Just days into President Donald Trump’s second administration, a Republican congressman already wants to rewrite the U.S. Constitution to allow him to remain in office after his term is up.
Rep. Andy Ogles introduced a House Joint Resolution on Thursday to amend the country’s founding document to allow a president to serve “for up to but no more than three terms.”
The proposed amendment reads: “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.”
Ogles argued that amending the 22nd Amendment would allow Trump “to serve three terms, ensuring that we can sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs.”
The measure would need two-thirds of the vote in both chambers of Congress and be ratified by 38 states to become official.
The proposed amendment would still prohibit a third run if a president had already served two consecutive terms, effectively boxing out former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton.
In a meeting with House Republicans in November, Trump joked about the possibility of a third term in 2028.
“I suspect I won’t be running again, unless you do something,” Trump said, according to audio obtained by The Hill. “Unless you say, ‘He’s so good, we have to just figure it out.’”
Andy Ogles and Matt Gaetz show Trump support during his hush money trial. / Mike Segar/Reuters
That same month, New York Congressman Dan Goldman introduced a resolution seeking to reaffirm the limits set by the 22nd Amendment, which states that presidents who have served two full terms cannot seek a third.
“When the 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951, our nation reaffirmed one of our most foundational beliefs: no one shall be king,” Goldman said at the time. “Any attempt for Donald Trump to circumvent the 22nd Amendment is blatantly unconstitutional.”
Trump has never been coy about his interest in a third term.
When he was president in 2020, he told a Nevada rally: “We’re going to win four more years in the White House. And then after that, we’ll negotiate, right? Because based on the way we were treated, we are probably entitled to another four after that.”
It’s also not the first time Trump has sought to bend the Constitution.
Shortly after returning to office on Monday, the president signed an executive order ending birthright citizenship, which was temporarily blocked by a federal judge who called it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
