Prediction markets tracking the possibility of President Donald Trump being removed from office under the 25th Amendment saw a steady climb over the weekend, with "Yes" contracts on the Kalshi platform rising from 28.6 percent to 35.1 percent within the last month. The number started at 15 percent when the contract launched in January 2025. It is now the second highest the figure since the start of the second term.
And right on cue, Democrats are doing what Democrats do: treating a betting platform like a constitutional mechanism.
According to Newsweek, the catalyst for the latest round of pearl-clutching was a Truth Social post Trump issued on Easter Sunday, a profanity-laden message directed at Iran over the ongoing war and the effective shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz:
"Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*****' Strait you crazy b*******, or you'll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah."
Colorful? Yes. Undiplomatic by State Department standards? Obviously. But the idea that this constitutes grounds for Cabinet-led removal of a sitting president tells you more about the people making the argument than about the president himself.
Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, wasted no time. On Sunday, he urged the Cabinet to consider invoking the 25th Amendment, calling Trump's post "completely, utterly unhinged."
Murphy didn't propose a policy alternative on Iran. He didn't outline what he'd do about the Strait of Hormuz. He skipped straight to removal. That's not governance. That's wish-casting.
It's worth pausing to remind everyone what the 25th Amendment actually demands, because the conversation around it has become almost entirely untethered from the text.
Invoking it would require the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to formally declare the president unable to perform the duties of office. That declaration would then trigger potential congressional involvement. This is not a vote-of-no-confidence mechanism imported from a parliamentary system. It was designed for incapacitation, not disagreement.
There is zero public indication that the vice president or any Cabinet member is entertaining this. None. The entire discourse is built on a prediction market contract and the hopes of Senate Democrats who have opposed this president since the day he took office.
Prediction markets are useful tools. They aggregate information, capture sentiment, and sometimes anticipate outcomes that traditional polling misses. But they are not oracles, and they are not evidence.
A 35.1 percent contract price means that traders, the majority of them, still believe this will not happen. Nearly two out of three bettors are on the "No" side. Framing a one-in-three speculative wager as a meaningful shift toward removal is editorial sleight of hand.
Critics of prediction markets have long argued that thin trading volumes and speculative spikes can distort these numbers. The source material doesn't even provide specific volume figures for this contract. We're asked to treat a rising line on a chart as a constitutional crisis without knowing whether the movement was driven by a thousand traders or a dozen.
Supporters counter that markets like Kalshi reflect real money and therefore real conviction. Fine. But real money also poured into contracts predicting outcomes that never materialized in every election cycle for the last decade. Money on the table doesn't make something likely. It makes it tradeable.
This is not the first time the 25th Amendment has been weaponized as a rhetorical device against Trump. It happened during the first term. It happened during the transition. It happens every time he says something that offends Washington's sense of decorum.
The playbook is familiar:
It's a feedback loop that feeds on itself and produces nothing. No Cabinet member defects. No formal action is taken. The news cycle moves on, and the same people reload the same argument for next time.
The United States is engaged in a conflict with Iran. The Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most critical energy chokepoints, has been effectively shut down. These are serious matters with real consequences for American security and the global economy.
Trump's rhetoric on the subject is blunt. It is directed at an adversarial regime that has made threats targeting civilian infrastructure. Whether one prefers the language of a diplomatic cable or the language of a Truth Social post, the underlying posture is clear: the administration is signaling that escalation against Iran is on the table and imminent.
That's a policy discussion worth having. Instead, we're discussing a prediction market contract and whether a profane social media post constitutes mental incapacity. One of these conversations matters. The other is a distraction dressed up as a constitutional concern.
Senator Murphy's call deserves scrutiny not for its seriousness, because it isn't serious, but for what it reveals about Democratic strategy during wartime. Rather than engaging on the merits of Iran policy, rather than offering an alternative framework for dealing with the Strait of Hormuz, Murphy chose to question the president's fitness for office based on tone.
This is a senator who could introduce legislation. He could demand hearings. He could propose diplomatic alternatives. He did none of those things. He called a social media post "completely, utterly unhinged" and suggested the Cabinet stage an intervention.
That's not opposition. That's performance.
And it's worth noting: if Democrats genuinely believed the president was incapacitated, they wouldn't be urging the Cabinet to act. They'd be filing formal resolutions. They'd be demanding medical evaluations through official channels. The gap between what they say and what they do tells the whole story.
Prediction markets will keep fluctuating. Democrats will keep invoking the 25th Amendment the way others invoke the weather: constantly, and with no ability to change it. Meanwhile, the actual war continues, the Strait remains closed, and the people treating a betting line as a barometer of constitutional crisis will wonder why no one takes them seriously.