Medical Experts Declare President Trump Too Unstable to Remain in Office, Cite Nuclear Weapons Risks

On April 30, 2026, a group of 36 leading physicians and other doctors with expertise in mental health issued a statement calling for President Donald J. Trump’s immediate, lawful removal from office for medical reasons. His mental instability, coupled with his sole, unchecked authority to launch nuclear weapons, makes him a clear and present danger to the safety of all Americans, they declared. The U.S. Senate offices of Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Jack Reed (D-RI) entered the experts’ statement into the Congressional Record, Vol. 172, No. 76. 

Read the statement in full here and below.

Medical Concerns about President Donald J. Trump and His Fitness for Office

The following is not a political statement. It is a medical one, made by individuals holding both conservative and liberal ideologies, identifying as both Republicans and Democrats, from different backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and religions. 

We are a group of neurologists, forensic psychiatrists, general psychiatrists, and other physicians, along with other mental health professionals, experienced in the diagnosis of cognitive disorders and in evaluating dangerousness to self and others. Among us are professionals whom the courts and criminal justice system regularly turn to for our expert opinion in these matters. We are also consulted by governments in matters related to national security and the psychological profiles of world leaders. Prior to the presidential election in the Fall of 2024, a statement assessing Donald J. Trump’s mental fitness for the presidency was issued. At that time, serious signs of cognitive decline were identified, and in our expert opinion, these signs warranted disqualification from office. 

It is our professional opinion, based on previous and ongoing assessments, that Donald Trump’s mental state since our 2024 statement has deteriorated even further. In keeping with our professional ethics, and for those of us who are physicians, with the Declaration of Geneva—the successor to the Hippocratic Oath that binds us to the humanitarian principles of medicine since the Nuremberg trials—we are compelled to warn of a President of the United States who is increasingly a danger to the public. 

We do not take our statement, and the responsibility that comes with making it, lightly. 

The President was not examined face to face, and he is not a patient of any member of our group. Rendering a formal diagnosis in this case is not our role. We have closely followed his behavior and his statements over the past year. 

Objectively observable signs of serious medical concern include:

• Marked deterioration in cognitive functioning, evidenced by disorganized and tangential speech, rambling digressions, factual confusions, unexplained sudden changes of course in strategic matters, both national and international, episodes of apparent somnolence during critical public proceedings.
• Grandiose and delusional beliefs, including assertions of infallibility, imagery of himself as Pope suggestive of a divine mission, being a mythical warrior hero, depicting himself as combat pilot—dropping feces on civilians, and claims that his decision-making authority is unlimited—with no need to consider domestic and international laws and constrained only by his “own morality.”
• Severely impaired judgment and impulse control, reflected in reckless threats of violence, advocacy of lethal force against civilians, encouragement of extrajudicial actions by armed supporters, repeated threats and often actions—judicial, prosecutorial, police, military, and by invoking emergency powers—against political opponents and others who disagree with him.
• Significant loss of self-control (disinhibition) and getting stuck on the same thoughts or actions, unable to let go or move on (perseveration), including seemingly compulsive, manic-like late-night communications—e.g., 150 social media posts in one night—fixation on perceived enemies, persecutory ideas, and prolonged, disproportionate attacks on specific individuals and institutions.
• Escalating violence that threatens national and global stability. As Commander-in-Chief of our military—more than 5000 nuclear warheads in inter-continental missile silos, on submarines, and in bombers around the world, are ready for launch solely upon his order, and no one now has the authority to countermand his order. 

On August 7, 1974, as President Richard Nixon’s impeachment loomed, White House Chief of Staff, General Alexander Haig, was so alarmed by Nixon’s wandering the halls of the White House at night, sleepless, distraught, and heavily intoxicated, talking out loud to portraits of past presidents on the walls, that he alerted Defense Secretary James Schlesinger. Equally alarmed, Schlesinger directed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General George S. Brown, that any military orders from Nixon—especially nuclear ones—first be cleared through him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.  It has been reported that the nuclear “football” that contains the codes for a nuclear launch was then quietly removed from Nixon’s control.

The public and those with the power to address such potentially catastrophic conditions must ask themselves if they—and we—are confident that officials such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio would do the same.

It is our professional opinion that the behaviors of Donald Trump, tragically, are neither momentary lapses nor political theater. It is our professional opinion that they reflect a rapidly worsening, reality-untethered, increasingly dangerous decline. If we were called upon under the 25th Amendment to judge the President’s present ability to discharge the duties of his office, we would have to conclude that he lacks the capacity to do so.

For the reasons cited above, emphasizing that he presents a clear and present danger to our   country and to the world, it is our expert opinion that Donald J. Trump is mentally unfit to be the President of the United States, and that steps to remove him from office must be undertaken with the greatest urgency, with vital responsibilities on the shoulders of those in positions of leadership. 

Signatories,

Henry David Abraham, M.D.

Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus 

Tufts University School of Medicine

Bernard D. Beitman, M.D.

Professor Emeritus and Former Chair of Psychiatry

University of Missouri School of Medicine

William Bernet, M.D.

Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

Ravi Chandra, M.D.

Distinguished Fellow, American Psychiatric Association

Eric Chivian, M.D.

Former Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry 

Harvard Medical School

Co-Founder, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

Recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize

Lance Dodes, M.D.

Former Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry 

Harvard Medical School

Training and Supervising Analyst Emeritus 

Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute

Jennifer I. Downey, M.D.

Clinical Professor of Psychiatry

Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons

George Drinka, M.D.

Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry

Oregon Health Sciences University

Former Medical Director, CPC Cedar Hills Hospital 

Portland, Oregon

Julian Fisher, M.D.

Former Lecturer in Neurology

Harvard Medical School

Justin Frank, M.D.

Former Clinical Professor of Psychiatry

George Washington University School of Medicine 

Co-Director, Metropolitan Center for Object Relations 

New York City

Mindy T. Fullilove, M.D.

Professor Emerita of Urban Policy and Health

The New School 

Nanette Gartrell, M.D.

Former Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Former Professor of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco

Prudence L. Gourguechon, M.D.

Past President, American Psychoanalytic Association

Gordan P. Harper, M.D.

Associate Professor of Psychiatry

Harvard Medical School

Ira Helfand, M.D.

Former Chair of Emergency Medicine

Cooley-Dickinson Hospital

International Steering Group

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize

Julia C. Hoigaard, Ph.D.

Former Lecturer in Psychology

University of California, Irvine

Co-author of Gottschalk-Gleser Content Analysis Scales

Howard Hu, M.D., M.P.H., Sc.D. 

Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences 

Keck School of Medicine of USC 

University of Southern California 

Jerome Kroll, M.D.

Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry

University of Minnesota Medical School

Robert S. Lawrence, M.D.

Professor Emeritus, Center for a Livable Future

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Former Chief of Medicine,  Cambridge City Hospital,

now known as The Cambridge Health Alliance

Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div.

President, World Mental Health Coalition (Washington, DC)

Co-Founder, Preventing Violence Now (New York)

Former Faculty of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Former Faculty of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine

Rosanne M. Leipzig, M.D., Ph.D.

Professor Emerita of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Craig Malkin, Ph.D.

Lecturer in Psychology, Harvard Medical School

Former Chief Inpatient Psychologist

Cambridge City Hospital,

now known as The Cambridge Health Alliance

James R. Merikangas, M.D.

Neuropsychiatrist and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry

George Washington University School of Medicine

Dee Mosbacher, M.D., Ph.D.

Former Professor of Psychiatry 

University of California, San Francisco  

Denis J. O’Keefe, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.

Professor of Social Work

New York University

Past President, International Psychohistorical Association

Jennifer C. Panning, Psy.D.

Founder, Mindful Psychology Associates (Evanston, IL)

John O. Pastore, M.D.

Professor of Medicine

Tufts University School of Medicine

Former Research Physician

Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Mark Peppercorn, M.D.

Professor of Medicine Emeritus

Harvard Medical School

Claire Pouncey, M.D., Ph.D.

Former President

Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry

Robert C. Rutherford M.D. M.P.H.

Emergency Physician

Former Director, Monroe County Health Department

Florida

Larry S. Sandberg, M.D.

Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry

Weill Cornell Medical Center

Stephen Soldz, Ph.D.

Professor, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis

Former President, Psychologists for Social Responsibility

Co-Founder, Coalition for an Ethical Psychology

Lise Van Susteren, M.D.

Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry

George Washington University School of Medicine

Consultant Profiler to the Executive Branch, Federal Government

Michael J. Tansey, Ph.D.

Former Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychology

Northwestern University Medical School

Mark W. Weber, Ph.D., L.I.C.S.W.

Former Lecturer in Psychiatry

Harvard Medical School

John Zinner, M.D.

Clinical Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science

George Washington University Medical Center

Former Head of Family Therapy Studies,

National Institute of Mental Health