President Donald Trump on Saturday once again floated running for a third term as president, telling NBC News he’s “not joking” when he suggests he might run again despite the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment that says “no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice.”
“A lot of people want me to do it,” Trump told NBC News’ Kristen Welker on Sunday. “But, I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration.”
Trump added he’s “focused on the current” administration.
According to a transcript of the conversation, Welker gave Trump a scenario where Vice President JD Vance “would run for office” and “if he won, at the top of the ticket, would then pass the baton to [Trump]."
“Well, that’s one,” Trump replied. “But there are others too. There are others.”
Welker asked Trump if he could “tell [her] another” scenario where Trump could run for and win a third term. “No,” Trump replied.
“Okay. So, but but sir, I’m hearing — you don’t sound like you’re joking. I’ve heard you joke about this a number of times,” Welker said.
“No, no. I’m not joking,” Trump replied.
“Amending the Constitution to abolish the two-term limit would be exceedingly difficult, requiring either a two-thirds vote of Congress or two-thirds of the states agreeing to call a constitutional convention to propose change,” NBC News reports. “Either route would then require ratification from three-quarters of the states.”
Still, according to Trump “a lot of people would like [him] to” seek a third term.
Last Tuesday, a Democrat pulled off an upset win in a deep-red Pennsylvania state Senate seat where President Donald Trump won by 15 percentage points last year.
Add that into the list of other special elections Democrats have overperformed in this year, and it’s clear why Republicans are suddenly sweating the special election in Florida's Sixth Congressional District.
Florida’s Sixth District was vacated by Republican Mike Waltz, who you might now know as the world’s most incompetent national security adviser. Last year, Trump won the district by 30 points—a huge margin—so it shouldn’t be, by any stretch of the imagination, competitive.
And yet …
A poll by St. Pete Polls for news outlet Florida Politics finds that Republican nominee Randy Fine is leading Democrat Josh Weil by a measly four points, 48 percent to 44 percent. That puts a Weil victory within the poll’s margin of error. Even worse for Republicans is that an internal poll from Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s 2024 pollster, finds Fine down 3 points to Weil, according to Axios. The same pollster had Fine up 12 points in February.
But let’s take a breath. Normally, undecided voters end up voting in line with their district/state’s partisan lean, which is R+14 for Florida’s Sixth, according to the Cook Political Report. That means it’s 14 points more Republican than the country as a whole. So, in a normal election, I would expect the Republican would win this seat with roughly 57 percent of the vote to the Democrat’s 43 percent—a spread of 14 points.
That, in itself, would flash some warning signs in GOP hallways. In November, Waltz won the seat with over 66 percent of the vote, in what ended up being a good cycle for Republicans overall.
But this isn’t a normal election. This is a special election in April, in a climate in which rank-and-file Democrats are seething over the state of the nation. Turnout will be the name of the game, and by all indications, Democrats are far more motivated than Republicans.
In the St. Pete/Florida Politics poll, Weil leads among those who have voted, 51 percent to 43 percent. As of Thursday, in early-voting returns, registered Republicans have just a five-point advantage in who has voted so far. The chances of an upset are small, but they do exist—shockingly. And a lot of that could be because, according to that St. Pete’s/Florida Politics poll, 51 percent of the district’s likely voters approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 45 percent disapprove. Remember, he won by 30 points in November. Given that, it’s not so surprising to see Fine’s anemic early performance.
Uncertainty over this district reportedly played a role in the Trump administration pulling Rep. Elise Stefanik’s nomination to be U.N. ambassador. The nomination had already been languishing as House Republicans were loath to (temporarily) lose her vote, given their razor-thin majority in the chamber.
But pulling Stefanik’s nomination doesn’t solve the GOP’s bigger problem. Its ability to maintain party discipline in the House has been genuinely impressive, and has been driven almost exclusively by Trump’s strong-arm efforts to threaten members who stray with primary challenges. They fear Trump. And Elon Musk, who might fund those challengers if a representative crosses the president.
But what happens if Trump is also alienating voters to such an extent that districts that backed him by 30 points are now competitive?
Put another way, Trump keeps his troops in line because they think his backing will give them the best chance to win reelection in 2026. So what happens if being closely tied to Trump makes it less likely they survive? What good is weathering a Republican primary only to end up getting steamrolled by a Democrat in the general election? It’s quite the conundrum, isn’t it?
The closer the margin in Tuesday’s special election, the bigger that conundrum for Republicans. And if Democrats pull off a big upset?
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel told a group of canvassers in Waukesha County last weekend that he needs to be elected to provide a “support network” for President Donald Trump and shared complaints about the 2020 election that have been frequently espoused by election deniers.
In a video of the remarks, Schimel is speaking to a group of canvassers associated with Turning Point USA — a right-wing political group that has become increasingly active in Wisconsin’s Republican party.
On the campaign trail, Schimel, a Waukesha County judge and former Republican state attorney general, has repeatedly said he is running for the Supreme Court to bring impartiality back to the body. He’s claimed that since the Court’s liberals gained a majority after the 2023 election, it has been legislating from the bench on behalf of the Democratic party.
But in more private events and to more conservative audiences, he’s often spoken more openly about his conservative politics.
At the Turning Point event, he said that prior to the 2024 presidential election, the country “had walked up to edge of the abyss and we could hear the wind howling,” but that the Republican party and its supporters helped the country take “a couple steps back” by electing Donald Trump.
Democrats and their “media allies” still have “bulldozers waiting to push into all that,” he said, by bringing lawsuits to stop Trump’s efforts to dismantle federal agencies without the approval of Congress, end birthright citizenship and fire thousands of federal workers.
“Donald Trump doesn’t do this by himself, there has to be a support network around it,” Schimel said. “They filed over 70 lawsuits against him since he took the oath of office barely a month ago, over 70 lawsuits to try to stop almost every single thing he’s doing because they don’t want him to get a win. They’re so desperate for him to not get a win that they won’t let America have a win. That’s what they’re doing. The only way we’re going to stop that is if the courts stop it. That’s the only place to stop this lawfare.”
When Schimel was the state attorney general, he lobbied the Republican-controlled Legislature to create the position of solicitor general under the state Department of Justice to help him file lawsuits against Democratic policies enacted by then-President Barack Obama. Republicans cut the position after Democrat Josh Kaul defeated Schimel in the 2018 election.
During his time in office Schimel joined a lawsuit with the state of Texas to have the Affordable Care Act declared unconstitutional. After the suit was successful in a Texas court, he said, “I’m glad he did this before I left office, because I got one more win before moving on.”
Kaul withdrew the state from the lawsuit after taking office in 2019, and the the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the suit by a 7-2 vote.
But, in his Turning Point remarks, Schimel accused his opponent, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, of participating in the kind of “lawfare” that is being used against Trump now.
“My opponent is an expert on lawfare,” he said, citing her work as a lawyer against the state’s voter ID law and support from liberal billionaire donors.
Crawford campaign spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said that Schimel’s comments show he’ll be a “rubber stamp” for the Republican party.
“Brad Schimel’s latest remarks are no surprise, especially coming from someone who’s been caught on his knees begging for money and is bought and paid for by Elon Musk,” Honeyman said. “Schimel is not running to be a fair and impartial member of the Supreme Court, but rather be a rubber-stamp for Musk and a far-right agenda to ban abortion and strip away health care. Schimel has recently been caught behind closed doors saying the Supreme Court ‘screwed’ Trump over by refusing to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and these latest remarks are all part of a pattern of extreme and shady behavior from Schimel. Wisconsin deserves a Supreme Court Justice who answers to the people, not the highest bidder.”
Schimel’s campaign has received millions in support from political action committees associated with Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who has been leading Trump’s effort to slash government programs.
Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that Schimel told a group of supporters in Jefferson County that Trump had been “screwed over” by the Wisconsin Supreme Court when it ruled against his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In his remarks in Waukesha, he highlighted a number of talking points popular with many of the state’s most prominent 2020 election deniers. He blamed decisions by the Supreme Court for allowing those issues to persist.
“There were a string of other cases that the Supreme Court refused to hear before the election that impacted the election that year unquestionably,” Schimel said.
Schimel pointed to the issue of special voting deputies in nursing homes as a major problem.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, officials known as special voting deputies who normally go into nursing homes to help residents cast absentee ballots were unable to enter those facilities.
Republicans have claimed that decision allowed people who should have been ineligible to vote because they’d been declared incompetent to cast a ballot. Conspiracy theorists have pointed to affidavits filed by family members of nursing home residents that their relatives were able to vote. Only a judge can declare someone incompetent to vote, however.
The issue led to the Republican sheriff of Racine County to accuse members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) of committing felony election fraud and became a target in former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman’s widely derided review of the 2020 election.
Schimel also blamed the election commission’s decision to exclude the Green Party’s candidates from the ballot that year for Trump’s loss. WEC voted not to allow the party on the ballot because there were errors with the candidate’s addresses on the paperwork. The party sued to have the decision overturned, but the Supreme Court ruled 4-3 against the party because it was too close to the election.
While conservatives held the majority on the Court at the time, Schimel blamed liberals.
“Well, that was with three liberals and a conservative getting soft headed,” Schimel said, referring to Justice Brian Hagedorn, who frequently acted as a swing vote when conservatives controlled the Court.
Schimel added: “Those billionaires from around the country said, ‘What if we could get four liberals on the court? Then we don’t have to fool a conservative into doing something stupid.’ And then they did it in 2023. They bought that election, and they stole the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and they put us in chaos ever since.”
Mike Browne, a spokesperson for progressive political group A Better Wisconsin Together, said Schimel is willing to say anything to curry favor with right-wing supporters and financial backers.
“Brad Schimel has extreme positions like using an 1849 law to try to ban abortion, supporting pardons for violent January 6 insurrectionists, endorsing debunked 2020 election lies, and shilling for Elon Musk,” Browne said. “His bungling attempts to try to talk his way out of it when he gets called out don’t change the fact that time and again we see Brad Schimel on his knees for right-wing campaign cash instead of standing up for Wisconsin or our rights and freedoms.”
The Schimel campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
We are losing the Second Civil War for the Union. Ten thousand were lost at the battle of Heath and Human Services. There were another 10,000 casualties at the battle of USAID. Thirteen hundred souls fell at the battle for the Department of Education. One thousand one hundred and fifty-five scientists have fallen at the battle of the EPA. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered a temporary halt to fighting raging at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and Treasury, allowing unions and nonprofits to pick up their wounded from the battlefield during the ceasefire. The Trump administration struck back immediately and appealed the Ninth Circuit decision to the Supreme Court.
Surrenders are happening in Trump’s battles to defeat Union law firms. Two thousand lawyers from the New York firm of Paul Weiss threw down their arms after the firm’s commander, Brad S. Karp, walked into the Oval Office on March 19 and agreed to spend $40 million to support groups of Trump’s choosing if he would stop shooting at Karp's lawyers. Today, another New York firm, Skadden Arps, raised a white flag and threw $100 million at Trump’s feet in what was seen by legal experts as an abject surrender to Trump’s autocratic rule.
Yesterday, Trump added to his articles of Confederation when he issued an executive order calling on the surrender of the Smithsonian Institution, founded in 1846 for “for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men.” From now on, according to Trump, the Smithsonian will be under the control of Vice President JD Vance and will be forbidden from putting on any “exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”
In addition, Trump ordered steps to be taken to restore “public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” that have been “removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.”
You know exactly what that means. They’ve already renamed Fort Benning and Fort Bragg after Confederate generals who lost more battles than they won. Now they’ll send teams of engineers around the country re-erecting statues to Robert E. Lee and General John Bell Hood, who lost more than 7,000 soldiers at the Battle of Franklin. They’ve already made teaching Black history illegal in some school systems and colleges around the country.
Now that Vance is in charge of the Smithsonian, how long do you think it will be until displays about the history of slavery are taken down at the National Museum of African American History and Culture? Do you think the word “feminism” will appear anywhere at all when they build the American Women’s History Museum?
Trump has been losing case after case challenging his executive orders in federal court. He has lost twice in courts of appeals, in Washington D.C. and California, in cases involving the firing of as many as 16,000 federal workers and his invocation of a 200-year-old wartime law when he deported alleged Venezuelan gang members to a notorious torture prison in El Salvador. He can’t win in court, so he has decided to intimidate lawyers and law firms who file and win cases against him. He’s rounding up foreign students from their apartments and dorm rooms and even off the streets for exercising their free speech rights in supporting Palestinian causes. How long before he orders the arrest of citizens for publishing political speech and even historical analysis that anger him?
We’re losing the Civil War that Trump started with his executive orders that effectively secede our federal government from the Union. The red states are already lost, some with abortion bans that don’t even allow exceptions for rape or incest. Advocates for Project 2025 want the Trump administration to use the long-dormant Comstock Act of 1873 to ban the shipment of abortion drugs and even medical equipment across state lines, effectively instituting a kind of passive national ban on abortion. Can a ban on birth control be far behind?
The First and Fifth Amendments are already constrained by Trump’s actions. He fired a cannon at the 14th Amendment with his executive order attempting to ban birthright citizenship. They’ve had their eye on equal protection of the laws since Brown v Board of Education and the Civil Rights laws. They want to bring back the “right of free association” that allowed segregated schools and public facilities in the states that lost what from now on we will have to call the First Civil War.
JD Vance is probably already working on a Smithsonian statue on the Mall for General Elon Musk, the Robert E. Lee of the Second Civil War.
We already know they won’t accept the results of the next presidential election if they don’t win. We are now confronted with this dark question: will our votes be enough to save the Union?
