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Why plans are already in motion for a Trump third term – no matter what the law says
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
259 points (97.4% liked)
politics
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Without a constitutional amendment, it's not going to happen. Even the secret service will intervene, following the orders of the legitimate president over Trump.
Even if there is no election, the 25th amendment continues to operate, and there is still a valid line of succession. Trump's and Vance's terms end in January, 2029. Trump is out.
Without an election, all House seats would be vacant, so there would be no Speaker. The line then goes to the President pro tempore of the Senate. Since only 1/3 of Senate terms expire in any election year, there is still a functioning Senate. It can select a "President pro tempore of the Senate", who is 4th in line for the Presidency.
If there is an Electoral College, its votes cannot be certified by a non-existent House of Representatives, which means a president cannot be selected. However, the Senate certifies the EC votes for the Vice President, and/or selects the Vice President if the votes cannot be certified for some reason.
With either the senate-selected Vice President, or the senate-selected President pro tempore of the Senate, there will be a non-Trump president in the White House in January, 2029.
I'm assuming he will just run as VP with Vance or one of his sons as President, but still functionally serve the same role.
Can't. You have to be qualified to run for president in order to run as VP. He isn't eligible to run again.
You can serve out less than two years of another president's term, and still be eligible to be elected to two terms of your own. For example, Harris could have replaced Biden two years into his term, in which case she probably would have won in 2024, and remained eligible to run in 2028. You can be president up to (but not including) 10 years.
The wording is specifically that you need to be qualified to hold the office of the president, not to run for the office.
With qualifications to hold the office being:
So the phrasing of the 22nd created an issue:
Elsewhere it talks about eligibility to hold office, but the 22nd only refers to election.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-22/overview-of-twenty-second-amendment-presidential-term-limits
There's also a similar issue with the speaker of the house, where eligibility isn't as clearly defined as one might expect.
While the intent of the law was clearly to codify the previous pattern of capping it at two terms (and being spiteful to FDR) it's phrased with enough ambiguity that it's clear how they'll argue it.