Summary
Despite the 22nd Amendment barring a third term (“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice”), Trump continues to suggest he could run again, raising the idea at a Black History Month event and with Republican governors.
Legal experts say the Constitution is clear that he cannot run, though some supporters, including Rep. Andy Ogles and Steve Bannon, are pushing for a constitutional amendment or a 2028 campaign.
Meanwhile, Trump has expanded executive authority in his second term, drawing criticism for undermining congressional checks.
There was a little kernel of sanity behind that ruling, though. Absent a clear conviction for a crime that smells like insurrection, who gets to decide what insurrection means? I remember that there was a lot of talk of the “insurrection at the border” at the same time the ruling was being considered, as well as describing migrants as “military-age men”. I am positive that if the SC let Colorado take Trump off the ballot, Texas would have taken Biden off based on some bullshit theory that he was instigating a foreign invasion of migrants.
The language behind a third Presidential term is much, much clearer. The plain text of the amendment bars it, and if Trump decides to run again, several states will declare him ineligible on the spot. That will go to the SC, too. We’ll see what happens then.
The House of Representatives, by a majority vote, found that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection and impeached him for this after January 6th. The Senate failed to vote to remove him from office, but this does not change the fact that he was found to have engaged in insurrection by the House of Representatives.
The House of Representatives already did.
And when either the House of Representatives votes to impeach him for it, then he can be removed from the ballot as well. They tried, and failed. Repeatedly.
And if the courts just randomly decide that Biden’s actions constituted an insurrection, we have much bigger problems to deal with, as the courts at that point can just declare anything they want as an insurrection, including political dissent.
Going based on the “kernel of sanity” thing, the argument is that it was meant to bar more than two consecutive terms, and was not meant to bar non-consecutive terms. The argument is that those who wrote the amendment knew the importance of being specific, and if they wanted to bar non-consecutive terms, they’d have specifically said as much.
Unfortunately, most people don’t interpret the impeachment the way you do. They view the fact that he didn’t get thrown out of office as more of an acquittal, really. Although impeachment is a political process and not a judicial one, the impeachment itself in the House is more akin to an indictment while the trial in the Senate is meant to mirror a jury trial.