Yves here. The Iran war just launched would seem to trump all other news. But an Iran war would also give justification for Trump trying to use a declaration of martial law to stop midterm elections. John Kirakou and Ted Rall addressed this issue in a late-last week show. Kirakou said he thought the military would not support it, that there had been very high level discussions at the end of Trump 1 as to what they would do if Trump refused to leave office. Kirakou did not mention any details but the drift of his commentary was they would refuse orders. I had said a military coup (as in defying directives from elective officials) was our most likely way out of a Trump regime-order-change attempt.
Military coups are not all bad. The recent one here was pretty tame and the country functioned more or less as normal. And the general in charge did not grift, or if he die, only on such a small scale as to not be detectable.
By Brett Wilkins, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
President Donald Trump raised eyebrows and angst among democracy defenders Friday for saying he deserves an unconstitutional third term in office, remarks that came a day after reporting that right-wing activists are drafting an executive order that could empower him to ban mail-in ballots and voting machines ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“Maybe we do one more term. Should we do one more?” the 79-year-old Republican president asked attendees of an event at the Port of Corpus Christi in Texas, to roaring applause. “Do one more term. Well, we are entitled to it.”
During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump rehashed his thoroughly debunked claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election for former President Joe Biden, saying this “should be my third term.”
A third term would require a constitutional amendment, as the 22nd Amendment restricts US presidents to two terms in office.
Trump: Maybe we do one more term. Should we do one more? One more term. Well, we are entitled to it. pic.twitter.com/Niue0Q75Oo
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 27, 2026
Extensions of presidential terms or abolition of limits are hallmarks of dictators and backsliding leaders of erstwhile democracies. After Chinese President Xi Jinping lifted constitutional term limits in 2018, Trump marveled, “He’s great,” adding, “He’s now president for life.”
Trump has made cryptic allusions to a third term in office on multiple occasions.
While many Trump supporters believe he should also be president for life, his allies in actual positions of power—including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and political strategist and convicted fraudster Steve Bannon, whom Trump granted clemency—have backed a third term for his administration.
A constitutional amendment enabling a third Trump term is not under any consideration and is all but impossible by the 2028 election. So Trump and his allies are working on other ways for the president to remain in office, focusing heavily on voter suppression. The Washington Post reported Thursday that a group of right-wing activists is writing a draft decree that would give the president “extraordinary power over voting.” On Friday, Democracy Docket published an April 2025 version of the draft order provided by a Trump ally, which the outlet described as “riddled with errors.”
According to the Post, the draft executive order would cite the pretext of alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 election. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded that there was no such interference.
MS NOW national security contributor Marc Polymeropoulos called the draft order “batshit authoritarianism.”
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This aged like milk…
If Trump wants a third term , then he cannot simply say make it so and it will happen. This is not like when he illegally put his name on the Kennedy Center and they let him get away with it. It will probably mean repealing the 22nd Amendment but this is no way an easy process nor would Trump have the patience to go this way nor does he have competent people that can carry it out. It seems to repeal an Amendment that you have to pass another Amendment. He could propose an Amendment “reforming” voting and include it in there but does he have the time to do so before the Midterms in November? Especially now that he has started a war in the Middle east?
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/what-does-it-take-to-repeal-a-constitutional-amendment
unless we are living in a post-constitutional age.
My thought also. Like Zelenski, no elections during state of emergency. Just don’t let go. Perpetual SoE.
I have little knowledge about the process, but there is an alternative to the method that all the previous amendments to the Constitution have been done and that is with a constitutional convention, which can be called by a supermajority of the states calling for it. 19 or 20 of the required 27 states have already passed legislation over the decades calling for a convention. But does the Republican Party have the ability to get another eight states’ legislatures and governors to pass such legislation?
If I thought that I could get an additional 8 states to pass the enabling legislation, I would go with that method especially as a convention would have no guardrails, and it would be easy for an organized and dishonest group to take over and ram through the changes that they wanted. Remember, the last constitutional convention was in 1787, and there is no settled process, which makes it easier for the unscrupulous to ram something through and call it legitimate.
It would not be easy, but it would allow for the possibility of completely rewriting the Constitution, such as enshrining the corporate-libertarian idea that money is speech, or removing the presidential term limits, or anything really, without the input and national, often decades long, debate and consensus that preceded all the other amendments. That this rewrite would have certainly no public approval, much like the current Iranian-Israeli-American War probably would not matter to the powers that be, but I suspect that they do not understand the Mandate of Heaven is a very real thing. If the America, as a nation, does not accept the changes, then war will happen as the regime will try to cram the new constitution onto the nation.
Mind you, this is just me speculating, and I don’t know much, but if I did want some legal cover and not just try for a straight up coup, then a convention is something I would try to do.
Trump is the master of distraction and confusion.
He’s just trolling. If we had serious people in the Beltway, he’d be laughed out of DC. But we don’t have those kind of people – a year or so ago we witnessed serval sitting Congresspeople who couldn’t figure out how to make their way past a single rent-a-cop to get into a government building. The shivering pipsqueaks in Congress may just roll over and let him have it. By the Democrat logic, if they sit back and do nothing and USians are mad enough about a 3rd Trump term, well then they might vote Democrat the next time.
The fuse has been lit, we’ll see how long it is and how big an explosion results within a few Months.
Trump is 79 years old and in shitty health FFS.
>>>Trump is 79 years old and in shitty health FFS.
You mean like that mental dynamo Joe Biden and his auto-pen?
I am sure they could preserve him like Vladimir Lenin, and put in the parts necessary for the appearance of life, much like the former bionic Sith Lord Dick Cheney.
Why members of Congress don’t publicly shout out loudly and clearly that he’s way out of bounds (and senile) tells me he might actually try and pull it off.
The midterm election is his test ground.
We’ll see, I guess.
i may consider formally seceding my 5 acre portion of this 20 acre place, if they do all that.
fuck all them people.
…and i aint even riled up, yet.
says right there in article 2, that the preznit shall faithfully execute the laws passed by congress.
if he’s lawless…and overthetop lawless, to boot…then there is no law, and we are no longer a country…merely a collection of rich cartels pretending real hard to be one.
glad i got beer this mornin,lol…and glad my mexican friends showed up with more, and with mota, too…
I didn’t start it but I tried.
Jimmy Kimmel now calls the Epstein papers the Trump-Epstein papers.
Cory Doctorow calls the new ballroom the Epstein Memorial Ballroom.
I’m pushing for every Trump pronouncement to be preceded by “Epstein Memorial”.
Trump is kept alive in the news by his very frequent disruptive suggestions and actions.
If each were coated in our understanding that he does not want his closeness to Epstein taken to heart, he’d probably shrink to the size of the wizard behind the curtain.
It may sound cute but truth is, coating Trump with Epstein cooties as seriously as Trump takes his mission to show he’s the smartest would significantly change the dialogs.
TACO
“…President Xi Jinping lifted constitutional term limits in 2018…”
No President Xi Jinping did not do so.
Wikipedia: In March 2018, the National People’s Congress (NPC) — China’s legislature, which is dominated by the ruling Communist Party of China (CCP) — voted overwhelmingly to amend the Constitution and remove the provision that limited the president and vice vice president to two terms.
Radio Free Asia:
That constitutional change was proposed by the CCP’s central leadership and then adopted by the NPC — it wasn’t a personal decree by Xi acting alone, but it was done under party direction with minimal opposition in the legislature.