Rep Introduces Long-Shot Amendment for 3rd Trump Term

The 22nd Amendment is pretty clear: "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice." A GOP congressman from Tennessee, however, wants to tweak those numbers so that a president—Donald Trump, in particular—can run for a third term, reports the Hill.

• Amendment: Rep. Andy Ogles, part of the House Freedom Caucus, introduced a constitutional amendment on Thursday that would allow a president to run for no more than three terms, with an addition that "no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice" (that last part says "more than once," not "twice," in the current incarnation of the 22nd).

• Ogles' take: Trump "has proven himself to be the only figure in modern history capable of reversing our nation's decay and restoring America to greatness, and he must be given the time necessary to accomplish that goal," Ogles says in a release. "This amendment would allow President Trump to serve three terms, ensuring that we can sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs."
• Trump's take: The president has previously said he wouldn't push for a third term, though he "joked" about it with GOP lawmakers shortly after he won the 2024 election, telling them, per the Hill: "I suspect I won't be running again, unless you do something. ... Unless you say, 'He's so good, we have to just figure it out.'"
• An Obama vs. Trump matchup? Don't get too excited that former President Obama could then make a run for his own third term, as that's not happening in Ogles' proposal: He's added in that a president can't run again "after being elected to two consecutive terms," meaning the remaining living ex-presidents—Obama, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush—wouldn't be eligible for Term No. 3.

• Iffy odds: Axios calls Ogles' measure "an extreme long shot" that "has virtually no chance of becoming ratified." To be added to the Constitution, the amendment would need to be greenlit by two-thirds of both congressional chambers, as well as ratified by 38 states.
• Constitutional commotion: It's not yet clear how constitutional "originalists" who've insisted that the Second Amendment can't be adjusted for modern times in an effort to stem America's gun violence would square Ogles' plan to upend the 22nd Amendment, or Trump's latest bid to nix birthright citizenship, which would essentially subvert the 14th Amendment.

(More third term stories.)