A third term Trump? The final limits are possible, say the experts: NPR

President Trump once again launched the idea of ​​testing the limits of the presidential mandate of the Constitution by requesting a third term, while his administration continues to challenge the constitutional provisions and to push an in -depth vision of the executive power.

After telling NBC News that he “jokes” of the possibility and that there were “methods” which would allow him to serve a third time, Trump refused to confirm to journalists on the Air Force One Sunday that he planned to leave the White House after the end of his second term on January 20, 2029.

The 22nd amendment prohibits a person from being elected American president for more than twice. The States ratified the restriction in 1951 following the third and the controversial fourth mandate of former President Franklin Roosevelt during the Second World War, who jostled a standard in two terms set by George Washington.

The evolution of the limits of presidential mandate with a new constitutional amendment would need the support of three -quarters of the States.

But some legal experts highlight plausible strategies to try the end of the 22nd amendment prices in unusual scenarios.

What Trump said, and what the 22nd amendment says

While Trump regularly turns news cycles with surprising or unprecedented comments, his latest public remarks are not the first time that the 78 -year -old president has mentioned a potential prosecution of a third term.

“I suspect that I will not run anymore,” Trump told a group of House Republicans last November, after winning the elections-that is to say that he added to laughter, unless the legislators say that he is “good” so that they can “understand”.

Trump’s remark attracted Swift Pollback from the Democratic Representative Dan Goldman of New York, who quickly introduced a resolution of the Chamber to reaffirm that the limits of the Constitution mandate for elected presidents apply to Trump and his non -consecutive conditions.

The words of the 22nd amendment would undermine any argument that Trump’s non -consecutive conditions grant him an exception to the limit of two terms, explains William Baude, professor who heads the Institute of Constitutional Law of the Faculty of Law of the University of Chicago.

“There is no room for maneuver” on the rule that a president cannot be elected more than twice, says Baude. “It is a clear declaration of the Constitution, and I do not think that a serious person will interpret him otherwise.”

Three days after the second inauguration of Trump, however, the republican representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee introduced a joint resolution to propose a change to the Constitution so that a person can be elected president three times if they had not been elected before two consecutive conditions.

But winning an election is not the only way a person can become president. And there are hypothetical situations involving the presidential succession, adds Baude, which are “not considered to be fully” by the text of the Constitution. They reveal ways including the common understanding of the limits of the presidential mandate of the 22nd amendment could be challenged before the court.

A theory: Trump could become vice-president and then president in 2029

Questioned by NBC News on a scenario involving Vice-President Vance, Trump said that “it’s a” method “.

A 1999 Minnesota law review The article entitled “The president twice and future” explains that a president elected twice could become vice -president, then – if the current president should be removed from his functions, resign or die – return as commander -in -chief.

The federal register sanctioned by the government of interpretation of the Constitution also underlines the possibility of a former president of two mandates as president of the House of Representatives or another federal officer who could become president through the 1947 law in the 1947 presidency.

All these hypothetical situations bypass a keyword in the restriction of the 22nd amendment – “elected”. Bruce Peabody, one of the co-authors of the article in the Revue du Law, who is now a professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said the Congress chose this mandate after examining the proposals that would have made an elected president twice eligible to “occupy” the office.

“There was certainly an awareness that the closest language they would offer was not going to cover all the scenarios,” explains Peabody, adding that it can be difficult to give meaning for the legislators.

Their choice of words, however, gave birth to what Brian Kalt – a law professor at Michigan State University who wrote on a hypothetical president with two mandates who is named for vice -president in Constitutional cliffhangers: a legal guide for presidents and their enemies – Calls an escape within the limit of two mandates of the 22nd amendment.

Dwight Eisenhower, the first American president to be constitutionally prohibited to appear to a third term, alluded to him in 1960.

Asked if he wanted to officially declare the support of the president of the time, Richard Nixon, as a republican presidential candidate, Eisenhower made people laugh at a press conference when he replied: “You know, the only thing I know about the presidency the next time is the following: I cannot run. But someone has raised the question, Vice-president, and you could discover about this. “

During the decades since then, similar chatter concerning the escape in legal and political circles have surrounded other presidents elected twice, notably Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

“This conversation has never been so serious. But in a certain situation where the president is somehow more popular than the common understanding of the Constitution, you would better believe that people will jump everywhere on any escape that they can and allow this person to flout the limits of terms. And we have seen it in other countries. Everywhere there are limits of terms, there are vulnerabilities,” said Kalt.

However, other legal experts indicate the last sentence of the 12th amendment, which covers the electoral college, as a roadblock for any president twice tried to return to the White House through the vice-president. He indicates that “no constitutionally ineligible person in the president’s office will be eligible for that of the vice-president of the United States”.

However, in court, a lawyer could try to assert that being a “born natural” citizen, at least 35 years old and a resident in the United States for at least 14 years is the only presidential eligibility conditions specified in the Constitution, said Stephen Gillers, professor emeritus of the New York University School of Law, who proposed in 2004 that Clinton was heading to Vice-President.

“I mean very clearly that I identify an argument that Trump could make to return to the White House. I don’t approve of it,” said Gillers. “But we know from experience that even if she is eccentric and that she offers the possibility of a third presidential term, Trump will do it. If his health holds, he will make the argument that he likes work. Whether he succeeds or not in court is another matter.”

Gillers postulates that Trump “could conclude an agreement” with Vance that, before the 2028 elections, they change their place on the republican ticket, and if they win the White House again, Vance resigns and Trump becomes president.

To avoid any debate on the question of whether the 12th amendment prohibits presidential voters from choosing a president twice as vice-president, Gillers says that there could be a similar arrangement in which Trump does not present himself on the winning republican post but, after the resignation of the newly elected vice-president, becomes vice-president with the approval of the approval of the congress.

“It is not improbable. And the simple existence of the possibility in the next four years gives Trump the power that improves his position,” explains Gillers. “The members of the Congress in 2027 will know that they do not take care of a lame duck necessarily because Trump could still hold, until 2027 and 2028, the possibility of his return to power and the power that this possibility gives him – to bring the Congress to bend to his will.”

How would the United States Supreme Court react to an attempt to a third term Trump?

A simpler possibility than certain constitutional scholars have not excluded are Trump who presents himself for a third term as president, regardless of the 22nd amendment.

“If you think about it, the 22nd amendment assumes that we would follow the Constitution,” explains Gloria Browne-Marshall, professor of constitutional law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “But if we will not follow the Constitution, what is the difference what is written there?”

Any attempted third administration Trump would likely trigger prosecution before the United States Supreme Court. And in this polarized political environment, it is difficult to predict how the conservative supermajurity of the Court would govern, explains Aziz Huq, professor of constitutional law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Chicago, which has focused on democratic decline.

“The court has weird means of the question of the 22nd amendment. And if the court raises the question, then it would be to other actors – whether in the United States, for example, in the process of appointment and primary votes or the congress when it determines who won the electoral college – to decide whether the 22nd amendment had the strength,” said Huq.

Browne-Marshall warns that such a test of the limits of the presidential mandate of the Constitution could further destabilize the American political landscape at a time when the ability of the courts and the congress to serve as vouchers and balances to the White House is in question.

“I do not think that everyone will sit and let him become a king without response by protest,” explains Browne-Marshall. “We are considering a large part of the weight to come across ordinary people if we do not have the checks and counterweights of the other two branches.”

The calendar of Trump’s latest comments – more than three years before the 2028 elections – leaves open the possibility of a new constitutional amendment which definitively blocks a third term of potential Trump, Peabody, professor of Fairleigh Dickinson University, underlines.

“The nation is in opinion, and it has the power to act if it does not like this possibility,” says Peabody.

Edited by Benjamin Swasey