On Thursday, January 23, 2025, U.S. Representative Andy Ogles proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution allowing Donald Trump to serve a third term as President. The Republican from Tennessee says the amendment is necessary to allow Trump to provide “the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs.”
“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,” the proposed amendment reads.
Approved in 1947 and ratified in 1951, the 22nd Amendment bars anyone from serving more than two terms as President. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who passed away in 1945, is the only President to serve more than two terms. However, Ogles is pushing Trump to serve a third term to reverse “our nation’s decay and restoring America to greatness.”
“President Trump’s decisive leadership stands in stark contrast to the chaos, suffering, and economic decline Americans have endured over the past four years. He has proven himself to be the only figure in modern history capable of reversing our nation’s decay and restoring America to greatness, and he must be given the time necessary to accomplish that goal,” Ogles said. “To that end, I am proposing an amendment to the Constitution to revise the limitations imposed by the 22nd Amendment on presidential terms. This amendment would allow President Trump to serve three terms, ensuring that we can sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs.”
Trump has not explicitly indicated that he’d push to run for a third term, but remarks made shortly after the most recent presidential election raised eyebrows.
“I suspect I won’t be running again, unless you do something,” Trump reportedly said, according to The Hill. “Unless you say, ‘He’s so good, we have to just figure it out.’”
Afterward, House Republicans attempted to brush his remarks off as a joke.
“That was a joke. It was clearly a joke,” Congressman Tim Burchett said. “I leaned over to somebody beside me, [Arizona Rep.] Andy Biggs, and I said, that’ll be the headlines tomorrow, ‘Trump trying to thwart the Constitution,’ which — there’s nothing further from the truth.”
