While the state of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s health (and potential “is he alive/dead?” Schrodinger’s cat-like situation) plays out right now, I look at the real issue: there is no way to deal with incapacitated members of Congress. I look at prior situations in the Senate itself, and then I do go off on some tangents: historical situations where leaders’ deaths were covered up and more recent situations where a bad health situation was allowed to linger before the plug was finally pulled.
Episode Links and Text
On Congressional Incapacitation
26 Mar 2020, Bipartisan Policy Center: What If a Member of Congress Is Severely Incapacitated and Cannot Perform the Duties of the Job?
Presidential incapacitation, either anticipated and short term or unexpected and longer term, can be handled by a transfer of power to the Vice President under the procedures of the 25th amendment.
But if a member of Congress becomes incapacitated, there is no legal avenue to replace that person.
Recently, many in Congress have been trying to deal with the issue of members unable to come to Congress, either due to sickness or quarantine, or because hygiene recommendations or logistical issues makes showing up at Congress difficult or impossible. A separate issue, however, is what to do if a member is so sick or severely incapacitated that they could not perform the duties of the job (either remotely or in person).
Congressional history is filled with examples of members who have had severe, debilitating illnesses. Senator Karl Mundt of North Dakota suffered a stroke and was absent from the Senate for the final three years of his term. Illness forced Senator Carter Glass of Virginia to be absent from the Senate for nearly two years. In the case of Glass, citizens of Virginia petitioned courts to remove Glass from his seat, as it was effectively vacant. The court refused to take action.
Never has a sitting member of Congress been removed from office due to incapacitation.
Karl Mundt
U.S. Senate Biography
From 1948 until his retirement in 1973, South Dakota senator Karl Mundt was known as a fierce opponent of communism. As a member—and eventually ranking member—of the Committee on Government Operations and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Mundt worked to expose communists in the government. In 1954 he chaired the Subcommittee on Investigations for the Army-McCarthy hearings, remaining loyal to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Mundt gained prominence with two major investigations into bribery allegations against officials at the Agriculture Department and the Pentagon. Mundt voted for cloture to end debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after striking a deal with Republican Leader Everett Dirksen. Mundt also became one of the leading conservationists in the Senate, which earned him an award from The World Wildlife Fund in 1969. After he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1969, Senate leaders took the unprecedented step of removing Mundt from his committee assignments.
Wikipedia: Illness
On November 23, 1969, Mundt suffered a severe stroke and was subsequently unable to attend sessions of Congress, although he received extensive speech and physical therapy. His wife, Mary, led his staff in Mundt's place and refused calls for the crippled Senator to resign. Mundt was stripped of his committee assignments by the Senate Republican Conference in 1972, but he remained in office through the end of his term on January 3, 1973.[3] He did not seek reelection in 1972, and was succeeded in the Senate by Democrat James G. Abourezk.
Carter Glass
Wikipedia: Family, decline, death
Carter Glass was a Methodist.[18] When he was twenty-eight, Glass married Aurelia McDearmon Caldwell, a school teacher. They had four children. She died of a heart ailment in 1937.[19] Glass remarried in 1940 at the age of 82. His second wife, Mary Scott, was his constant companion as his health began to fail over the next few years. They lived at the Mayflower Hotel Apartments in Washington, D.C. Starting in 1942, Glass began suffering from various age-related illnesses and could not attend Senate meetings after that time. However, he refused to resign from the Senate, despite many requests that he do so, and even kept his committee chairmanship. Many visitors were also kept away from him by his wife.[20]
A confidential 1943 analysis of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Isaiah Berlin for the British Foreign Office stated that Glass[21]
“...is very old and frail and something of a legend in the South. The fruit-growing interests of his State make him an opponent of the reciprocal trade pacts, but on all other questions he has loyally supported the President’s anti-Isolationist policy. He cannot have many years of active service before him.”
Glass died of congestive heart failure in Washington, D.C., on May 28, 1946. He is interred at Spring Hill Cemetery in Lynchburg. His fellow sponsor of the Glass-Owen Act, Senator Robert Latham Owen, lies nearby.
Gemini Conversation and Excerpts
Link to Gemini Conversation: https://share.gemini.google/i03cKVsS52d4
A few items:
McConnell leadership positions he still retains:
While the Constitution provides no clear mechanism to force an incapacitated senator to vacate their seat, committee assignments and chairmanships are governed separately by party rules and Senate resolutions.
Though he stepped down as the Republican Leader in January 2025, McConnell still holds several significant positions in the 119th Congress (2025–2026). As of July 2026, he holds the following roles:
Full and Joint Committees
* Senate Committee on Rules and Administration (Chair)
* Joint Committee on Printing (Chair)
* Joint Committee on the Library (Vice Chair)
Subcommittees
* Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense (Chair) — He also sits on the full Senate Appropriations Committee.
* Agriculture Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics, and Research (Chair) — He also sits on the full Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee.
Because committee business often relies on narrow party margins, his ongoing hospitalization is actively bottlenecking Senate operations. Without his vote, the Appropriations Committee is currently split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, which has stalled scheduled markups and temporarily blocked the advancement of defense spending bills for the 2027 fiscal year.
Discussing a “25th Amendment” for Congress
….
The Current Reality
Without a new Constitutional Amendment, a sitting member’s seat only becomes officially vacant under three conditions:
* Death
* Voluntary Resignation
* Expulsion (which has historically only been used for treason or severe criminal corruption, never for a medical crisis).
Lawfare
Because the Constitution gives each chamber the exclusive power to “be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members,” the Senate itself must recognize a vacancy before a state governor can act. If an incapacitated senator cannot resign, the Senate is effectively stuck at an impasse unless they are willing to attempt an unprecedented two-thirds expulsion vote.
Me: Yes, I don't see any of the Senators, many of whom are aged themselves and may undergo extended hospitalization and return, voting for expulsion just due to medical incapacitation... which may also complicate any use of a Constitutional Amendment anyway. It seems it needs something where it comes from the state/constitutents
Gemini:
You’ve hit on the exact structural flaw in relying on the Senate to police itself. Expulsion was designed for treason or extreme corruption, not for a severe medical crisis. Because many senators are elderly and protective of their own institutional power, they have a vested interest in not setting a precedent of ejecting a colleague for health reasons.
Because of that inherent conflict of interest, a Constitutional Amendment designed to address incapacity would likely need to bypass the chamber entirely and put the trigger in the hands of the state or its constituents.
….
The Historical Hurdle
The reason we don’t have these mechanisms now is that the Framers specifically debated—and rejected—giving states the power to recall federal representatives during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. They feared that if states could recall senators at will, the federal government would be too unstable and members would be beholden to local factions rather than the national interest.
Overcoming that deeply ingrained constitutional history to pass a new amendment would be incredibly difficult, but as you pointed out, leaving the decision to the Senate almost guarantees inaction.
Historical Examples of Hiding Deaths of Leaders
Gemini Output (plus some links) — due to length, will not blockquote, but the below is output straight from Gemini. I will be dropping in links to other sources.
Hiding the death of a leader is a surprisingly common historical strategy, usually executed by inner circles desperately trying to buy time to secure their own power, prevent a military collapse, or manipulate the line of succession.
Here are three of the most audacious, and successful, cover-ups in history:
1. The Carts of Rotting Fish (China, 210 BCE)
You likely heard about the death of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China (and the man buried with the Terracotta Army). He died suddenly while touring Eastern China, two months away from the capital.
His Chancellor, Li Si, and the chief eunuch, Zhao Gao, panicked. They knew the Emperor’s capable eldest son, Fusu, favored a rival faction and would likely execute them upon taking the throne. They needed time to forge a fake imperial decree forcing Fusu to commit suicide and installing a younger, easily manipulated son instead.
To hide the death during the long journey back to the capital, they kept the Emperor’s body inside his enclosed, shade-drawn carriage. They had meals delivered to the window, carried on loud one-sided conversations with the carriage, and issued forged documents from inside. However, it was the middle of summer, and the Emperor’s body began to rapidly decompose. To mask the overwhelming smell of a rotting monarch, Li Si ordered carts of salted, decomposing fish (abalone) to be hitched immediately in front of and behind the imperial carriage.
2. The Three-Year Shadow (Japan, 1573)
Takeda Shingen, known as the “Tiger of Kai,” was one of the most brilliant and feared warlords of Japan’s Sengoku (Warring States) period. In 1573, while on a major military campaign against his rival Tokugawa Ieyasu, Shingen fell mortally ill.
Knowing his clan was surrounded by aggressive enemies who would immediately invade if they knew he was dead, Shingen issued a stunning final command: his death was to be kept an absolute secret for three full years.
His generals obliged. To pull off the deception, they utilized a kagemusha (a political body double). Shingen’s younger brother, Takeda Nobukado, bore a striking resemblance to the warlord and stepped into the role. For three years, the double attended military meetings, reviewed troops from a distance, and maintained the illusion that Shingen was alive. The ruse successfully held off rival warlords, who were too terrified of Shingen’s tactical genius to risk an attack. (This incredible cover-up later inspired Akira Kurosawa’s 1980 masterpiece film, Kagemusha).
Kagemusha IMdB link
3. The Secret in the Tent (Ottoman Empire, 1566)
Suleiman the Magnificent died of natural causes in his royal tent during the brutal Siege of Szigetvár in Hungary.
His Grand Vizier, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, recognized a catastrophic problem: announcing the death of the empire’s greatest sultan would instantly shatter the morale of the besieging Ottoman army. Worse, Suleiman’s heir, Selim II, was 800 miles away in Anatolia. If the army found out the Sultan was dead, it would trigger a chaotic, violent succession crisis right in the middle of a warzone.
For 48 days, the Grand Vizier kept the death an absolute secret. He had the Sultan secretly buried beneath the floorboards of his own tent. He forged military orders in the Sultan’s handwriting and severely restricted access to the royal quarters. To keep the troops convinced, he occasionally propped up a lookalike in the Sultan’s carriage to wave at the army from a distance in dim lighting. The ruse worked perfectly — the Ottomans won the siege, and the secret was only revealed once Selim was safely secured on the throne.
Modern Political Incapacitations: Two Famous Examples
I selected 2 of the 3 given to me by Gemini: Franco and Woodrow Wilson. You may find the third interesting, but it’s not in the podcast.
1. The Three-Year Secret (Ethiopia, 1913–1916)
Emperor Menelik II, widely considered the founder of the modern Ethiopian state, suffered a series of severe strokes starting in 1906 and was entirely incapacitated by 1909. His teenage grandson, Lij Iyasu, was elevated to act as the de facto regent.
When Menelik II finally died on December 12, 1913, Iyasu was terrified that formally announcing the death would trigger a massive succession war among the regional nobility. To secure his own grip on the throne, Iyasu strictly forbade anyone from mourning, locked down access to the palace, and kept the Emperor’s death an absolute state secret. The Ethiopian public was kept completely in the dark for nearly three years. The ruse only ended in September 1916, when a coalition of nobles overthrew Iyasu and finally announced that Menelik had been dead since 1913.
2. The “Life Support” Delay (Spain, 1975)
As medical technology advanced, 20th-century inner circles realized they didn’t need to hide a corpse—they just needed to keep the heart beating artificially until the political timing was right.
Francisco Franco, Spain’s military dictator, suffered severe gastrointestinal bleeding and fell into a coma on November 3, 1975. For weeks, his inner circle—led by his surgeon son-in-law—kept him artificially alive on life support machines. While historians still debate exactly who gave the final order, Franco was officially unplugged and declared dead on November 20.
This date was almost certainly manipulated for propaganda purposes: November 20 was the exact anniversary of the 1936 execution of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the revered founder of the Spanish fascist movement that had originally brought Franco to power.
Wikipedia: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead
3. The Ultimate Incapacitation Cover-Up (United States, 1919–1921)
Tying back to your earlier questions about what happens when a U.S. official is incapacitated—while he didn’t actually die, the most consequential 20th-century cover-up was that of President Woodrow Wilson.
In October 1919, Wilson suffered a massive stroke that left him paralyzed on his left side and partially blind. Rather than transferring power to the Vice President, his wife, Edith Wilson, and his physician, Dr. Cary Grayson, formed an impenetrable barrier around the President.
For the final 17 months of his presidency, Edith acted as the sole gatekeeper. She reviewed all state papers, decided what the President would see, and effectively ran the executive branch by proxy, all while issuing statements that Wilson was merely suffering from “exhaustion.” They successfully hid the true, devastating severity of his condition from Congress, the press, and the public.
This massive deception is precisely the historical nightmare that eventually pushed Congress to draft the 25th Amendment—specifically to ensure the executive branch could never be secretly run by an unelected proxy again.
Development of the 25th Amendment
As I mentioned in the podcast, Gemini was actually incorrect about Wilson’s situation being the direct impetus for the 25th Amendment, which wasn’t ratified until the 1960s. It does help to question the stuff the AI feeds back at you — it tries to make linkages that aren’t exactly correct.
10 Feb 2021, National Constitution Center: How a national tragedy led to the 25th amendment
It was on this day in 1967 that two states, Nevada and Minnesota, made the Constitution’s 25th Amendment a reality, clearing up questions about presidential succession that dated back to the Founders’ time.
President John F. Kennedy’s death on November 22, 1963, led a united Congress to push for the key constitutional change. Kennedy’s assassination created moments of chaos in the federal government that afternoon. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was in the same motorcade as Kennedy, and there were early, erroneous reports that Johnson was also wounded.
As the country came to grips with the assassination, Johnson made sure the moment when he took the oath of office, about two hours after Kennedy’s death, was documented, so the nation knew a constitutional change of office had taken place.
Kennedy’s sudden passing accelerated an argument about a constitutional change that had been in the works in Congress in 1963.
Technically, the Constitution never spelled out how a vice president would become president if a president died, resigned or was unable to perform the office’s duty.
This oversight became apparent in 1841, when the newly elected President, William Henry Harrison, died about a month after becoming President. Vice President John Tyler, in a bold move, settled the political debate about succession.
There was a question in Congress about what powers Tyler had and what he should be called (Acting President, President or Vice President). Tyler settled the debate by asking the Chief Judge of the District of Columbia Circuit to administer the presidential oath, and he fought all attempts by his many political foes to treat him as anything but the legitimate President of the United States.
In the following years, presidential successions happened after the deaths of six presidents, and there were two cases where the offices of president and vice president almost became vacant at the same time. The “Tyler Precedent” stood fast in these transition periods.
Furthermore, there was no constitutional way to replace a vice president who had vacated office or to handle a situation where a president became incapacitated while in office.
By 1963, Congress was debating an attempt to amend the Constitution to clear up all succession matters and add a procedure for dealing with a leader who became unable to perform the office’s duties temporarily or permanently. This became a bigger issue with the realities of the Cold War and with President Dwight Eisenhower’s illnesses in the 1950s.
The influential Senator Estes Kefauver had started the amendment effort during the Eisenhower era, after it was proposed by the American Bar Association, and he renewed it in 1963. Kefauver died in August 1963 after suffering a heart attack on the Senate floor.
With Kennedy’s unexpected death, the need for a clear way to determine presidential succession, especially with the new reality of the Cold War and its frightening technologies, forced Congress into action.
The 25th Amendment was more about multiple succession issues more than incapacity, in terms of getting it passed.
Mitch McConnell Coverage
This is elsewhere, not really in this episode.
* 8 July 2026, The Cut: What’s Going on With Mitch McConnell?
* 10 July 2026, Intelligencer: New Mitch McConnell Ambulance Video Adds to Health Mystery
* 10 July 2026, CNN: McConnell was loaded into ambulance on a stretcher, according to eyewitness and new video
* 10 July 2026, USA Today: Elaine Chao, wife of Mitch McConnell, issues statement after US return
* 11 July 2026, WHAS11: ‘Tell us what’s going on’ | Andy Beshear, Scott Jennings strike similar tone on Mitch McConnell
Related Links
* 30 Jun 2026: Congressional Morbidity and Mortality Watch: A Quickie Update - the first time hearing about McConnell’s hospitalization
* Feb 2026: Political Mortality: Rahm Emanuel Says There Should Be a Mandatory 75-Year-Old Retirement Age for Key Federal Roles
* 9 Jan 2026: Congressional Mortality 2026 Update: More Consequences
* 25 May 2025: Political Mortality Update: Yes, A THIRD Democratic Representative Died in 2025
* 10 Apr 2025: Congressional Mortality Has Consequences
* 25 Jan 2025: 2025 Update on Senate Demographics
* Sep 2023: Politicians: Don’t Tempt the Reaper
* Feb 2023: Senate Mortality 2023: Top Ten Old Senators
* April 2022: All Men Must Die, But They Don’t Have to Die in Office
* May 2023: A Sampling of Political Mortality
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