By Don Newman

October 3, 2025

I am hereby making a bold prediction: There will be no 2028 presidential election in the United States.

The Constitution of the country calls for one, the electoral system is gearing up and ready for one, and politicians in both the Republican and the Democratic parties are preparing to hold multimillion-dollar political extravaganzas that will last almost two years as they fight for power.

But as Donald Trump continues to obliterate other democratic norms in a way that is rapidly bringing the United States more in line with China and Russia than Canada, the possibility that he will attempt to prevent the 2028 election is becoming less farfetched.

Trump was first elected in 2016 Presidential election, defeated in the election in 2020 but returned to office in 2024.

The 22nd Amendment limiting a presidency to two terms was approved by Congress in 1947 and ratified by the necessary three-fourths of the states as required by the U.S. Constitution in 1951. It was designed to prevent another presidency like that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was first elected in 1932 during the Depression and won his fourth term 12 years later in 1944 during World War II. He died five months later, in April, 1945.

Since 1788 and the first presidential election, no president had served longer than two four-year terms, including the heroic George Washington, the first president, elected unanimously twice by the Electoral College.

Washington set the standard for gracious presidential exits when he retired to Mount Vernon rather than presenting himself for a third term, citing both the personal reasons of age and fatigue and a desire to set an example for two terms as the (then-unofficial) limit on power.

Not everyone likes the 22nd Amendment. In a 2000 interview conducted by Jann Wenner for Rolling Stone as Bill Clinton was preparing to leave office, Clinton suggested the amendment should be changed to still limit a president to two consecutive terms, but permit a president to subsequently return and run again.

Trump has invented reasons to send troops into ‘war ravaged’ Portland, Oregon, and justified sabre-rattling against Venezuela on the excuse of fighting drug cartels, as though he’s conducting Wag-the-Dog dress rehearsals for main event.

Donald Trump would no doubt welcome that proposal. In August, during his latest (less acrimonious) Oval Office meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky, who noted that Ukraine doesn’t hold elections in wartime, Trump perked up.

“So, you say during the war, you can’t have elections,” Trump said. “So, let me just say, three and a half years from now – so you mean, if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections? Oh, that’s good.”

Since then, Trump has invented reasons to send troops into “war ravaged” Portland, Oregon, and justified sabre-rattling against Venezuela on the excuse of fighting drug cartels. It’s as though he’s been conducting Wag-the-Dog dress rehearsals for main event.

So, he could cancel the election on the argument that America is at war, just declaring the emergency and saying the Constitution is suspended. If America still has a recognizable constitutional infrastructure, any such move would end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which Trump has pre-emptively packed for just such occasions.

While this prospect may seem extreme, Trump has been normalizing the previously unthinkable since he launched his first campaign in 2015. His volatility and narcissism have rationalized everything from the storming of the U. S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to his threats to make Canada the 51st state.

This time around, he is much better organized, more entrenched and more brazen in his daily degradations of American democracy. Senior Democrats, including governors Gavin Newsom of California and JB Pritzker of Illinois are issuing dire warnings about 2028.

Whether the worst-case scenario plays out may depend on what happens next year in the midterm elections when all 435 members of the House of Representatives are up for election along with 35 of the 100 members of the United States Senate. Currently, both Houses of Congress are held by Trump-compliant Republican majorities. The Democrats are given some chance of winning control of the House but the Senate apparently remains out of reach.

If the Democrats control even one chamber of Congress, it will make it more difficult for Trump to try to extend his stay in office. But it will not be impossible. And based on his behaviour in 2021 after he lost, the idea of him now leaving quietly at the end of his current term seems wildly optimistic.

Policy Columnist Don Newman is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a lifetime member and a past president of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery.