The NAACP has been a force in American political life for 117 years. It has survived Jim Crow, fought the Klan in court, buried its members after lynchings, and outlasted every president who ever stood in the way of Black freedom. On Tuesday, for the first time in that history, the organization called for a sitting president to be removed from office under the 25th Amendment.

In a statement released April 7, the NAACP called on Vice President JD Vance and the Cabinet to invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, which allows for the removal of a president deemed unable to discharge the duties of the office. The statement cited what it called "alarming signs of President Trump's deteriorating health and increasingly delusional behavior," per the NAACP's official press release.

"This president is unfit, unwell, and unhinged," said Derrick Johnson, President and CEO of the NAACP. "The rhetoric and behavior we are witnessing from Trump isn't just alarming, it's dangerous. Trump must be immediately removed from office." The statement added that the situation has "reached a level of instability that poses a direct threat to the well-being of millions of Americans and the integrity of our armed forces."

The statement pointed specifically to Trump's Easter Sunday Truth Social post, in which he threatened to destroy Iran's power plants, bridges, and civilian infrastructure if Tehran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Trump had declared "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again," followed by threats to bomb the country "back to the Stone Ages." The NAACP described that post as one of "many recent actions that has triggered public concern" about Trump's mental fitness, per the organization's statement.

The NAACP's call comes amid a broader, unusually bipartisan chorus of voices raising the 25th Amendment. Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned from Congress in January after her own split with Trump, wrote on X that his Iran threats represented "evil and madness" and invoked the amendment, per The Hill. Former White House counsel Ty Cobb, Anthony Scaramucci, and Iranian embassies around the world have also publicly cited the amendment in recent days, per Time. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries separately called on Congress to "end this reckless war of choice in Iran before Donald Trump plunges us into World War III."

The 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967 in the aftermath of President Kennedy's assassination, establishes procedures for presidential succession and incapacity. Section 4, the provision at issue here, allows the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to declare the president unable to perform the duties of the office by sending a written declaration to the Speaker of the House and the Senate president pro tempore. The president can then contest the declaration, at which point Congress must vote, with a two-thirds majority in both chambers required to sustain the removal, per Time. Section 4 has never been involuntarily invoked against a sitting president.

The practical likelihood of the amendment being invoked remains extremely low. It would require Vice President Vance and a majority of Trump's own Cabinet to move against him, an outcome that political observers across the spectrum consider deeply improbable given the current alignment of the Republican Party. No Cabinet member has publicly indicated support for such a step.

The NAACP's decision to make this call for the first time in its 117-year history is a signal in itself. The organization has survived political climates far more dangerous than the present one without ever demanding the removal of a president through a constitutional mechanism. That it has chosen to do so now, over Trump's conduct during the Iran war, reflects both the gravity of the moment and the organization's assessment that the threshold for historic action has been crossed.

The White House has not responded to the NAACP's statement. Hours after it was issued, Trump announced a two-week ceasefire agreement with Iran brokered by Pakistan, conditioned on Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz.