'Trump in 2028': GOP-aligned organization calls for abolition of presidential term limits

30 March 2024

One of the coalition members of the far-right Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025" presidential transition plan is proposing to overhaul the US Constitution to keep former President Donald Trump in power beyond the eight-year limit.

The American Conservative — one of the 100 advisory groups to Project 2025 — recently published a call to repeal the 22nd Amendment as a means of allowing Trump to seek a "second consecutive term" in the White House if he wins in November. That amendment has been in place since 1951, and stipulates that presidents can't spend more than eight years in office, whether in two back-to-back terms or staggered between other administrations.

"If, by 2028, voters feel Trump has done a poor job, they can pick another candidate; but if they feel he has delivered on his promises, why should they be denied the freedom to choose him once more?" writer Peter Tonguette proposed. "As with Prohibition, it is simply a matter of finding the will to get rid of a bad idea that needlessly limits Americans’ freedom."

"Trump in 2028!" he added.

President Joe Biden's reelection campaign drew attention to Tonguette's call to abolish presidential term limits in a tweet, suggesting that the repealing the 22nd Amendment is the GOP's way of "allowing Trump to be in office forever." The Lincoln Project — an anti-Trump Republican super PAC — quote-tweeted the post, writing "They're telling you exactly what they plan to do." And journalist Ahmed Baba tweeted "It’s very clear where this is headed if we re-elect Trump. This is not a liberal conspiracy theory. His allies are openly declaring it."

Project 2025 is an endeavor led by the Heritage Foundation, which is an immensely influential conservative think tank in Washington, DC. Heritage launched the initiative as a way to help Trump — or the next Republican president — to have an army of tens of thousands of pre-vetted staffers ready to start radically restructuring the federal government to serve far-right political objectives. Project 2025's full 900-plus page agenda is freely available to read online, and lays out a two-fold goal of staffing the federal civil service with conservative activists, and consolidating power around the chief executive to give a president greater ability to singlehandedly wield the power of the federal government against political opponents.

The call to repeal the 22nd Amendment is merely the latest extreme proposal to come from a Project 2025 ally. Politico previously reported that Russell Vought of the Center for Renewing America (CRA) — another one of the initiative's coalition partners — is aiming to implement numerous Christian nationalist policies should Trump win in November.

Politico's Heidi Pryzybyla found several deleted social media posts from William Wolfe, who is a visiting fellow at CRA, in which he called for an end to sex education in schools, no-fault divorce and even surrogacy. Wolfe previously served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense in Trump’s pentagon, and it’s likely that Project 2025 could place him high up in the Trump administration.

Aside from Franklin Delano Roosevelt — who led the United States from the Great Depression through World War II — no president has served more than two terms in office. While the framers of the US Constitution didn't place term limits on the chief executive, George Washington voluntarily decided to step down after two four-year terms, establishing an unspoken tradition of US presidents capping their time in office at eight years.

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