in 2024, has been among the most vocal proponents. In April, she posted on X that "Trump is clearly experiencing severe cognitive decline and leaders from every political affiliation have recognized this. He's become a national security threat to the United States." After Thursday's speech, she escalated further:

"He lies with every breath he takes. How can anyone deny the urgency of the 25th Amendment at this point?"

Newsom's office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment on whether the governor would support Ansari's bill.

The contradiction no one can explain away

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton framed the episode as something more troubling than political opportunism. He argued Newsom was retaliating against Trump for the specific content of the speech, not the manner in which it was delivered.

"Gavin Newsome wants to remove [Trump] from office for disclosing California could have tens of thousands of aliens illegally registered to vote and that China attacked 220 million voters."

That framing puts the 25th Amendment push in a different light. If Democrats are invoking constitutional removal mechanisms not because a president is incapacitated but because they object to his policy disclosures, the implications for democratic governance are serious. The 25th Amendment was written for medical emergencies, a president under anesthesia, a president felled by a stroke, not for policy disagreements four months before an election.

The question of illegal immigrants on California voter rolls has become a persistent flashpoint. Trump's speech reportedly referenced the issue directly, and the broader debate over illegal immigrants driving California's population growth has put the state's Democratic establishment on the defensive.

California Assemblyman Joe Patterson, a Republican, identified the irony in Newsom's position with precision:

"Does anyone else think it's weird that as he talks about Trump rigging an election, he simultaneously asks for the president's cabinet to remove a duly elected president?"

He added: "Yeah, Gavin... that would pose no risk to our democracy at all. Get real!"

A governor with his own credibility problems

Newsom's standing as a critic of presidential fitness is further complicated by his own political record. He is currently pursuing a $787 million defamation lawsuit against Fox News, which recently cleared a key hurdle when a Delaware judge refused to dismiss the case. As Newsmax reported, the suit centers on Fox host Jesse Watters airing an edited clip of a phone call between Newsom and Trump during the June 2025 Los Angeles immigration protests. The case now moves to discovery, the same litigation phase that produced damaging internal communications in Fox's prior Dominion settlement.

The governor's willingness to litigate aggressively against media outlets while simultaneously demanding the removal of a duly elected president paints a picture of a politician more interested in political combat than constitutional principle.

Newsom has also faced criticism closer to home. His $20 million diaper program drew fire over inflated costs and nonprofit ties, and his handling of state emergencies, including a recent chemical tank incident that threatened 40,000 Orange County residents, has raised questions about where his attention actually lies.

The left's cheering section

Not everyone on the left treated Newsom's 25th Amendment call with the gravity the subject deserves. Democratic influencer Harry Sisson celebrated the moment on X, posting: "Boom. Gov. Gavin Newsom calls for the 25th Amendment to be invoked after Trump's unhinged speech tonight. He's right!"

That reaction, treating a constitutional removal mechanism as a social media victory lap, tells you everything about how seriously some on the left take the institutions they claim to be defending.

The 25th Amendment exists for genuine incapacity, not for moments when a president says something his opponents find inconvenient. Democrats spent years ignoring real and visible questions about Biden's fitness. They have no standing to invoke the same standard now, and voters can see the difference.

When you spend four years looking the other way on one president's decline and then reach for the Constitution the moment another president gives a speech you don't like, the problem isn't presidential fitness. It's yours.