US Politics

Donald Trump has declined to definitively say he will not seek an unconstitutional third term as US president. “I would love to do it: I have my best numbers ever,” the 79-year-old told reporters on Air Force One during a trip to Asia. Pressed on whether he was not ruling out a third term, he said: “Am I not ruling it out? I mean, you’ll have to tell me.”Why all the talk of Trump 2028?While this has been an ongoing theme with the president, the Trump Organization is now selling $50 red caps that read “Trump 2028”, appearing to promote the president as a candidate in the next election. Trump relishes showing the caps to foreign leaders and earlier this month placed them in front of Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer during budget talks in the Oval Office. Jeffries told CNN: “It was the strangest thing ever.”Meanwhile a thinktank called Third Term Project is “devoted to getting President Donald J Trump his rightful third term in office”. And in an interview last week with the Economist magazine, Maga guru Steve Bannon said: “Trump is going to be president in ’28, and people ought to just get accommodated with that. At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is. But there is a plan.”But what does the constitution say?The 22nd amendment states in part: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” The amendment was ratified in 1951 after Franklin Roosevelt broke with a self-imposed two-term limit set by presidents since George Washington, the nation’s first.Roosevelt, a Democrat who was president during the Great Depression and the second world war, served a third term and then died months into his fourth term in 1945.Wayne Unger, a law professor at Quinnipiac University, told the Reuters news agency that the constitution is clear: presidents are limited to two terms of four years each. Unger said that while that had not been tested in court, any challenge by Trump would likely be unsuccessful. “I would predict the supreme court to say nope, it’s clear, two terms of four years each, Donald Trump, you cannot run for a third.”Could Trump’s allies change the constitution?Ronald Reagan publicly supported repealing the 22nd amendment, telling an interviewer that he “wouldn’t do that for myself, but for presidents from here on”. But that is a very long shot in an era of hyper-polarisation between Democrats and Trump’s Republican party.Any constitutional amendment would require two-thirds support in the House of Representatives and Senate or a convention called by two-thirds of the states, and then ratification by 38 of the 50 state legislatures. Republicans hold a razor-thin 219-213 majority in the House and a 53-47 majority in the Senate. Republicans control 28 state legislatures.In January Andy Ogles, a Republican congressman from Tennessee and ardent Trump supporter, proposed changing the 22nd amendment to allow people to serve three non-consecutive terms as president. Since Trump’s terms starting in 2017 and 2025 were non-consecutive, the amendment would allow him to serve a third term starting in 2029.Could Trump run as vice-president then take over?Trump’s allies argue that the 22nd amendment only explicitly bars a person from being “elected” to more than two presidential terms but says nothing about “succession”.On Monday, however, Trump dismissed the idea that he could run as vice-president and then have the candidate for president resign immediately after taking office, which would return him to the presidency. “I’d be allowed to do that,” Trump said in an exchange aboard Air Force One before adding: “I think the people wouldn’t like that. It’s too cute.”However, Trump is barred from running for vice-president because he is not eligible to be president. The 12th amendment to the constitution reads: “No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice-president of the United States.”Are there any other loopholes?Another theory is that Trump could become speaker of the House – which does not necessarily require him to be a member of the House – and ascend via the Presidential Succession Act if both the president and vice-president are incapacitated.While theoretically possible as a non-elected path to the presidency, this has never been tested and would face immediate supreme court challenges. Scholars such as Unger predict that the court would rule it unconstitutional because the 22nd amendment’s intent is to limit total service, not just elections. More

The Indiana governor, Mike Braun, announced on Monday that he is calling a special session to consider redrawing congressional districts in the state, the latest state to work on its maps ahead of 2026.Indiana is one of several Republican-led states the Trump administration has pressured to undertake mid-decade redistricting to favor Republicans, which began with a push in Texas to redraw lines to add Republican seats.California is considering a ballot measure to redraw its lines to favor Democrats, a move initiated in response to Texas. Virginia’s Democratic house speaker, Don Scott, also said last week the state would hold a special session to redistrict to benefit Democrats, potentially adding two or three Democratic seats. Several other states, including Indiana and North Carolina, have now launched redistricting efforts to benefit Republicans.“I am calling a special legislative session to protect Hoosiers from efforts in other states that seek to diminish their voice in Washington and ensure their representation in Congress is fair,” Braun said in a statement on Monday morning.Indiana currently sends seven Republicans and two Democrats to Congress.Republican state lawmakers in some states, including Indiana and Kansas, have pushed back on the idea of redistricting. But Braun has said, if the state doesn’t redraw its maps, “probably, we’ll have consequences of not working with the Trump administration as tightly as we should.”John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, highlighted the opposition in a statement on Monday. “Between the overwhelming opposition from Hoosiers and the relentless pressure from Washington – including but not limited to Vice-President [JD] Vance taking two taxpayer-funded trips to the state, threats to cut federal funding, and phone calls from President Trump – Governor Braun clearly called this special session solely because he got orders from Washington,” he said. “Hoosiers do not want a mid-decade gerrymander.”Also on Monday, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, is reportedly headed to Illinois to meet with local leaders about redrawing the congressional maps. Jeffries will meet with the Illinois legislative Black caucus and Black members of Congress, a nod to the fact that Black lawmakers will be needed to pass a new map, according to Punchbowl News.Last week, the Illinois senate Black caucus warned that it wouldn’t support a new map if it dilutes the Black voting population, Punchbowl noted. There are three historically Black districts among Illinois’s 17 congressional seats. Only three of the state’s seats are held by Republicans. More

The head of America’s largest federal workers union says it is time to end the government shutdown, now the second-longest in US history, as hundreds of thousands of employees miss another round of paychecks.Everett Kelley, who leads the American Federation of Government Employees representing more than 800,000 workers, avoided assigning blame to either party in the Monday morning letter but said lawmakers must stop playing politics and pass a stopgap funding measure to reopen the government, its closure now eclipsing the four-week mark.“Both political parties have made their point, and still there is no clear end in sight,” Kelley wrote in the statement. “Today I’m making mine: it’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today. No half measures, and no gamesmanship.” NBC News first reported the letter.A “clean” continuing resolution is a temporary spending bill that keeps the government running at current funding levels without attaching other political demands. Republicans say they have offered that in their measure, but Democrats argue the bill shortchanges key services and are using their power in the Senate to push for a deal on health insurance subsidies that expire at year’s end.Because of this stalemate, hundreds of thousands of federal and Washington DC government employees are either working without pay or furloughed. The union represents workers across nearly every federal agency, from Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers and army nurses to food safety inspectors and veterans affairs staff, many of whom are now lined up at food banks after missing their second paycheck, Kelley said.“These are patriotic Americans – parents, caregivers, and veterans – forced to work without pay while struggling to cover rent, groceries, gas and medicine because of political disagreements in Washington,” Kelley said. “That is unacceptable.”But the crisis extends beyond federal workers: roughly 42 million Americans who receive food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program face losing their benefits as soon as 1 November if the shutdown continues, after the US agriculture department warned states it would run out of money to pay for the program.Senate Democrats have blocked a Republican-backed continuing resolution 12 times, demanding commitments on extending Affordable Care Act health subsidies. Three Democrats and one independent who caucus with the party have broken ranks to support the measure, but it remains short of the 60 needed to advance. The Republican senator Rand Paul is the sole Republican to defect on the measure.The AFGE is already suing the Trump administration over mass layoffs organized during the shutdown and over partisan emails sent from government accounts without employees’ knowledge.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKelley called for three immediate steps: reopening the government under a continuing resolution, ensuring full back pay for all affected workers, and addressing policy disputes through normal legislative debate rather than shutdown tactics.“When the folks who serve this country are standing in line for food banks after missing a second paycheck because of this shutdown, they aren’t looking for partisan spin,” he said. “They’re looking for the wages they earned. The fact that they’re being cheated out of it is a national disgrace.”The shutdown reaches the one-month mark this week, with no negotiations scheduled between the parties.The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, told CNN on Sunday that he and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, requested a meeting with Donald Trump to discuss the shutdown before he went out of the country but had been rebuffed. The president has said he will only meet with Democrats after they vote to reopen the government.“A strong America requires a functioning government – one that pays its bills, honors its commitments, and treats its workforce with respect by paying them on time,” Kelley wrote. “The government belongs to all of us. Let’s open it back up and keep America moving forward.” More

What, exactly, is Congress for? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress, too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, that is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via non-partisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation or revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered non-competitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

The party of Argentina’s far-right president, Javier Milei, has won Sunday’s midterm elections after a campaign in which Donald Trump announced a $40bn bailout for the country and made continued aid conditional on the victory of his Argentinian counterpart.With more than 95% of ballots counted, La Libertad Avanza secured 40.84% of the nationwide vote, in an election widely seen as a de facto referendum on the self-styled anarcho-capitalist’s nearly two years in power. The Peronist opposition, Fuerza Patria, secured 31.67%.While the result falls short of giving Milei a congressional majority – which remains with the Peronists – it has surprised Argentinian analysts, given the recent blows to the libertarian’s popularity from corruption allegations involving his sister to the current economic crisis.The government had downplayed expectations, considering anything between 30% and 35% a satisfactory outcome, especially after Milei’s heavy defeat in the provincial elections in Buenos Aires in September, when he lost to the Peronists by 14 percentage points.View image in fullscreenThis time, Milei’s party turned the tide, winning in Argentina’s largest electoral district, home to about 40% of the electorate.“I am the king of a lost world,” Milei sang as he took the stage in front of hundreds of supporters at a hotel in Buenos Aires. He began his speech by saying: “Today we passed the tipping point – the construction of a great Argentina begins.”The president hailed the US bailout as “something unprecedented, not only in Argentine history but in world history, because the US has never offered support of such magnitude”.“Now we are focused on carrying out the reforms that Argentina needs to consolidate growth and the definitive takeoff of the country – to make Argentina great again,” the president said in Spanish, echoing the Trumpist slogan.View image in fullscreenTrump soon offered his congratulations on Sunday night, calling the win for Milei’s party a “landslide victory”.Speaking on a trip to Asia on Monday, Trump said Milei had a “lot of help” from the US, as he praised the unexpectedly “big win”, describing it as “a great thing”.“He had a lot of help from us. He had a lot of help. I gave him an endorsement, a very strong endorsement,” Trump said, also crediting some of his top officials, including the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, who oversaw the financial assistance to Argentina. “We are sticking with a lot of the countries in South America. We focus very much on South America,” Trump said.View image in fullscreenUp for grabs in the election were 127 of the 257 seats in the lower house and a third of the senate, 24 of its 72 seats. Milei’s party secured 64 lower house seats and 12 in the senate.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe new seats in the lower house, combined with those already held, allow the government to meet its main goal for this election: securing at least a third of the lower house to sustain presidential vetoes.Milei began his administration almost two years ago with his “chainsaw” spending cuts, slashing tens of thousands of public jobs and freezing investment in infrastructure, healthcare, education and even the supply of medicines for pensioners.He managed to bring down inflation from more than 200% in 2023 to about 30% in September, achieving the country’s first fiscal surplus in 14 years. Economic activity grew by 0.3% in August 2025 after three consecutive months of decline.View image in fullscreenBut purchasing power has plummeted: most Argentinians say they are struggling to make ends meet, more than 250,000 jobs have been lost and about 18,000 businesses have closed.The libertarian’s popularity also took a hit when Milei promoted a cryptocurrency that later collapsed; his sister and most powerful cabinet member, Karina Milei, was implicated in an alleged corruption scheme; and one of his party’s leading candidates withdrew from Sunday’s election after admitting to having received $200,000 from a businessman accused of drug trafficking in the US.To prevent the peso from devaluing, the government burned through its dollar reserves, even after taking a $20bn loan (of which $14bn has been disbursed) from the International Monetary Fund, and was forced to turn to Trump, who came to the rescue with a $40bn bailout.Trump’s stance was seen by many in the country as interference in the election, and some predicted that – owing to anti-American sentiment among parts of the population – US support could backfire on Milei.Although voting is compulsory, turnout was the lowest since the return to democracy in 1983, at 67.85%, surpassing the previous record low of 71% set in 2021. More

The Trump administration’s military airtrikes against boats off Venezuela’s coast that the White House claims were being used for drug trafficking are “extrajudicial killings”, said Rand Paul, the president’s fellow Republican and US senator from Kentucky.Paul’s strong comments on the topic came on Sunday during an interview on Republican-friendly Fox News, three days after Donald Trump publicly claimed he “can’t imagine” federal lawmakers would have “any problem” with the strikes when asked about seeking congressional approval for them.US forces in recent weeks have carried out at least eight strikes against boats in the Caribbean off Venezuela’s coast, killing about 40 people that the Trump administration has insisted were involved in smuggling drugs.Speaking with Fox News Sunday anchor Shannon Bream, Paul asserted that Congress has “gotten no information” on the campaign of strikes from Trump’s administration – despite the president claiming the White House would be open to briefing the federal lawmakers about the offensive.“No one said their name, no one said what evidence, no one said whether they’re armed, and we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said of the targeted boats or those on board. He argued that the Trump administration’s actions bring to mind the way China and Iran’s repressive governments have previously executed drug smugglers.“They summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public,” Paul contended in his conversation with Bream. “So it’s wrong.”Paul’s comments separate him from other Republican members of Congress who have spoken in favor of the Trump administration’s offensive near Venezuela, including US House representative Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Senator Cynthia Loomis of Wyoming, as reported by the US news website Semafor.The Kentucky libertarian joined Democratic US senators Tim Kaine of Virginia and Adam Schiff of California in introducing a war powers resolution that would have blocked the Trump administration’s use of military strikes within or against Venezuela. But the measure failed to win a majority in the Senate.Trump on Friday told the media that his administration would be willing to brief lawmakers on the strikes but simply saw no reason to seek congressional authorization for them.“I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK?” Trump said. “We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be – like – dead.”Paul has had military-related disagreements with Trump before his Sunday interview on Fox.Trump telegraphed his intent to use the US military to support his administration’s goals of deporting immigrants en masse before he won his second presidency in the 2024 election. After Trump’s second electoral victory but before he retook the Oval Office in January, Paul said he believed using the military in support of deportation was “illegal” and a task better suited for US law enforcement. “It’s a terrible image, and I … oppose that,” Paul said at the time. More

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The council of American-Islamic relations (Cair) has accused the Trump administration of a “blatant affront to free speech” after federal immigration authorities detained British journalist, Sami Hamdi, on Sunday.The Muslim civil rights organization claimed that Hamdi had been detained at San Fransisco airport for criticising Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza. Hamdi is one of several people who have been arrested and deported by ICE for expressing pro-Palestinian views.The Department of Homeland Security said that Hamdi’s visa had been revoked, and that he was in ICE custody “pending removal”.ICE detains British journalist after criticism of Israel on US tourBritish journalist Sami Hamdi was reportedly detained on Sunday morning by federal immigration authorities at San Francisco international airport, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) says that action is apparent retaliation for the Muslim political commentator’s criticism of Israel while touring the US.A statement from Cair said it was “a blatant affront to free speech” to detain Hamdi for criticizing Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza while he engaged on a speaking tour in the US. A Trump administration official added in a separate statement that Hamdi is facing deportation.Read the full storyTrump told Pence ‘you’ll go down as a wimp’ in January 6 phone call, book saysOn the day that his supporters attacked the US Capitol because his 2020 re-election run ended in defeat, Donald Trump called his vice-president at the time, Mike Pence, and told him he would go down in history as a “wimp” if he certified the election result, a new book says.Those details were revealed on Sunday when ABC News published a preview excerpt of an upcoming book by its political correspondent Jonathan Karl. The book, titled Retribution, cites Pence’s notes from the 6 January 2021 phone call with Trump, who was purportedly trying to shame his vice-president into refusing to certify Joe Biden’s victory weeks earlier in the White House.Read the full storyGavin Newsom confirms he is considering 2028 presidential runGavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, told CBS News Sunday Morning he plans to make a decision on whether to run for president in 2028 once the 2026 midterm elections are over.“Yeah, I’d be lying otherwise,” Newsom said in response to a question on whether he would give serious thought to a White House bid after the 2026 elections. “I’d just be lying. And I’m not – I can’t do that.”Read the full storyUS and China reach ‘final deal’ on TikTok sale, treasury secretary saysUS treasury secretary Scott Bessent claimed on Sunday that the US and China have finalized the details of a deal transferring TikTok’s US version to new owners.“We reached a final deal on TikTok,” Bessent said on Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan. Alluding to Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, Bessent continued: “We reached [a deal] in Madrid, and I believe that as of today, all the details are ironed out, and that will be for the two leaders to consummate that transaction” during a meeting scheduled for Thursday in Korea.Read the full storyTrump’s move to pay troops amid shutdown sets dangerous precedent, experts warnBy ordering that US military personnel receive paychecks even though the government is shut down, Donald Trump is seeing to the needs of a politically untouchable constituency that has been caught up in the congressional logjam over federal spending.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

US airports report over 20 air traffic controller shortage incidents in one day

Interested in New York’s mayoral race? Read this feature on Jewish New York’s reckoning with Zohran Mamdani and his outreach to the Jewish community
Catching up? Here’s what happened Saturday 25 October. More