Robin Abcarian in the LA Times:

At this point, the Constitution seems less a constraint than a mere sticking point for Trump as he smashmouths his way past anything that impedes his heart’s desires.

“I think the scenario in which he can legitimately — through some even remotely quasi-democratic means — stay on after January of 2029 is zero,” said [Pamela] Karlan, who co-directs Stanford’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, and served twice as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

What about a scenario, though, where Trump could be, say, JD Vance’s running mate in 2028 and then return to power once Vance steps aside?

“Some people make cutesy arguments…that he should run as vice president, but I think most states would refuse to put him on the ballot,” Karlan said. “It’s an argument made by people who are cleverer than they are smart.”

On the other hand, she noted, if a pro-Trump Republican candidate were to win in 2028, Trump could function as something of a shadow president.

“He could be the power behind the president in the sense that the president could name him secretary of State,” Karlan said. “Or theoretically attorney general, even though he’s not a lawyer, or name him secretary of whatever they are calling the Defense Department at that point.”

Election law expert Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law, told me he’s less worried about the next presidential election and far more concerned about ways in which Trump might interfere in the 2026 midterms.

“I think 2028 is a long way off and assuming that Trump does not try to run again, he may not have that much interest in the next election because he will be done,” Hasen said. “Also, he is 79.”

In 2026, though, Trump could wreak all kinds of electoral havoc, Hasen said, such as “Sending troops to block voting in some areas, seizing voting machines, pressuring election officials to illegally count or not count valid ballots, or change the vote count — the kinds of things we saw in the aftermath of the 2020 election. I don’t think anything is off the table.”…