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us supreme court
Trump’s Third Term: Distraction or Power Play?
With Trump, it’s always best to assume the worst.
Apr 08, 2025
“No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice….”
The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution restored the two-term tradition that President George Washington established. Except for Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, every president since Washington has followed it. President Donald Trump talks about breaking it.
Is he just waiving another shiny object at all of us? Or is he previewing his ultimate power play? With Trump, it’s always best to assume the worst.
Distraction From Disasters
Distraction is a classic Trump strategy. He draws attention away from his failures. And a little more than two months into his second term, there have already been plenty. Examples:
- He promised an economic boom.
But it’s been a bust: persistent inflation, plunging stock market, falling consumer confidence, global trade war, a looming “Trumpcession.”
- He promised a more efficient government.
But he’s gutting it: decimated worker morale, devastating spending cuts undermining public health and safety, allowing his family and friends to exploit personal conflicts of interest for private gain.
- He promised that “only the best people” would run his government.
But his advisers are a clown car of incompetent loyalists: national security team using a commercial app for top-secret discussions; vaccine-denier secretary of health and human services willfully ignorant of science gutting public health agencies; a hatchet-man terminating federal workers who safeguard America’s nuclear arsenal.
- He promised to improve America’s global stature.
But he destroyed our standing as a leader of the free world: undermining NATO; alienating America’s friends; taking Russia’s side in the brutal war that it launched against a democratic nation; inflicting massive economic pain on our closest allies; dismantling “soft power” diplomatic weapons—USAID and Voice of America—that won hearts and minds for decades.
Trump benefits from anything that moves the spotlight away from the ongoing disasters he is inflicting on America and the world.
Preserving His Power
Even so, Trump’s talk about a third term is more than a distraction.
As a lame duck president, his power has a limited shelf life. But holding out the possibility of remaining in office past 2028 stops the erosion of his influence. He can maintain control of his MAGA base, silence potential GOP critics, and retain his grip on congressional Republicans. Trump’s threat to remain in office is as important as his ability to execute it.
How Viable Is the Threat?
Some scholars argue that the 22nd Amendment barring a twice-elected president from being elected for a third term does not prevent him from serving another term if he reaches the office through a different path. They offer this hypothetical: In 2028 Trump runs for vice president with JD Vance at the top of the ticket. The ticket wins, President Vance resigns, and Trump becomes president again.
But the 12th Amendment provides that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice president of the United States.” Because Trump will have served two terms and be “constitutionally ineligible” to serve again, he would not be “eligible” to run for vice president either.
With his conservative majority, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rewrote the Constitution to place Trump above the law. Would the court stop Trump’s ultimate power grab or crown him king for life?
“Since you’re not electable as president, you’re not eligible to be president, and therefore you’re not eligible to be vice president,” said Yale University constitutional law professor Akhil Reed Amar.
Northeastern professor Jeremy Paul declared that using the vice presidency as a back door to a third term is “ridiculous.”
Likewise, according to Princeton professor Deborah Pearlstein, “Trump is constitutionally ineligible to serve a third term. End of story.”
Except Fairleigh Dickinson professor Bruce G. Peabody doesn’t think it’s the end of the story: “[T]he weight of legal, historical, and policy argument still falls on the side of permitting a twice-elected president to lead the executive branch once again.”
Peabody’s argument goes something like this: The Constitution elsewhere defines presidential “eligibility” as anyone who is a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old, and a U.S. resident for at least 14 years. If that definition merely establishes the minimum requirements for running, a twice-elected President Trump would still be “eligible” to seek the vice presidency.
Whatever ambiguity might exist surrounding a presidential third term, the obvious resolution is to adopt a new constitutional amendment repealing the 22nd Amendment. But that’s where the academic debate yields to the real world. A new amendment would never gain the requisite approval—two-thirds of both houses of Congress and two-thirds of the states.
Practical Problems
Ultimately, other real-world questions are even more important:
- If Vance ran as a presidential placeholder and won, would he then step aside?
- Will Trump’s incompetence continue until accumulating failures so erode his support as to render potential reelection a fantasy?
- Will Trump, who will be 82 years old when his current term expires, be capable of holding the presidency for another four years?
- If Trump tries to run in 2028, will the courts act quickly enough to stop his power grab?
With his conservative majority, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rewrote the Constitution to place Trump above the law. Would the court stop Trump’s ultimate power grab or crown him king for life?
Asking for forebears who died on battlefields to preserve my freedom.
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Chief Justice Blocks Court Order Requiring Return of Man Sent to El Salvador Prison
"Justices regularly issue administrative stays so the full court can mull a request," one legal expert noted. "It is surely upsetting for Abrego Garcia, though."
Apr 07, 2025
Just hours before a midnight deadline, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday blocked District Judge Paula Xinis' order directing the Trump administration to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador, to the United States.
Roberts—who is part of the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority but has publicly criticized President Donald Trump's attacks on the federal judiciary and sometimes sided with the liberal justices against the administration—did not explain his decision to grant an administrative stay, which temporarily pauses Xinis' order until the high court makes another decision.
"I would not reach too much into Roberts' action," saidSlate's Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the court. "Justices regularly issue administrative stays so the full court can mull a request. Remember that Roberts also stayed Judge [Amir Ali's] order on foreign aid before the full court ultimately denied a stay. It is surely upsetting for Abrego Garcia, though."
Roberts ordered Abrego Garcia's attorneys to respond by 5:00 pm ET Tuesday. "BUT: Abrego Garcia's lawyers have—at roughly the same time, although Roberts' order appears first on the docket—already filed their response," notedLaw Dork's Chris Geidner.
"In short, the question is now back to the court," Geidner explained. "No reply is required in shadow docket requests, although it is often submitted. The court does not need to wait for a reply, so any reply should be submitted as quickly as a party thinks the court would need it/might act."
As Abrego Garcia's lawyers wrote to the high court:
The government knew about the court order prohibiting Abrego Garcia's removal to El Salvador, and admits that removing him in violation of that order was an "administrative error"... Abrego Garcia has never been charged with a crime, in any country. He is not wanted by the government of El Salvador. He sits in a foreign prison solely at the behest of the United States, as the product of a Kafka-esque mistake.
The government "can—and does—return wrongfully removed migrants as a matter of course"... The district court's order instructing the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return is routine... It does not implicate foreign policy or even domestic immigration policy in any case. The United States has never claimed that it is powerless to correct its error and before today, it did not contend that doing so would cause it any harm. That is because the only one harmed by the current state of affairs is Abrego Garcia.
The Trump administration had asked the Supreme Court to intervene earlier Monday, after Maryland-based Xinis doubled down on an order issued Friday and a panel from the Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit declined to grant a stay.
One of the appellate judges wrote: "The United States government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. The government's contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable."
Before the Trump administration sent Abrego Garcia to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in his native El Salvador, he lived in Maryland with his wife, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen; their autistic, nonverbal 5-year-old child; and two children from Vasquez Sura's previous relationship.
As CNNreported Monday, before Roberts' decision, Vasquez Sura had welcomed the appeals decision and renewed her call for Trump and Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, to bring her husband home.
“This decision gives me hope, and even more encouragement to keep fighting. My children, family, and I will continue praying and seeking justice. Now that the court has spoken, I ask again that both President Trump and President Bukele stop attempting any further delays," she said. "They need to follow the court's order NOW. My children are waiting to be reunited with their father tonight."
Congressional Democrats—including Reps. Joaquin Castro (Texas) and Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) on Monday—have also pressured the administration to return Abrego Garcia to his family. Castro also shared a warning from Joyce White Vance, a University of Alabama law professor and legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, that "if it can happen to Abrego Garcia, it can happen to any of us."
As Common Dreamsreported, Trump on Sunday expressed a desire to accept Bukele's offer to take prisoners who are U.S. citizens. "I love that," he said. "If we could take some of our 20-time wise guys that push people into subways and hit people over the back of the head and purposely run people over in cars, if he would take them, I would be honored to give them."
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Supreme Court Lets Trump Freeze Millions in Funding to Tackle Teacher Shortages
One legal expert called it "unquestionably a win for the Trump administration, but on remarkably narrow and modest terms."
Apr 04, 2025
Republican-appointed justices handed the second Trump administration its first win at the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, allowing the Department of Education to temporarily freeze millions of dollars in grants intended to help states combat K-12 teacher shortages while a legal battle over the money plays out.
The emergency order was unsigned, but the three liberals—Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor—all dissented, and Chief Justice John Roberts noted that he "would deny the application" without offering further explanation. That means the decision came from the other five right-wingers, including three appointees of President Donald Trump.
The decision stems from a federal lawsuit filed in the District of Massachusetts by a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general last month after the U.S. Education Department "arbitrarily terminated approximately $600 million in critical grants" for two programs: the Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) and Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED).
The coalition's initial complaint explains that Congress authorized the funding "to address nationwide teacher shortages and improve teacher quality by educating, placing, and supporting new teachers in hard-to-staff schools, especially in rural and other underserved communities, and in hard-to-staff subjects, such as math and special education."
"The department's actions appear to encompass 'policy objectives' of ending disfavored but lawful efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion—objectives that Congress expressly directed grantees to carry out in creating these programs, including by identifying that these teacher preparation programs should assist 'traditionally underserved' local education agencies... and ensure 'general education teachers receive training in providing instruction to diverse populations, including children with disabilities, limited English proficient students, and children from low-income families," the document details.
U.S. District Judge Myong Joun—an appointee of former President Joe Biden—found that the coalition was likely to succeed on the merits of its claims under the Administrative Procedure Act and issued the temporary restraining order sought by offiicals in California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Wisconsin.
However, the country's high court granted a stay on Friday, concluding that the Trump administration "is unlikely to recover the grant funds once they are disbursed," the plaintiff states "have the financial wherewithal to keep their programs running" during the legal fight, and if they "ultimately prevail, they can recover any wrongfully withheld funds through suit in an appropriate forum."
In a dissent that was under two pages, Kagan wrote that "nothing about this case demanded our immediate intervention. Rather than make new law on our emergency docket, we should have allowed the dispute to proceed in the ordinary way."
Jackson argued in her longer dissent, joined by Sotomayor, that "this court's eagerness to insert itself into this early stage of ongoing litigation over the lawfulness of the department's actions—even when doing so facilitates the infliction of significant harms on the plaintiff states, and even though the government has not bothered to press any argument that the department's harm‐causing conduct is lawful—is equal parts unprincipled and unfortunate. It is also entirely unwarranted."
In a footnote that drew attention from court watchers, Jackson accused the majority of handing the Trump administration "an early 'win'—a notch in its belt at the start of a legal battle in which the long-term prospects for its eventual success seem doubtful," and expressed concern that "permitting the emergency docket to be hijacked in this way, by parties with tangential legal questions unrelated to imminent harm, damages our institutional credibility."
I am fascinated by this fourth wall–breaking footnote from Justice Jackson criticizing the majority for handing the Trump administration "a notch in its belt at the start of a legal battle in which the long-term prospects for its eventual success seem doubtful." It's more about optics than law ...
[image or embed]
— Mark Joseph Stern ( @mjsdc.bsky.social) April 4, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Trump's billionaire education secretary, former wrestling executive Linda McMahon, welcomed the ruling as "an important step towards realizing the president's agenda to ensure that taxpayer funds that support education go toward meaningful learning and serving our students—not to train teachers in radical racial and gender ideologies."
Meanwhile, Steve Vladeck, CNN's Supreme Court analyst and a Georgetown University Law Center professor, said that Friday's decision "is unquestionably a win for the Trump administration, but on remarkably narrow and modest terms."
"It leaves open the possibility that the plaintiffs are going to win not just this case, but a bunch of other challenges to the government's cancellation of grants, while freezing the order in this specific case. And even that was a bridge too far for Chief Justice Roberts and the three Democratic appointees," he added. "It's a victory for the government, but a short-lived one that may soon be overtaken by far more significant losses in the other pending cases in which Trump has asked the justices to intervene."
CNN noted that the Supreme Court "has already resolved two emergency appeals from the Trump administration" and is still considering others on topics including Trump's efforts to end birthright citizenship and to invoke the Alien Enemies Act for mass deportations.
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