section_path: Incumbency/Circumvention of authority
section_name: Circumvention of authority
paragraph_text: Circumvention of authority
  
  Controversial measures have sometimes been taken short of removal to deal with perceived recklessness on the part of the president, or with a long-term disability. In some cases, staff have intentionally failed to deliver messages to or from the president, typically to avoid executing or promoting the president to write certain orders. This has ranged from Richard Nixon 's Chief of Staff not transmitting orders to the Cabinet due to the president's heavy drinking, to staff removing memos from Donald Trump 's desk. Decades before the Twenty-fifth Amendment, in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson had a stroke that left him partly incapacitated. First lady Edith Wilson kept this condition a secret from the public for a while, and controversially became the sole gatekeeper for access to the president (aside from his doctor), assisting him with paperwork and deciding which information was "important" enough to share with him.