CHICAGO — Illinois Governor JB Pritzker ignited a wave of political reaction this week after publicly calling for the invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove President Donald Trump from office, citing concerns over his mental fitness and inflammatory rhetoric targeting American cities.
Pitzker condemned Trump’s recent speech at Quantico, Virginia, where the president suggested using cities like Chicago as “training grounds for our military” and threatened action against “the enemy within.”
“It appears that Donald Trump not only has dementia set in, but he’s copying tactics of [Russian President] Vladimir Putin,” Pritzker said. “Sending troops into cities, thinking that that’s some sort of proving ground for war, or that indeed there’s some sort of internal war going on in the United States, is just, frankly, inane, and I’m concerned for his health. There is something genuinely wrong with this man, and the 25th Amendment ought to be invoked”.
By any measure of democratic stability, the recent rhetoric and behavior of President Donald Trump should alarm every American. When a sitting president refers to U.S. cities as “training grounds for our military,” we are no longer debating policy—we are confronting a crisis of fitness. Governor Pritzker’s bold call to invoke the 25th Amendment is not only justified, it’s overdue.
Other prominent voices echoed the governor’s remarks. Representative Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) posted a blunt message on social media: “25TH AMENDMENT!” following Trump’s Quantico address.
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich also weighed in, writing in a Tuesday editorial that Trump is “showing growing signs of dementia” and is “increasingly unhinged.” Reich cited Trump’s promotion of an AI-generated video about magical healing beds and his decision to deploy troops to Portland based on outdated footage from Fox News. “He’s 79 years old with a family history of dementia. He could well be going nuts,” Reich warned.
This is not political theater. It is a constitutional safeguard. The 25th Amendment exists precisely for moments like this—when the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office. It is not a partisan tool, but a mechanism to protect the republic from instability, erratic behavior, and cognitive decline that threatens national security.
Critics will argue that invoking the 25th Amendment is an extreme measure. But what is more extreme—removing a president who threatens cities with military force, or allowing such threats to go unchecked? What is more dangerous—questioning a leader’s fitness, or ignoring clear signs of cognitive decline and erratic behavior?
Pritzker’s leadership in this moment is both courageous and necessary. He is not merely defending Illinois; he is defending the integrity of American democracy. His invocation of the 25th Amendment is a call to action for Cabinet members, lawmakers, and civic leaders to prioritize the country’s well-being over political loyalty.
This is not about ideology. It is about stability, accountability, and the rule of law. The president’s words and actions have consequences. They embolden extremists, undermine public trust, and destabilize communities already grappling with economic and social challenges. When Trump speaks of “the enemy within,” he is not uniting the country—he is sowing division and fear.
Governor Pritzker’s stance reminds us that leadership is not about silence or calculation. It is about moral clarity. It is about recognizing when the line between political disagreement and constitutional crisis has been crossed. That line is behind us.
The 25th Amendment is not a relic of the past. It is a living provision, designed to protect the nation from precisely this kind of danger. It is time for those in power to heed Pritzker’s call. The stakes are too high for hesitation. America deserves a president who governs with reason, not rage; with clarity, not confusion.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.