“BREAKING: A constitutional amendment has been filed allowing President Trump to seek a 3rd term in office.
“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times, nor be elected to any additional term after being elected to two consecutive terms, and 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.”
It was filed by Congressman Andy Ogles (R-TN).
Don’t let this slip by unnoticed. This is not just “one extra term”, it’s a warning shot. It’s a red flag. It’s an omen.
They are slowly turning up the heat in the pan. Do not be the frog who sits denying it’s getting hotter.
One extra term will become two, two will become three, and three will eventually give way to lifelong reign of each president.
Please help spread this. I don’t usually get political and I don’t usually ask for assistance but this is important and you have more reach.
this is literally, unironically, how Putin came to power in Russia. first he served his 2 terms. then he got them to amend the constitution so that non consecutive terms could be infinite. then, he got voters to amend the constitution again to say that Putin could run infinitely by packaging the amendment with pensions. now, we’re here.
Seriously. Write your representatives. I just wrote to mine.
First, the original source is just a screenshot of a tweet. Because we need to get better about our information literacy practices, I went and got the original text of the resolution, which you can find here or on Rep. Ogles’s website (ogles.house.gov, but I don’t recommend it, as it’s Trump ass-kissing central). This is because Ogles is a notorious and egregious Trump toady for whom this is basically par for the course. He is an obnoxious Trump sycophant. Publicity stunts to prove his MAGA loyalty is what he does.
Next: yes, this proposes amending the constitution to let Trump serve three terms (which would invariably become more). Yes, this is what happened with Putin in Russia. However, once again, we need to be more mindful about the tone of the information we are sharing and what we are suggesting is possible as a result. I have written before about how the Russian and American political systems are not very similar, and saying “well, Russia has elections and a president and a constitution that was amended to let that president serve for life so that could/would happen in America” is misleading. I don’t have the space to go into the whole comparative analysis here, but I’ll just point out that America (for now) still in fact does have genuinely competitive elections and a real opposition party, and this is not remotely something that could be pulled off in the present timeframe. Putin pulled this stunt after a decade-plus of ruthlessly consolidating his power on the back of Yeltsin’s brief and disastrous privatization in the 90s and 500 years of absolute dictatorship (whether by the Russian Empire or the USSR) before that. By the time he did so, he had also successfully organized the Duma and the State Council (the houses of the Russian parliament) to be full of loyal stooges who would obediently rubber-stamp whatever he said, which continues today. There has never been a real or functional democracy in Russia, full stop.
Of course, you may say, Trump and co. are trying to destroy democracy in America, so we may end up like that! Which! We might, it’s very possible, especially if we fall asleep at the wheel! Again, however, the fact that Ogles filed this as a publicity stunt two weeks ago (it’s from January 23) does not mean we are in imminent danger of it happening. It also recognizes the fact that they would need a constitutional amendment to make it happen, and as I have said before, the process for full ratification of a new constitutional amendment is deliberately very high. Two-thirds of both the House and Senate and three-fourths (38) of the 50 states need to ratify it (after those same number of states call a constitutional convention) for it to take effect. They do not pass by one simple majority vote in the House and/or Senate, and even in the current congress, there’s no guarantee it would be a majority. The GOP has a majority of something like 2 in the House (pending special elections to fill vacancies) and 4 in the Senate. This is razor-thin. Also, I looked at the original text of Ogles’s resolution. There’s nothing even saying that it was even referred to the relevant committee (the line that should be filled in there is a blank). Because again, landmark legislation does not happen by one idiot MAGA congressman eagerly tonguing Trump’s senile orange ass as an inauguration gift of feudal fealty. (Like, if the Orange Fuhrer actually makes it to the end of his second term, he’ll be 82, and he’s already demonstrably deranged. Are they going to Weekend at Bernie’s him for this putative third term, or…?)
Also: The last successful constitutional amendment was the 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, and it referred to the salary of House members. Guess when it was first proposed? 1789. Yeah, it took literally 200 years to become the law of the land. Hmm.
Lastly, if you’re still worried and want to make absolutely sure this doesn’t happen, then: vote for Democrats in the 2026 midterms. Even if they literally do nothing and just sit there, they will ensure that this is never brought up for a vote, let alone any of Trump’s other legislative bad ideas (national trans ban, national abortion ban, putting migrants in jail for life, what have you). Again: I am not saying that you should not be worried about this, that you should just brush it off, that you should ignore this repeated-yet-again clear statement of fascist intent, or anything else. But if you’re panicking about this, then you’re distracted from looking at anything else they’re doing, and which might have a much more clear and present risk (such as Musk’s smash-and-grab of classified information and Treasury data).
Trust me, if this or anything like it gets to the actual point where I think it’s a real and present danger, then I will be sounding the all-hands-on-deck alarm like no tomorrow. But in the meantime, even if we’re all scared, we gotta do better than posting a screenshot of an unsourced tweet with a “spread this and panic now” message. If you are scared, then take the time (such as I laid out above) to look into how the constitutional amendment process works, what would be necessary to ever ratify it (and which doesn’t even take into account the mass opposition that would be mustered), what actually happened in Russia, or anything else. Information is power, so let’s do it right.
amhrancas 