Nebraska Congressman Mike Flood on Friday called for members of President Joe Biden's Cabinet "to invoke the 25th Amendment for the good of our country" after with former President Donald Trump.
In Friday morning, Flood, who represents Nebraska's 1st Congressional District, became one of the country's first federal officeholders to call for Biden's removal from power over his uneven debate performance.
Tweeting from his official congressional account on X, formerly Twitter, Flood said the president's debate performance "revealed the current state of Biden’s mental acuity for all the world to see" and said he "has shown an unwillingness to let go of power" before calling on Biden's Cabinet to invoke the never-before-used 25th Amendment.
Established in 1965, the amendment allows the vice president and a majority of the president's Cabinet to vote to declare a president “unable to discharge the powers and the duties of his office†and give the vice president the duties of acting president.
Flood's endorsement of such a move — , a Republican from Texas who serves as the policy chair for the far-right House Freedom Caucus — drew stinging backlash from Democrats in Nebraska, where Flood has cast himself as a bipartisan dealmaker through his first two years in Washington, D.C.
"Flood, of course, is being over-the-top and reckless, calling for the 25th Amendment because someone had a bad debate performance, when his candidate (Trump) has 34 felonies and is a convicted criminal," said Jane Kleeb, the chair of Nebraska's Democratic Party. "I mean, let's get serious."
Flood, who was not available for an interview Friday, said in a follow-up statement that his "call for the 25th Amendment does not come lightly."
"Last night was not just tough to watch, it highlighted growing concerns about President Biden’s ability to carry out his presidential duties," Flood said in the statement. "He couldn’t formulate words to express himself during the debate, and if you were the CEO of a major company, you’d get fired."
Flood was one of the first GOP members of Congress to publicly back Roy's call for Biden's ouster Friday morning. By Friday afternoon, Roy urging Vice President Kamala Harris to convene Biden's Cabinet and and declare the president unable to carry out his duties, while House Speaker Mike Johnson amid this "alarming situation."
Biden, 81, was marred particularly early in the debate , engendering the concerns many Americans already had over his age and ability to serve.
Trump, meanwhile, was vigorous as he , refused to denounce those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and warned that the members of the congressional committee that investigated the insurrection could face criminal charges.
It was Biden's performance, though, that and reopened discussion of whether he should be the party's presidential nominee, The New York Times reported Thursday night, but Friday.
In Nebraska, Kleeb, who has been the state party's chair since 2016, acknowledged that Biden's debate performance marked "a bump in the road" for his campaign, but was emphatic about her and the party's continued support of the president.
"Our party is not talking about a new nominee," she told the Journal Star. "We are not gonna abandon the president after one bad debate performance. We all knew his age when we nominated him as president.
"And anybody on the bench that could be the next president in 2028 also knew Biden's age, and if they thought they had a path to victory, they would have won. So we are all rallied and strong behind the president. There is not an inch of room we're giving to considering having a brokered convention."
Kleeb, too, said November's election still presents a "total black and white choice for voters," casting Trump as the "chaos" candidate who "cozies up with Russia and North Korea."
"Voters are not shallow," Kleeb said. "They know how much is at stake.Â
"And then to have a member of Congress in our state be so extreme and so MAGA to call for — to invoke the 25th Amendment — is absolutely a snapshot of where the Republican Party is in our state," she said, accusing the GOP of having "no ideas and they go to the extreme because they think that's how we win elections."
Flood's quick embrace of the invocation of the 25th Amendment on Friday made him an outlier among Nebraska's congressional delegation.
Neither Rep. Adrian Smith nor Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska's 3rd and 2nd congressional districts, respectively, immediately weighed in on Roy's resolution Friday. In a social media post Thursday night, Bacon called the debate "the most lopsided" he had ever seen, declaring "Trump dominated tonight."
Flood's call for Biden's ouster comes less than a month after he stood alone among Nebraska's federal officeholders when he called for "respect (of) the rule of law" following Trump's conviction, which the state's other GOP officials widely cast as "political" and unfair.
The congressman's social media posts Friday were met with mixed reactions among his followers, one of whom to "get with Chip Roy and make it happen" while "call for (Trump) to withdraw from the race."
Democratic state Sen. Carol Blood, who is seeking to unseat Flood in November, said Flood "should worry more about doing his job and representing people than participating in hyper-partisanship shenanigans."
In a phone interview Friday, Blood pointed to the federal government's continued reliance on stopgap funding bills as evidence of a dysfunctional Congress while she largely declined to offer political commentary on Biden's debate performance — or her opponent's response to it.
"I'm mostly worried about the people who point fingers who aren't even doing their own jobs. It's hard to take anything they say seriously if they can't do the work that they've been assigned to do," she said, later adding: "We've got to stop the hyper-partisanship. I'm just not gonna participate in it."
Nebraska Congressman Mike Flood called for members of President Joe Biden's Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Biden from power following the president's uneven debate performance Thursday night.Â