CAN TRUMP SERVE A THIRD TERM? HERE ARE 11 WAYS IT COULD HAPPEN

Babylon Bee

 

Can Trump Serve a Third Term? Here Are 11 Ways It Could Happen

Politics

Mar 31, 2025 · BabylonBee.com

 

Democracy is dead because Trump killed it by being elected to a second presidential term. But could he kill it even more by serving a third term as president?

 

It's possible. Here are 11 feasible ways that Trump could serve a third term. Here they are. Read, and shudder.

 

Trump could appoint himself as a Federal Judge and unilaterally proclaim himself the Forever President: Federal judges can do anything they want and no one can stop them.

 

He might change his name to Bill Trump, making him legally eligible to run again: The Founders never accounted for a despot who would do something as devious as this.

 

He could collect all the Infinity Stones and snap his fingers, granting himself infinite terms: He already has three of them stashed in Mar A Lago. Terrifying.

 

Trump could just never leave, extending his second term forever: The scary thing is this is technically legal.

 

He could switch parties and become a Democrat so he can do whatever he wants: This one just might work, actually. Gotta hand it to Trump.

 

He could use the Men in Black neuralizer to make the nation forget he was already president: Maybe he's already used this on us and we're living in the hell of a fourth or even fifth Trump term without knowing it.

 

He might die and be resurrected as a glowy blue force ghost and rule for all eternity: He'll be impossible to assassinate then.

 

Elon could build a time machine to help Trump go back in time to 1787 and change the Constitution: Someone needs to stop this madman.

 

Trump could sign an executive order that only orange people may run for President: He'd be the only eligible person left besides Steve Thompson in Bentonville, Arkansas.

 

Trump could pardon himself for future constitutional violations before leaving his second term: Then he'd be able to have all the terms he wants, no strings attached.

 

He could convince some washed-up, loser career politician with dementia to run, then secretly pull the strings from behind the scenes: Hey, it worked for Obama.

 

Horrendous, right? It seems like any — and maybe all — of these scenarios could definitely happen. Time to hunker down!

RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION AND CENSORSHIP WON'T BE TOLERATED IN VA HOSPITALS, SECRETARY SAYS

National Review

 

Religious Discrimination, Censorship Won’t Be Tolerated in VA Hospitals, Secretary Says

By Ryan Mills

April 3, 2025 3:12 PM

 

The sermons of religious workers in Veterans Affairs medical centers will not be subjected to censorship and a Pennsylvania chaplain facing allegations of inappropriate conduct for delivering a sermon addressing Biblical views on homosexuality will not be reprimanded, according to Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins.

 

In a letter to the Texas-based First Liberty Institute, Collins stated that it is “undisputed and well-settled law that constitutional law and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act protects statements made by all VA Chaplains while delivering sermons in accordance with their ecclesiastical endorsers.”

 

Collins drafted the letter in reference to the case of Russell Trubey, a Protestant chaplain at the Coatesville VA Medical Center near Philadelphia, who is represented by First Liberty and the Independence Law Center. The conservative law firms reached out to Collins in February after they say Trubey’s supervisor, chaplain Brynn White, had him investigated for inappropriate conduct and recommended he be reprimanded for “conduct unbecoming” for preaching a sermon in June that included a Bible passage critical of homosexuality.

 

White also proposed a policy change that would prohibit sermons from including “divisive, culture, or political issues,” and limit sermons to addressing only “commonly-held religious ideals and values across various denominations and people groups,” according to the law firms. She also confirmed that she intended to screen her chaplains’ sermons.

 

National Review wrote about Trubey’s case in February.

 

Trubey’s lawyers contended that he was being subjected to religious discrimination, and that White’s proposed policy changes violated Trubey’s constitutional rights to speak freely and to freely exercise his religion. Collins, a U.S. Air Force Reserve chaplain, agreed.

 

In his letter, he wrote that the letter of reprimand issued to Trubey in November “was made in error and was rescinded once staff were counseled regarding the complexities of the applicable laws.” The VA, he wrote, “is committed to preventing any future misappropriation of the law.” And, he added, “VA confirms that there is no national or local policy or standard operating procedure which inhibits Chaplain sermons.”

 

First Liberty received the letter on Wednesday, though it appears to have been drafted in February. Trubey’s lawyers said they were “thrilled” and “grateful” for Collins’ backing.

 

“Secretary Collins made it clear that the government has no business censoring anyone’s sermon, including military chaplains,” Erin Smith, a First Liberty lawyer, said in a written statement.

 

Randall Wenger of the Independence Law Center added that “Chaplains like Rusty Trubey serve those who have served us—our veterans—and they must be free to meet the spiritual needs of our service members according to conscience and Scripture.”

 

Trubey, a ten-year veteran of the Coatesville VA, delivered the allegedly divisive sermon in June, the second in a two-part series titled “When a Culture Excludes God.”

 

During the sermon, he read a passage from Romans 1, which condemns “shameful” homosexual acts. Before reading the passage, Trubey warned attendees that it could be hard for them, but it was important to first hear the bad news in order to hear God’s good news of hope and redemption, according to Trubey’s lawyers.

 

When Trubey informed White about complaints he’d received, she told him Romans 1 was a “very charged and divisive text” and transferred him out of chaplain services while he was investigated.

 

White’s religious background isn’t clear. A profile of her on the Society for Shamanic Practice’s website describes her as an “ordained minister,” a “board-certified (mental health) chaplain,” and a “shamanic practitioner.”

MAJOR INFANT MORTALITY STUDY WAS EDITED TO PRESERVE RACIAL PERSPECTIVE

National Review

 

Major Infant-Mortality Study Was Edited to Preserve Racial ‘Perspective’

By Abigail Anthony

April 2, 2025 1:10 PM

 

Researchers deliberately obscured a data point about white babies under the care of black physicians because it ‘undermines the narrative.’

 

When the high-profile Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case was before the Supreme Court, the Association of American Medical Colleges submitted an amicus brief citing a 2020 study and claiming that “for high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician is tantamount to a miracle drug: it more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live.” The study in question, “Physician–patient racial concordance and disparities in birthing mortality for newborns,” suggested that the mortality rates for black newborns decline significantly if they are under the care of black physicians, an outcome possibly driven by white physicians harboring “spontaneous bias.” The study stated, “Black physicians systemically outperform their colleagues when caring for Black newborns,” and the research “gives warrant for hospitals and other care organizations to invest in efforts to reduce such biases and explore their connection to institutional racism.” In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson cited that brief and claimed the following: “For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die.”

 

The problem? The study was totally wrong. Worse, documents recently obtained by FOIA requests show that the researchers deliberately omitted a data point about white babies under the care of black physicians because it “undermines the narrative.”

 

In 2024, two researchers — one at Harvard University, another at the Manhattan Institute — noted that accounting for a “crucial omitted variable,” namely very low infant weight, completely invalidates the previous finding: “This paper shows that the influential estimates of the impact of racial concordance on Black newborn mortality are substantially weakened and often become both numerically close to zero and statistically insignificant, once the analysis controls for the mortality effect of very low birth weights.” Why? The black babies with a very low birth weight are disproportionately more likely to be seen by a white doctor, and those babies are more likely to have a vulnerability closely linked to mortality. Contrary to the previous study’s argument, the disparities couldn’t be simply explained by the physician’s race. Ultimately, the 2024 analysis showed that black physicians were not outperforming their white colleagues. Moreover, there wasn’t evidence to brand white physicians as racist. Whoops!

 

More recently, the nonprofit organization Do No Harm obtained documents about the study through FOIA requests. First reported by the Daily Caller, an unpublished version of the study stated the following: “White newborns experience 80 deaths per 100,000 births more with a black physician than a white physician, implying a 22% fatality reduction from racial concordance.” (If you apply the logic espoused in the published version, this might suggest that black physicians have a “spontaneous bias” against their white infant patients.) That sentence was struck out, and the study’s lead author, Brad N. Greenwood, left the following comment in the margin: “I’d rather not focus on this. If we’re telling the story from the perspective of saving black infants this undermines the narrative.” (I’d argue a better perspective is, you know, saving infants regardless of their race.) Funnily enough, the published version of the paper sets forth a different claim: “Concordance appears to bring little benefit for White newborns but more than halves the penalty experienced by Black newborns.” The stricken data point, the Daily Caller reports, appears in an appendix and not the study’s body.

 

The reality is that even bright, dedicated researchers suffer from oversights, and unintentional methodological errors can sabotage a study. But, in this particular case, the researchers deliberately obscured results that weakened their social-justice “narrative.” In Greenwood’s own words, they were “telling the story” from a particular “perspective.” Maybe it isn’t surprising that the FOIA documents revealed that the study had a progressive agenda, since one of the study’s authors, Rachel Hardeman, is the current director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity, and she states on her personal website that her “goal” is to “manifest racial justice so that all people, especially Black women and girls, can live their full greatness and glory.”

 

Within the halls of academia, the peer-review process is portrayed as a rigorous intellectual sparring match that elevates publishing in a journal to a grand accomplishment, but the truth is that academics get away with murder — if they are progressive. The laughably bad standards were illustrated in 1996 when physicist Alan Sokal published a nonsensical paper that “flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions,” and they’re further confirmed in the more recent “grievance studies affair” conducted by Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose. Indeed, it is difficult to distinguish the hoax articles from the earnest ones. Consider the following articles published in peer-review journals: 1) “Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research,” 2) “The earth is a big badass butch dyke in menopause,” 3) “Loving the Brine Shrimp: Exploring Queer Feminist Blue Posthumanities to Reimagine the ‘America’s Dead Sea,’” and 4) “Transfiguring the Anthropocene: Stochastic Reimaginings of Human-Beaver Worlds.” Editors and peer-reviewers largely adjudicate whether an article arrives at a sufficiently progressive conclusion, independent of the methodology or argument structure.

 

To conservatives, the words “published study” and “expert” no longer communicate any prestige or credibility because supposed academics have a lengthy history of distorting data to promote a political conclusion that encourages their preferred policies, thereby abandoning any commitment to truth. Dubious practices have been obvious for years in the “research” on “gender-affirming care,” a set of medical interventions that amount to sexual lobotomies. In the event that the data cannot be contorted to support their left-wing agenda, the so-called scientists might just refuse to publish their findings — even if they’ve received nearly $10 million in government funding. It is only a matter of time until “peer-reviewed paper” becomes a pejorative — or perhaps that has already happened.

MADOC'S OPEN MIC FRIDAY APRIL 4 6:30 P.M. AT THE LEGION

Dear Friends:

What a lovely day out there!! Sorry I'm a little late getting this email out to you - but last couple of days were just a little impossible! :D

AND this is the ONLY Open Mic this month. The next usual date is Good Friday and the Legion is closed. However we make it up in May by having THREE!! I'll attach the poster so you have all the upcoming dates.

So, anticipating lots of fun and hoping, as always, to see lots of friendly faces and talent walk through the doors tomorrow night.

Jerry will be back with us, taking care of our sound needs. So will have 3 mics, music stand, PA and so on. We also plan to have a keyboard available for anyone interested. And Robert has ordered and hopes to have a guitar cable/hook up that can be disconnected by the player and not have to wait for the sound to turn you off. We'll remind you, if we get it.

Hope you are all looking forward to this as much as I am - and we'll see you tomorrow !!

Elizabeth & Robert 

AH: Those May dates are May 2, 16 and 30.

BOOKER CALLED FILIBUSTER AN ABUSE OF POWER A FEW YEARS BEFORE SETTING SENATE SPEECH RECORD

Fox News

 

Booker called filibuster an 'abuse of power' years before setting Senate speech record

By Anders Hagstrom Fox News

Published April 2, 2025 11:34am EDT

 

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., condemned the Senate filibuster as an "abuse of power" in 2022, years before his party praised him for launching the "longest filibuster in U.S. Senate history" on Tuesday.

 

Booker set the record for longest Senate floor speech at 25 hours and 5 minutes after starting to speak at 7 p.m. on Monday.

 

The filibuster has been a deeply controversial tool for the Senate in recent years, with many Democrats condemning the practice during President Joe Biden's administration as Republicans used it to foil his agenda.

 

"The filibuster has been abused to stop reforms supported by the vast majority of Americans—from background checks to protecting the right to vote. We must stop this abuse of power," Booker wrote on X in January 2022.

 

Booker's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

 

Former Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who was the lone Democrat to oppose abolishing the filibuster during Biden's administration, has poked fun at Democrats who criticized her at the time.

 

"Maybe it isn’t an old Jim Crow relic, after all," she quipped about Booker's performance on Tuesday, referencing President Barack Obama's description of the filibuster.

 

Sinema specifically called out Rep. Pramila Jayapal. D-Wash., who condemned the "Jim Crow filibuster" just last year.

 

Jayapal changed her tune when Republicans were trying to pass a continuing resolution in March, urging Democrats in the Senate, "Don’t betray working families. Don’t give Trump and Elon Musk a blank check. Don’t be complicit in the slashing of government programs. Vote NO on cloture and NO on final passage of Republicans’ bad bill."

 

Cloture is the Senate term for ending a filibuster, causing Sinema to chime in, "Just surprised to see support for the 'Jim Crow filibuster' here," she wrote.

 

Booker himself has flipped on the issue multiple times. He gave a firm defense of the filibuster in 2019 before his call to remove it in 2022.

 

He said at the time that Democrats "should not be doing anything to mess with the strength of the filibuster."

 

"I will personally resist efforts to get rid of it," he said.

MAYBE IT WASN'T SUCH A GOOD IDEA TO SUPPORT A LARGER, MORE EXTENSIVE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OVER THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS

 National Review

 

Maybe It Wasn’t Such a Great Idea to Support a Larger, More Extensive Federal Government for 100 Years

By Rich Lowry

March 27, 2025 6:30 AM

 

The Left gets hoist with its own petard.

 

President Donald Trump is using every tool he has to challenge woke practices in America — and he has a lot of them.

 

Notably, none of the mechanisms that the president is using were put in place by conservatives for leverage against progressive institutions.

 

No, Trump is simply availing himself of the vast federal apparatus created by liberals on the assumption that an ever-more powerful and extensive federal government was synonymous with righteousness.

 

Now that someone is in charge who doesn’t agree with them and who is willing to use all the influence that the progressive state affords him, they are vulnerable to the centralized power that they’ve eagerly built up over decades.

 

Expanding the federal government has been a progressive priority since the time of Woodrow Wilson, and now its tentacles — via federal funding and a skein of rules — reach practically into every corner of American life.

 

The universities are particularly dependent on government and intertwined with it, and are quickly learning how uncomfortable it is when their paymaster isn’t ideologically aligned with them and is willing to throw his weight around.

 

(Hillsdale College could have told them about this risk a long time ago.)

 

A recent interview in Slate was headlined, “Colleges Are Getting in Line: An expert in higher-ed finance explains why every school in the U.S. is vulnerable to Trump.”

 

“The power is essentially the same for every college in the country that gets federal funding,” said Robert Kelchen, a professor of higher education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, “and it does not make a difference whether it’s public or private. If the federal government is giving money to students for research, all that money can be taken away. And that’s the leverage that the federal government has over the vast majority of higher ed. Some large universities can get well over $1 billion a year in total revenue from the federal government.”

 

The Slate interviewer asked, “Did any leaders in higher education recognize ahead of this the vulnerabilities that came with this dependence on the federal government?”

 

Kelchen’s answer was basically, “no.” Even if the Trump approach has been more aggressive than most people would have anticipated, it shouldn’t be news that federal money comes with strings.

 

Universities already had to make all sorts of commitments to the feds to tap into funding. This University of Florida website says that among the assurances it has to make to the federal government are that it is in compliance with:

 

Federal Discrimination Regulations

Federal Lobbying Regulations

Federal Regulations Regarding Promoting Objectivity in Research

Federal Regulations Regarding Research Misconduct

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act

Title IX of the Education Amendments

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act

National Occupational Safety and Health Act

FDA Good Laboratory Practices Act

Drug-Free Workplace Act

Smoke-Free Workplace Act

 

On top of this, the Obama and Biden administrations used federal dollars as the lever to coerce educational institutions into adopting their preferred policies on the handling of sexual-assault cases and trans students.

 

It’s not quite, “You f***ed up, you trusted us,” but, “You f***ed up, you never thought the federal leviathan could be turned against you.”

 

Progressives put Chekhov’s proverbial gun on the table, assuming that it would be used only against someone else.

 

The night-watchman state wouldn’t be able to do what Trump is doing (and not just with universities, but with disfavored law firms and with corporations beholden to woke ideas), or what his predecessors did in the other direction.

 

Progressives can’t say they weren’t warned, even if it’s been a long time coming. In God and Man at Yale in 1951, Bill Buckley wrote of the issue of public funding. He warned that Yale is “working toward her own destruction, i.e. to the day when some future Yale president, fedora in hand, will knock at the door of some politician with palm outstretched. This day, of course, means the end of Yale as a private institution.”

 

If the academic establishment is now fully realizing the power that its federal patron has over higher education, maybe it should have made a little more time for Albert Jay Nock all along.

SAN FRANCISCO NOW ISSUING EQUITABLE SPEEDING DISCOUNTS

Not the Bee

 

Oh look, San Francisco is giving equity discounts for speeding tickets now

Cardinal Pritchard

Apr 1, 2025

 

Huge news here, everyone: People still actually live in San Francisco.

 

Oh wait, my editor is telling me that this is not the news. The news is that San Francisco has set up a bunch of "speed safety cameras" and is now handing out speeding tickets with fines - get this - based specifically on a speeder's income.

 

Yes, equitable speeding tickets!

 

Here's the scoop:

 

block quote

Violations for speeding range from $50 to $500, but individuals with a household income at or below 200% of the federal poverty level are eligible for a 50% discount, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. Indigent persons, or individuals who are homeless, are eligible for an 80% discount on the speeding ticket.

block quote end

 

This is not satire:

 

This Speed Safety System Pilot Program was signed in 2023 by - you guessed it! - Gavin Newsom. No word on whether or not he's changed his mind on the program now that he's pretending not to be a far-Left progressive so that he has a chance at the presidency in 2028.

 

There are currently 33 of these speed cameras set up in San Francisco, half of which are in use.

 

So I guess next time I'm speeding in San Francisco I'll go ahead and tell the authorities "my truth," which is that I'm a homeless man who lives in my Tesla and I can never sleep at night because people are constantly drawing swastikas on my car and trying to light it on fire.

 

That should get me a pretty decent discount!