Can Trump Serve a Third Term?

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. President-elect Donald Trump, who will return to office for a second term on Jan. 20, 2025, recently reignited a constitutional debate about whether a twice-elected president can serve a third term. “I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s so good, we’ve got to figure something else out,'” Trump told House Republicans on Nov. 13, perhaps jokingly. The 22nd Amendment, which was ratified in 1951, states that “[n]o person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” The amendment was spurred by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected president an unprecedented four times, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said in a 2019 report. The 22nd Amendment would block Trump, who at 78 is the oldest person to be elected president in U.S. history, from running for a third term — unless it was repealed, which is highly unlikely. “I don’t think there’s any realistic possibility that the 22nd Amendment could be repealed,” Kermit Roosevelt, a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and great-great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, told us in an email. “That would take another amendment (like the 21st,...