Amy Coney Barrett Gives Least Reassuring Answer on Trump Third Term

It’s unclear whether President Trump plans to run again in 2028, despite the Twenty-Second Amendment unambiguously barring a president from being elected for a third term.

In a Monday evening interview, Fox News host Brett Baier broached the subject with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett—and the wording of the Trump appointee’s response alarmed some observers.

“The Twenty-Second Amendment says you can only run for office for two terms,” Baier said.

“True,” answered Barrett.

“You think that that’s cut and dry?”

“Well, that’s, you know, that’s what the amendment says, right?” Barrett said. “After FDR had four terms, that’s what that amendment says.”

Many online were concerned that Barrett had left room for interpretation, among them California Governor Gavin Newsom, who wrote on X, “The answer is: YES.”

In an appearance on CBS last week, Barrett—currently on a book tour—gave a better answer when interviewer Norah O’Donnell noted that she “explicitly write[s] in the book that the Constitution ‘leaves no room for second guessing when it comes to term limits.’”

“The Twenty-Second Amendment sets a two-term limit,” Barrett said, again citing the history of the amendment’s enactment after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four elections. “So really, I can’t say anything else but just point to the Twenty-Second Amendment. If you ask the question how many terms a president can serve, I would point to the Twenty-Second amendment.”

Trump, for his part, has teetered on the question of whether he sees himself as constrained by the Twenty-Second Amendment—not to mention the Constitution in general.

In March, he told NBC’s Kristen Welker that he was “not joking” about considering a third term. There are “methods” by which he could do so, he claimed, one being if Vice President JD Vance was to win the presidency, then pass the baton to Trump.

In May, however, Trump declared to Welker that he will be “a two-term president”—though he seemingly couldn’t help but add, “There are ways of doing it.” In August, he said he would “like to run” again but “probably won’t.”

Online, the president sells “TRUMP 2028” hats, with the product description stating: “Rewrite the rules with the Trump 2028 high crown hat.”

President Trump greenlit Israel’s Tuesday bombing of Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, according to Israeli sources speaking with the media after the shocking attack.

The Israeli Defense Forces said they were targeting a meeting of Hamas leadership, who were gathered in Qatar to discuss a ceasefire proposal put forward by the Trump administration.

“The members of the leadership who were attacked led the terrorist organization’s activities for years, and are directly responsible for carrying out the October 7 massacre and waging the war against the State of Israel,” the IDF stated.

Israeli sources told multiple outlets—including CNN and Israel’s Channel 12 that the United States had prior knowledge of the planned attack.

The attack comes just months after Trump toured Qatar, hailed the country as a close ally, and accepted that $400 million private jet from Qatari leadership.

Qatar, which has served as a primary mediator in hostage and ceasefire talks and hosts a major U.S. airbase, has condemned the strike as “criminal” and “cowardly.”

“This criminal attack constitutes a flagrant violation of all international laws and norms and a serious threat to the security and safety of Qataris and residents of Qatar,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari. “The State of Qatar affirms that it will not tolerate this reckless Israeli behavior and its continued tampering with regional security, as well as any action targeting its security and sovereignty. Investigations are underway at the highest level, and further details will be announced as soon as they become available.”

Hours after the attack, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement that expressed both approval of Israel’s actions and regret for the location (Israel bombed a residential neighborhood).

“This morning, the Trump administration was notified by the United States military that Israel was attacking Hamas, which very unfortunately, was located in a section of Doha, the capital of Qatar. Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” Leavitt said. “However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.... The president views Qatar as a strong ally, and friend of the United States, and feels very badly about the location of this attack. President Trump wants all of the hostages in Gaza, and the bodies of the dead, released, and this war to end now.”

Leavitt then refused to elaborate when asked about what prior knowledge Trump had regarding Israel’s attack, if any.

Qatar has already confirmed it is suspending its mediation between Israel and Hamas after the bombing. Israel’s attack may very well prolong Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and Hamas’s detainment of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel seems to care less about the latter with each passing day.

Aside from that, this episode shows that (1) deference to Israel’s violence is still the Trump administration’s policy, and (2) no amount of groveling and gift-giving to Trump can stop you from getting backstabbed.

This story has been updated.

One Republican lawmaker known for pushing conspiracy theories suggested a surprising culprit behind President Donald Trump’s lewd birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaking to CNN’s Manu Raju Monday, Representative Tim Burchett suggested that Trump’s apparent signature had been forged—by the dreaded autopen.

“I mean, anybody can do a signature. We’ve seen autopens they used quite a bit in the Biden administration. I’ve never known Trump to be much of an artist either, so I kind of draw that into question,” Burchett said.

While the crude drawing of a naked woman on Epstein’s note wasn’t exactly the work of an artist, Raju pointed out that Trump had been known to draw pictures.

“The thing is, it’s been there for four years and now it’s just come out,” Burchett continued. “I just don’t buy it.”

Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly pushed the conspiracy theory that staffers for former President Joe Biden frequently used an autopen, in an attempt to magically undo the work of the previous administration. Trump also claimed that he never uses an autopen, before admitting that he does, but “only for very unimportant papers.”

Now Burchett seems to be hoping he can use the president’s catchall undo button to discount the damning evidence that Trump wrote a creepy message to his close friend, the alleged sex trafficker. It’s worth noting that the Tennessee Republican has a tendency to boost conspiracy theories that drift into the mainstream, like a bill he introduced opposing weather modification.

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal published an image of Trump’s lewd 50th birthday letter to Epstein, after it was delivered to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee by lawyers for the alleged sex traffickers’s estate—sending the White House scrambling for any way to claim the letter was a fake.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers used to have to fill out paperwork before they arrested someone. Now, likely in service of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, that requirement has been scrapped.

Six current and former ICE agents told NBC News that they had previously been required to record a person’s name, appearance, employer, last known address, immigration history, criminal history, and more.

The form used to be required for every arrest made, except when ICE was called in to work with local law enforcement agencies. But in the last few months, that policy has quietly vanished because some at the agency thought it was a “waste of time,” according to Darius Reeves, the former director of ICE’s Baltimore field office.

“It’s hard to fill out a worksheet that just says, ‘Meet in the Home Depot parking lot,’” one of the former ICE officials told NBC News.

Despite everything the Trump administration says to the contrary, it’s been clear for months that ICE is not targeting individuals with criminal histories; it’s performing massive, indiscriminate sweeps. Back in May, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller yelled at ICE agents, threatening to fire them if they didn’t make at least 3,000 arrests a day.

In an attempt to stop the blatant racial profiling, a federal judge in July issued a temporary restraining order blocking ICE from conducting “roving patrols” that used people’s race, or their language, as a reason to detain them.

And it actually helped: An analysis from the right-leaning Cato Institute said that arrests fell 66 percent in L.A. after the order.

But on Monday, the Supreme Court lifted that order, and ICE officers are now free to racially profile broad swaths of people to their hearts’ content: in L.A., in D.C., and soon in Chicago.

For those who believe that this type of lawlessness should have consequences, there’s one silver lining. If officers make arrests without probable cause, they could be sued, according to ICE’s former chief counsel in Dallas. The now-defunct paperwork requirement wasn’t just in place to protect civilians from the agents but to protect ICE officers from legal liability.

As the White House grapples with the House Oversight Committee’s release of a lewd birthday letter from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, additional mentions of the president in the deceased sex criminal’s 50th birthday book have emerged.

On one page of the 2003 book, a man identified by House Oversight Committee Democrats as “a longtime Mar-a-Lago member” appears to joke about Epstein selling a woman to Trump for $22,500.

Epstein, standing alongside two men and a woman whose identity has been redacted, holds a giant check supposedly from Trump, in payment for the woman. The note reads: “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women! Sells ‘fully depreciated’ [redacted] to Donald Trump for $22,500. Showed early ‘people skills’ too. Even though I handled the deal I didn’t get any of the money or the girl!”

As the president seeks to dispel the scandal surrounding perhaps the world’s most notorious sex trafficker, one would be hard-pressed to come up with a more embarrassing revelation than his name appearing on an enormous check for a woman from Epstein.

On another page, a letter from a woman whom Epstein apparently took around the world mentions meeting both Trump and former President Bill Clinton. (Clinton also reportedly penned Epstein a letter in the book.) “Before Jeffrey, I was a 22 year old divorcee working as a hostess in a hotel restaurant,” the message states. Since then, she wrote, she met Trump and Clinton, among other dignitaries.

The White House has been quiet about these pages thus far, as they instead seek to disprove the authenticity of the infamous birthday note in which Trump seems to have typed an unsettling poetic dialogue between himself and Epstein, framed by a marker drawing of a woman’s figure.

The letter’s release on Monday undermined the Trump administration’s claims that The Wall Street Journal’s prior reporting on the letter was fake. White House spokespeople have since persisted with that narrative nonetheless—desperately trotting out recent autographs by the president that appear different from Trump’s first-name signature on the 2003 birthday note. But examples abound of contemporaneous examples that are a perfect match.