In the normal course of history, the president of the United States is a figure who inspires optimism in the American people. The 47th president prefers to stir feelings of fear, vulnerability, hopelessness, and political inevitability—the sense that he, and only he, can rescue the nation from looming peril. Since his second inauguration, Donald Trump has seized authoritarian control over the federal government and demanded the obedience of the other powerful institutions of American society—universities, law firms, media companies. The question weighing heavily on the minds of many Americans is whether Trump will subvert next year’s midterm elections or the 2028 presidential election to extend his reign.
With his every word and deed, Trump has given Americans reason to believe that he will seek a third term, in defiance of the Constitution. It seems abundantly clear that he will hold on to the office at any cost, including America’s ruin.
The Founders of our nation foresaw a figure like Trump, a demagogue who would ascend to the presidency and refuse to relinquish power to a successor chosen by the American people in a free and fair election. Writing to James Madison from Paris in 1787, Thomas Jefferson warned that such an incumbent, if narrowly defeated, would “pretend false votes, foul play, hold possession of the reins of government.” Were that moment ever to come, the Founders believed, it would mark the demise of the nation that they had conceived, bringing to a calamitous end the greatest experiment in self-government ever attempted by man.
Trump proved in 2021 that he would do anything to remain in the White House. Even after the violence of January 6, his second impeachment, and the conviction and incarceration of scores of his followers, he reiterated his willingness to subvert the 2024 election. That proved unnecessary. Yet since his victory, Trump has again told the American people that he is prepared to do what it takes to remain in power, the Constitution be damned.
In March, Trump refused to rule out a third term, saying that he was “not joking” about the prospect and claiming that “there are methods which you could do it.” He was asked about the idea of Vice President J. D. Vance running for the presidency, getting elected, and then passing the baton back to him. “That’s one,” he said. “But there are others, too.” As he so often does, Trump later claimed that he wasn’t being serious. But also in March, Trump’s ally Steve Bannon said that he is “a firm believer that President Trump will run and win again in 2028,” adding that he and others are working on ways to do it, which would require circumventing the Twenty-Second Amendment. (Bannon later told The Economist: “Trump is gonna be president in ’28, and people just ought to get accommodated with that.” He added, “At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is. But there’s a plan.”) In September, after meeting with congressional leaders about the looming government shutdown, Trump posted photographs on Truth Social in which Trump 2028 hats rested prominently on his Oval Office desk. In October, when discussing the possibility of a third term, Trump said, “I would love to do it. I have my best numbers ever.”
We Americans are by nature good people who believe in the inherent goodness of others, especially those we elect to represent us in the highest office in the land. But we ignore such statements and other expressions of Trump’s intent at our peril. The 47th president is a vain man, and nothing would flatter his vanity more than seizing another term. Doing so would signify the ultimate triumph over his political enemies.
I am not a Pollyanna, nor am I a Cassandra. I was at the forefront of the conservative legal movement that began in 1981 with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. I have had the privilege of spending much of my career in public service, first in the Ford and Reagan White Houses; then in the Department of Justice; and, finally, appointed by George H. W. Bush, in the federal judiciary. I have never once in more than four decades believed that any president—Democrat or Republican—would intentionally violate the Constitution or a law of the United States. But Trump is different from all prior presidents in his utter contempt for the Constitution and America’s democracy.
The clearest evidence that Trump may subvert upcoming elections is that he tried to overturn the 2020 election. He shocked the nation and the world when he ordered then–Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the votes electing Joe Biden president, while claiming that the election had been stolen from him by his “radical left” enemies, whoever they are. When Pence refused to yield to Trump’s demand, Trump instigated the attack on the U.S. Capitol to prevent Congress from counting the votes and certifying Biden as his successor.
On January 6, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,” further inflaming the crowd that had already breached the Capitol. Witnesses before the January 6 committee testified that Trump expressed support for hanging Pence while the attack was under way. Trump was prosecuted by the United States for having committed the gravest crime that a president can commit: attempting to remain in the presidency after losing an election and thereby obstructing the peaceful transfer of power. Yet he continues to deny that he lost the election. He describes January 6 as a glorious day in American history, not one of its darkest.
Among his first acts after being sworn in again was pardoning or commuting the sentences of every person convicted in connection with January 6. He then set about exacting revenge on the American justice system. He summarily fired dozens of government officials who had tried to hold him accountable for the attack on the Capitol, as well as for his other alleged criminal offenses of removing classified documents from the White House upon his departure, secreting them to Mar-a-Lago, and obstructing the government’s efforts to find and retrieve the documents. He has since replaced those fired officials with loyalists—sycophants committed to him, not to our democracy or the rule of law.
Today, Trump has vastly greater powers than he did in 2020. He has a willing vice president to preside over the joint session of Congress that will certify (or not) the next election, a second in command who refuses to admit that his boss lost the 2020 election. (Vance has said that he would not have certified the results without asking states such as Pennsylvania and Georgia to submit new slates of electors, a solution he invented to a problem that does not exist—there is no evidence of widespread fraud in those states or any state in 2020.) Trump’s party controls both houses of Congress, and he will surely do everything he can to maintain those majorities. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has paved the way for a third Trump term, as it did for his current term, by essentially granting him absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for any crimes he might commit in violation of the Constitution or the laws of the United States.
For anyone who doubts that Trump is contemplating a monarchical reign, consider how very far down that road he already is. Since returning to office, he has sought absolute power, unchecked by the other branches of government, the 50 states, or the free press.
On the first day of his current term, he launched a direct attack on the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of birthright citizenship when he issued an executive order contradicting the clear language of the amendment, federal statute, and Supreme Court precedent.
He has arrogated to himself Congress’s power to levy tariffs, declaring that previous foreign-trade and economic practices had created a national emergency justifying his unilateral imposition of sweeping global tariffs. When Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell predicted that Trump’s unlawful tariffs would cause “higher inflation and slower growth,” Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!” Later, he fired Fed Governor Lisa Cook, purportedly “for cause.” The Supreme Court has temporarily blocked Cook’s firing, but it won’t decide until next year whether Trump has the power to fire a member of the independent Federal Reserve. A ruling in Trump’s favor would give him absolute control over the central bank and thus over the monetary policy of the United States.
He has usurped Congress’s spending and appropriation powers by attempting to impound billions of dollars that Congress designated for specific purposes, including for public broadcasting, for Voice of America, and for desperately needed U.S. aid to starving and disease-stricken populations around the world.
He has likewise usurped Congress’s power to establish executive-branch departments and agencies, fund their operations, and provide civil-service protections to federal-government employees, unilaterally overhauling the U.S. government. He has hollowed out the Department of Education, effectively abolishing it. He has dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and asserted executive control over the independent Federal Election Commission and Federal Trade Commission, and fired thousands of federal employees without reasonable cause or explanation—all while Congress has stood by silently.
The Supreme Court, too, has largely given the president its imprimatur to continue his power grab. It has either effectively reversed lower-court rulings against the president using the so-called shadow docket, or allowed the administration to proceed until the Court determines the constitutionality of various actions, by which time the damage to the Constitution, the U.S. government, and American society will have been done, as the justices well know. When the Court has ruled against Trump—for example, forbidding him from deporting undocumented immigrants without due process—he has provoked a constitutional crisis by ignoring the order.
The Founders built layers of safeguards into the American system of government to constrain a president, not just the checks and balances by the branches of the federal government. But Trump has run roughshod over these fail-safes, too. In violation of the sovereign rights reserved for them by the Constitution, Trump has commanded state officials to aid him in his purge of undocumented immigrants.
The president has also taken military command of cities across the country—over the vehement objection of the states. When a federal judge held that Trump’s military occupation of Portland, Oregon, was unlawful, he circumvented her orders and trashed the judge—whom he appointed—for her ruling, saying that she should be “ashamed” of herself.
Given that Trump has for years pronounced the free press in America “the enemy of the people,” it came as no surprise when media companies were among the first Trump targeted with unconstitutional edicts. In return for his favor, many of the country’s major media institutions have surrendered to him.
Though he claims to be a great friend of free enterprise, Trump has asserted dominion over the economy and insinuated his administration into American capitalism so that our great businesses are dependent on and subject to the government, as they are in communist and socialist nations.
He has extorted the nation’s legal profession, forcing law firms to betray their clients and the law in order to secure his favor. He has bludgeoned the nation’s colleges and universities with lawless order after lawless order. The federal government cannot tell universities how to conduct their affairs or dictate the viewpoints that professors teach. The First Amendment zealously guards such decisions, and the Constitution categorically forbids the president from wielding Congress’s power of the purse to punish these institutions.
Trump has turned the federal government against the American people, transforming the nation’s institutions into instruments for his vengeful execution of the law against honorable citizens for perceived personal and political offenses. He has silenced dissent by persecuting and threatening to prosecute American citizens for speaking critically of him, and he has divided us, turning us against one another so that we cannot oppose him.
Trump has always told us exactly who he is. We have just not wanted to believe him. But we must believe him now.
This is the man who said in January 2016, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s, like, incredible.”
The man who proposed in 2022 that the “Massive Fraud” he alleged in the 2020 election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” and who proclaimed, soon after reassuming office, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
The man who, when asked the question “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?,” answered, “I don’t know.” And the man who, when asked whether every person in the United States is entitled to due process, replied, “I don’t know.”
The man who said in August that he can “do anything I want to do,” because he’s president.
The man who has demanded that his attorney general and Department of Justice immediately prosecute his enemies: “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
And the man who summoned American military generals from around the world to Quantico, Virginia, to tell them that “America is under invasion from within,” repeatedly describing that enemy invasion as being by the “radical left,” a term he now seemingly uses to characterize all of his political opponents. He also said at this meeting, “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military” for fighting the “war from within.”
Donald Trump is clearly willing to subvert an election in order to hold on to the power he so craves, and he is now fully enabled to undermine national elections. No one can prevent him from remaining president of the United States for a constitutionally prohibited third term—except the American people, in whom ultimate power resides under the Constitution of the United States.
[From the November 2025 issue: America’s unfinished revolution]
On July 4, 1776, nearly 250 years ago, America freed itself forever from the oppression of tyrannical rule by monarchs. There was never to be a king in the United States of America. Never again were the liberties and freedoms of Americans to be subject to the whims of a monarch. From that day, Thomas Paine wrote, “so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”
The nation has survived great challenges and calamities, including the Civil War. Now it is being tested again. Once more, we must ask, as Lincoln did, whether a nation so “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” can long endure.
If America is to long endure, we must summon our courage, our fearlessness, our hope, our spirited sense of invulnerability to political enthrall, and, most important, our abiding faith in the divine providence of this nation. We have been given the high charge of our forebears to “keep” the republic they founded a quarter of a millennium ago. If we do not keep it now, we will surely lose it.
This article appears in the December 2025 print edition with the headline “President for Life.”
