MMA fighter turned politician Sharice Davids joins call to remove Trump from office

In the aftermath of the insurrection that took place at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, lawmakers are calling for President Donald Trump to…

By: Karim Zidan | 2 years ago
MMA fighter turned politician Sharice Davids joins call to remove Trump from office
Bloody Elbow 2.0 | Anton Tabuena

In the aftermath of the insurrection that took place at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, lawmakers are calling for President Donald Trump to be removed from office.

According to reports, “Informal discussions” have been held within the Trump administration about the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer also called for the invocation of the 25th Amendment, adding that Trump “should not hold office one day longer.”

“The quickest and most effective way — it can be done today — to remove this president from office would be for the vice president to immediately invoke the 25th amendment,” Schumer said in a statement Thursday morning.

Invoking the 25th Amendment requires the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to vote on removing Trump from office. In such a situation, the president would be replaced by the vice president, who is second in the line of succession. To date, no sitting president has ever been permanently removed using the 25thAmendment.

Calls for Trump’s removal grew after Trump spoke at a rally on Jan. 6 in which he continued to spread misinformation about the 2020 presidential election before inciting the crowd to march on the Capitol, where they eventually laid siege on the building complex.

Approximately 100 Democratic members of Congress have expressed support for Trump’s removal, including former MMA fighter turned congresswoman Sharice Davids.

“For the first time in history we have a President who should be impeached twice but because of the time constraints and inaction of Senate Republicans, I urge the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment now,” Davids tweeted shortly following the attack on the Capitol.

Elected in 2018 to represent Kansas’ third congressional district, Davids is the first openly LGBTQ+ Native American elected to the U.S. Congress, and one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress. Prior to her pivot to politics, Davids was an MMA fighter who compiled a 5-1 professional record. She tried out for The Ultimate Fighter did not make it onto the show, leading her to shift her focus away from MMA to travel the U.S. and on Native American reservations to work with the communities, and has since become a nationally recognized expert on economic and community development programs and initiatives for Native Americans.

Other lawmakers have called for Trump to be impeached a second time, though it remains unclear whether there would be enough time to impeach the president before the end of his term on Jan. 20.

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About the author
Karim Zidan
Karim Zidan

Karim Zidan is a investigative reporter and feature writer focusing on the intersection of sports and politics. He has written for BloodyElbow since 2014 and has served as an associate editor since 2016. He also writes for The New York Times and The Guardian. Karim has been invited to speak about his work at numerous universities, including Princeton, and was a panelist at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival and the Oslo Freedom Forum. He also participated in the United Nations counter-terrorism conference in 2021. His reporting on Ramzan Kadyrov’s involvement in MMA, much of which was done for Bloody Elbow, has led to numerous award nominations, and was the basis of an award-winning HBO Real Sports documentary.

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