If the first two options are too difficult or too convoluted, Trump could try something even bolder, and far more Trumpian. He could simply run for a third term and see if anyone stops him.
The question of who would do so, and how, is surprisingly difficult. Would the Republican National Committee block him from seeking the party’s nomination for 2028? Surely not, if he still dominates the GOP. Would states refuse to put him on their ballots? Some certainly would, but that would spark litigation. The issue would then wind up at the Supreme Court — a court that is already
quite sympathetic to Trump’s interests and, in four years, may be populated with even more Trump appointees than it has today.
Still, would the high court really green-light a flagrant violation of the 22nd Amendment? It sounds implausible now, even for this very conservative court. But it’s important to consider the context in which such a case would be heard.
It would be the middle of the 2028 election season. Trump would be out on the campaign trail, acting like a candidate, insisting he is running again for the good of the country. The RNC would have proudly proclaimed him its nominee. Imagine half of Americans continue to support him unconditionally.
It does not take a Supreme Court cynic to see that, in such a climate, declaring Trump ineligible to run would take immense political courage from the justices.
“All you need is a court that is willing to be your faithful helper,” Versteeg says, adding that she believes it’s unlikely — though not impossible — that the current court would fall in line for Trump.
Bassin, of Protect Democracy, is more blunt.
“The court’s gonna tell the Republican Party that they can’t run their candidate?” he asks. “I don’t think so.”
In fact, the country and the court have already experienced a similar conundrum.
Many legal scholars believe Trump was constitutionally ineligible to run in 2024 because the 14th Amendment
bars anyone from holding federal office if they previously engaged in an insurrection. But when Colorado sought to enforce that provision, citing Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, and removed Trump from its ballot, the Supreme Court swiftly stepped in. Only Congress, not states, can enforce the insurrection ban,
the court declared — even though the 14th Amendment itself contains no such limitation.
That ruling was widely seen as being at least partially results-driven: Whatever the legal arguments, the justices simply were never going to let individual states kick the leading Republican candidate off their ballots. The same calculus might apply if Trump tried to run again in 2028.
One might respond that the 22nd Amendment’s command (“No person shall be elected” as president “more than twice”) is far clearer than the 14th Amendment’s abstruse language about insurrections. But litigation has a way of muddying even the most crystal-clear language, and pro-Trump lawyers will have plenty of opportunities to make the two-term limit seem ambiguous.
