#the 22nd amendment

[tomorrowusa]

Never mind the 22nd amendment. Some Trumpsters are already talking about a THIRD Trump term.

The American Conservative magazine published an article last week in which the author, Peter Tonguette, argued that Trump should be able to run for a third term in office in 2028. This drew some attention in non-Trump circles as a potential trial balloon by Project 2025, the authoritarian policy agenda that is guiding Trumpworld right now. Tonguette argued that Trump’s victory in the GOP primary contest this year shows that voters still support him—and that they should be allowed to do so indefinitely. “As the primary season has shown us, the Republicans have not moved on from Trump—yet the Twenty-second Amendment works to constrain their enthusiasm by prohibiting them from rewarding Trump with re-election four years from now,” he wrote, perhaps getting ahead of himself a bit. I do not doubt that Trump would run for a third term if he could. He has addressed the possibility before, suggesting in 2020 that he should get to run for one “because they spied on my campaign,” referring to his political opponents. And at a closed-door fundraiser in 2018, Trump also favorably referred to Chinese President Xi Jinping for eliminating the two-term limit in that country. “He’s now president for life, president for life, and he’s great,” he reportedly told his supporters. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”

Maybe Trump's campaign slogan for 2028 should be: Make America Belarus. The dictator of Belarus, a Putin satellite, has been using rigged elections to remain in power since 1994.

Never mind the US Constitution. Trump's trained seals on the US Supreme Court will gladly find some loophole allowing him to be president in perpetuity.

If somebody says he wants to be a dictator, believe him – especially if he's already a big fanboy of despots like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, and Xi Jinping.

It's almost always easier to prevent a dictator from taking power than it is to get rid of one who is already in power.

[rejectingrepublicans]

The dementia patient who was fart sleeping in court wants to be president at 86.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Richard Luscombe at The Guardian:

Alarm over Donald Trump’s suggestion he would be willing to serve an unconstitutional third term as president, made during his meeting with House Republicans on Wednesday, has prompted a Democratic lawmaker to seek a formal resolution rejecting the idea. The president-elect drew laughter from the Republican caucus for his remarks about the possibility of remaining in the White House beyond January 2029, which would be prohibited by the 22nd amendment limiting a commander-in-chief to two four-year terms of office. “I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s so good we’ve got to figure something else out’,” said Trump, who incited the deadly January 6 Capitol riot in 2021 to try to cling on to power at the end of his first administration. On Wednesday Dan Goldman, the New York Democratic congressman, said he plans to file a motion this week specifically mentioning Trump and reiterating the two-term clause from an amendment approved by Congress in 1947, two years after Franklin D Roosevelt’s four-term, 12-year presidency before and during the second world war ended with his death.

A lengthy ratification process was completed in 1951 when 36 of the then 48 states gave their consent to the prohibition of any person who had been elected to the presidency twice from standing again. Goldman’s motion, according to NBC News, which saw a copy, features language highlighting the amendment “applies to two terms in the aggregate as president of the United States” and reaffirms that it “applies to President-elect Trump”. The initiative, first reported by the New York Times, is unlikely to receive a scheduled vote in the House, which was projected on Wednesday to remain in Republican hands under the speakership of Mike Johnson, a vocal ally of the 78-year-old president-elect. But the Democrat could seek to introduce it as a privileged motion, which would guarantee it floor time, a procedural tool previously used to force votes on the ousting of Republican former speaker Kevin McCarthy last year, as well as the expulsion from the House of his fabulist former colleague George Santos.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) is set to file a motion to make sure the two term limit set by the 22nd Amendment is strictly enforced, whether consecutive or non-consecutive, to prevent Donald Trump from gaining any funny ideas about running for a 3rd term.

[yrsofafterglow]

1461 days until Trump is out of office, forever

[larrywilmore]

Concerns about the next 4 years

Overturning the 22nd amendment,  revenge, congressional complicity...S.E. Cupp and I talk about what worries us most in the upcoming administration and our hope that the checks already in place hold.

Listen to our full conversation

[deadpresidents]

This is a sort of silly hypothetical, but I'm still curious:

Let's say that a president serves 2 terms, but for whatever reason wants to be on a ticket again. Could he run as someone's vice president after his own terms?

If he could, and that ticket won, what would happen if the president died? I'm pretty sure that a president can technically serve up to 10 years, even under the 25th amendment, in the case of a presidential ascension after half of the previous president's term (like how Coolidge or L. Johnson could have run for second full terms but, say, T. Roosevelt or Truman couldn't've [post 25th amendment].)

If a president died less than 2 years in and his vice president already had 2 terms served prior, would the office still go to the veep even if it would give him over 10 years as executive? Or would it go to the next person in the line of succession?

If a someone served two full terms as President, they would not be eligible to serve as Vice President.

The eligibility requirements for the Vice Presidency are exactly the same as those for the Presidency, so since they would be term-limited and unable to serve as President, they would also be unable to serve as Vice President. If someone is ineligible to serve as President for any reason, they are also ineligible to serve as Vice President for that very same reason.

The only way a President could serve more than eight years is if they were Vice President and succeeded to the Presidency and there were less than two years left in the Presidential term that they were assuming. In that case, they could still run for President in their own right for two full terms. So the best two examples, post-22nd Amendment, would be LBJ and Gerald Ford. When LBJ succeeded JFK, there were less than two years left in JFK's unfinished term which had started on January 20, 1961. So, LBJ ran and was elected in his own right in 1964, and he could have run again in 1968 if he wanted to.

On the other hand, when Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974 and Gerald Ford succeeded him, there were still more than two years left in Nixon's unfinished term which began on January 20, 1973. Ford was able to run for a term in his own right in 1976. But if Ford had won the 1976 election, he would not have been able to run for another term in 1980 because he had served more than 2 years of Nixon's unfinished second term.

[ask-evil-x]

Me and my friends are legit fucked, the orange man is now in charge of the country we live in and my friend who did research says that orange man is a disgusting person and the tumblr people have informed me via their posts that America may very well have a state similar to a that of a three colored one years and years ago.

the-

the orange man-

???

orange anon? from other blogs?

[davidaugust]

Is this real, or an article about another country with changed proper nouns?

Just had this article I wrote published by The Haven:

[hansilw]

NEW: Citing President-elect Donald Trump's Nov. 13 comments suggesting he may need House Republicans' help to bypass the Constitution's two-term limit for presidents and run for a third term, Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York has introduced this resolution

[tomorrowusa]

If somebody says he's going to be a dictator – believe him.

Trump at NRA convention floats a three-term presidency

The only way to keep Trump from having a third term is to defeat him in his attempt to have a second term. It's always easier to prevent a dictator than to get rid of one.

Make sure everybody you know who isn't a MAGA zombie is registered to vote. Be a precinct captain to people you know in real life and online. Polite persistence will pay off.

Be a voter | Vote Save America 🇺🇸

Don't wait for the next person to stop totalitarianism.

^^^ They aren't casting "protest votes" for third parties that can't win.

[professorlexi]

At least we know this is the last time

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Graeme Demianyk at HuffPost:

Steve Bannon suggested falsely that President-elect Donald Trump could run for president again in 2028, despite the Constitution’s two-term limit on the office. The podcaster and former White House chief strategist made the claim at the New York Young Republican Club’s annual gala on Sunday evening. In a speech, Bannon mentioned the pro-Trump lawyer Mike Davis, saying Davis noted that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly say the two-term limit applies to presidents who serve non-consecutive terms. “Since it doesn’t actually say ‘consecutive,’ that ― I don’t know, maybe we do it again in ’28?” Bannon told the New York crowd. “Are you guys down for that? Trump ’28! Come on, man!” Trump is the second U.S. president in history to be elected to two non-consecutive terms, following Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892. The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution ― ratified in 1951, less than a decade after Franklin Roosevelt was elected president for the fourth time in a row ― states that “no person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice.”

Far-right fascist Stephen Bannon baselessly suggests that Donald Trump can run again in 2028. There is no provision that lets him run again.

See Also:

NCRM: ‘Trump ’28, Come on, Man!’: Bannon Calls for Third Term

[rodgermalcolmmitchell]

Elon Musk's secret plan to rule the world, and why he now backs Trump

Way back in 2015, we published the prescient post about Trump,  “Hitler in America. Why a bigot can win the Presidency.” Now, Elon Musk backs Trump, and I fear we are about to be prescient again. While Donald Trump is old, feeble-minded, lazy, childish, easily steered by flattery, and devoid of long-term planning ability, Elon Musk is the opposite. He is young, smart, energetic, hard-knuckled,…

[reasonsforhope]

LGBTQ+ organizations and allies are celebrating Michigan for becoming the first state in three years to pass comprehensive anti-discrimination protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. The legislation, which now heads to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) to be signed into law, finally passed after decades of court battles and hold-ups from Republican legislators.

The bill passed in a 64-45 vote in the Democrat-led House on Wednesday. It amends the state’s 1976 Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA) to include LGBTQ+ people among its protected groups. The law forbids discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodation within businesses, government buildings, and educational facilities on the basis of religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, familial status, marital status — and now, LGBTQ+ identity.

Democrats had tried introducing various LGBTQ+ non-discrimination measures over the last 40 years, according to the bill’s gay sponsor Sen. Jeremy Moss (D). However, the attempts were repeatedly voted down by Republican-led legislatures. Last January, Democrats took control of the full legislature for the first time in nearly 40 years, finally giving them the chance to pass the protections.

In July 2022, Michigan’s Supreme Court issued a landmark 5–2 ruling that ELCRA already forbade discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity as forms of discrimination based on sex and gender. This followed a 2020 Michigan Court of Claims ruling that said ELCRA didn’t ban anti-gay discrimination as well as a 2018 vote by Michigan’s Civil Rights Commission interpreting ELCRA as protecting LGBTQ+ people from religious-based discrimination...

When the House voted to pass the historic bill on Wednesday, a crowd in the House gallery broke into applause, Bridge Michigan reported. Republican House members had tried adding amendments that would’ve carved out exceptions for religious people to continue discriminating against LGBTQ+ people. None of these amendments passed into the final bill.

Gov. [Whitmer] has signaled that she will soon sign the bill into law. In a Wednesday tweet, she noted the observation of International Women’s Day and wrote, “I’m celebrating trans women who have continuously led the way, despite constant threats to their lives and liberty. I’m proud that we’re finally in a position to expand the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to protect LGBTQ+ Michiganders. Let’s get it done!”

-via LGBTQ Nation, 3/9/23

Note: If it's not clear from the language, this is basically a done deal--the bill signing IS ABSOLUTELY GOING TO HAPPEN.

As scary as things are right now, there are so many of us fighting to protect ourselves, our communities, and the queer and trans people around us.

This comes only a day after Minnesota's governor signed a landmark executive order that guarantees the right to gender-affirming care and prevents the state from complying with any other states' attempts to interfere. via them.us, 3/9/23

There is hope, and there are so many people fighting for us.

[deadpresidents]

Do you agree with the idea that one of the more politically astute things Biden could've done in early 2021 was push for an amendment that limited presidents (including himself) to a single term?

I ask this as someone who feels that a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024 is very much not in the national interest. Such an amendment would've guaranteed two different nominees next year, and more broadly, I think there are arguments for limiting presidents to just one term (second terms have been pretty awful in the modern era, if we consider Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and G.W. Bush).

Btw, I realize presidents don't have a formal role in the amendment process, but I think if Biden had gotten enough Dems behind it, there might have been enough support in Congress to send it to the states. In early 2021, the GOP would've almost been happy to have Trump term-limited, and ambitious Republicans like Scott, Cruz, and Rubio probably would've supported such an amendment.

That's an interesting question. From our perspective, I can totally understand the reasoning behind it, too. And that would have been a better time to attempt it for the reasons you pointed out.

However, I just think it's nearly impossible to amend the Constitution, especially in the political climate we've been living in for the past decade. It's also difficult to imagine any President actively seeking to impose further term limits on themselves. These are people who work practically the entire lives in order to get into that particular job, so it would require a superhuman act of selflessness to get them to advocate for changing the Constitution so that they only serve one term. We can't even get modern Presidents (or serious candidates for the Presidency) to voluntarily pledge to only serve a single term, so I just don't see any of them trying to change the Constitution to legally prohibit running for re-election. President Biden had been seeking the Presidency for at least 35 years, with three official campaigns for the job, before he finally was elected in 2020. I don't think there was ever a realistic chance of him voluntarily giving up a chance at a second term. And I wouldn't be so sure that ambitious legislators who have obviously been eyeing the Presidency for years would have supported a single term limit. You know how there are people who are opposed to raising taxes on the super wealthy because they are still holding out hope that they'll someday strike it rich? I'm guessing there would be a similar line of thinking and members of Congress with Presidential aspirations wouldn't want to support a single term limit just in case they eventually find themselves in the White House.

I've written about this before, but my personal opinion is actually in support of eliminating Presidential term limits altogether. As I've said in the past, the Founders did not explicitly place term limits on the President, and while most Presidents before FDR followed George Washington's tradition of serving two terms and retiring, term limits weren't imposed until after World War II. The Constitution was amended 21 times for over 150 years before Presidential term limits were finally instituted. And, even then, it was largely because Franklin D. Roosevelt won four straight Presidential elections. I question whether the Founders would see it as a proper balance of power to place term limits on the Executive Branch, but not on the Legislative or Judicial branches. So, my personal belief has been that there should either be term limits on the President, Congress, AND the Supreme Court, or there should be no limits at all. Of course, that might result in someone shitty, like Donald Trump, running for a third term, but it also provides options that voters otherwise wouldn't have. Imposing a two-term limit on Presidents may prohibit a terrible President from being elected a third time, but it also might prevent someone proven to be a good, responsible, popular leader from continuing in office.

Ultimately, the decision should be left to the voters, but I sure would feel better about 2024 if Barack Obama could be on the ballot again. We place limits on who can be candidates for what is arguably the most powerful and important job in the world, and then we complain because we don't like our choices. We prohibit the only people in the world who have actually DONE the job of President (and seemingly should have some understanding and experience on how to do that job) from being President for more than two four-year terms. Yet, nearly all of our Supreme Court Justices leave the bench by dying, and many of the most powerful legislators (in both parties) are alarmingly old and frail -- and probably running for re-election. Barack Obama has been term-limited from running for President since leaving office in 2017. Obama was 55 years old when he left office; he'll be 63 on the next Inauguration Day, in 2025 -- eight years after leaving office and sixteen years after his first inauguration. That's still younger than Ronald Reagan (69), George H.W. Bush (64), Donald Trump (70), and Joe Biden (78) were when they were first inaugurated as President!

So, if we're going to amend the Constitution regarding term limits, I say get rid of all of them or impose them on every branch of the federal government.