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Some Trump backers want no-term limit for him as president. He is thrilled

Some Trump backers want no-term limit for him as president. He is thrilled
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Merchandise for "Make America Healthy Again" is sold in front of a bus with US President Donald Trump's face during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in n Oxon Hill, on February 21, 2025 (Getty Images via AFP)
Some Trump backers want no-term limit for him as president. He is thrilled
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Updated 22 February 2025
AFP

Some Trump backers want no-term limit for him as president. He is thrilled

Some Trump backers want no-term limit for him as president. He is thrilled
  • “We love the idea of Trump as our Julius Caesar-type figure,” says Shane Trejo, from a group called Republicans for National Renewal
  • Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon says: “A man like Trump comes along only once or twice in a country’s history”
Updated 22 February 2025
AFP

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump, yes.
But what about King Trump or even Donald Caesar?
The thoroughly un-American idea has been aired repeatedly in Washington since the Republican began his second term a month ago.
And it’s not just radiating from the wild fringes of Trump’s nationalist-populist Make America Great Again movement known as MAGA.
It’s coming from the 78-year-old billionaire himself.
“LONG LIVE THE KING!” Trump crowed Wednesday on his Truth Social platform to celebrate his government’s nixing of the New York City congestion pricing plan.
The White House then posted a fake magazine cover on its official X account, repeating the slogan and showing Trump wearing a golden crown.

Trump has a long history of suggesting he might serve more than the two terms allowed by the US Constitution.
What was often dismissed as joking during his first term looked darker after Trump refused to concede his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, then stoked his millions of followers to believe the election was rigged — culminating with the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol.
As Trump launches his second presidency with an unprecedented demonstration of executive power — using the world’s richest man Elon Musk to dismantle swaths of the government — giddy supporters want even more.
Much more.

American emperor?
“We love the idea of Trump as our Julius Caesar-type figure,” Shane Trejo, from a group called Republicans for National Renewal, told reporters at the conservative CPAC conference in Washington.
Trejo stood alongside a poster showing the elderly Trump as a rather more youthful Roman emperor with a chiseled face, laurel wreath and a toga.
Mixing his imperial metaphors, Trejo also described Trump as a “Napoleonic figure” capable of leading “our country out of perdition and into greatness.”
Republicans for National Renewal is lobbying Congress to approve a constitutional amendment to the two-terms limit.
According to the House Republican who introduced the resolution, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Trump is “the only figure in modern history capable of reversing our nation’s decay and restoring America to greatness” and therefore should be given more time in power.
Amending the constitution would require a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate. That’s all but impossible to achieve.
But Republicans for National Renewal’s website proposes emulating a trick used by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and working around the term limits by getting a placeholder elected instead.
In the US version, Trump’s son Don Jr. “could run on a Trump/Trump ticket before gracefully resigning on Jan. 21, 2028 after securing victory,” the website says.
“This plan while unorthodox would show that MAGA cannot be stopped by any procedural rule.”
Another supporter calling to extend the Trump era is former adviser and highly influential right-wing strategist Steve Bannon.
“We want Trump in ‘28,” Bannon said at CPAC. “A man like Trump comes along only once or twice in a country’s history.”
Bannon, who emulated a viral Musk moment from January in making what looked like a Nazi salute from the stage, led the crowd in chants of, “We want Trump!“
Trump has done nothing to tamp down the talk, even if it goes against the grain of the founding US principles.
Just this Thursday, Trump asked guests at a White House event: “Should I run again?“
The response was shouts of “Four more years!“
No chance, say the constitutionalists.
But Trump clearly is thrilled by the controversy — and sure that the crown fits.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week.




Screen grab of President Donald Trump's post on Truth Social


The origin of the phrase, according to some historians? Napoleon Bonaparte — the French general who crowned himself emperor in 1804.

Topics: Trump Returns Donald Trump MAGA

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The US Pentagon is urging defense contractors to double or quadruple production rates focussing on 12 critical weapons due to concerns over low US stockpiles in a potential conflict with China, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a Reuters' request for comment.

Climate change and pollution threaten Europe’s resources, EU warns

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AMSTERDAM: Climate change and environmental degradation pose a direct threat to the natural resources that Europe needs for its economic security, the EU’s environmental agency said on Monday.
The European Environment Agency said biodiversity in Europe is declining due to unsustainable production and consumption, especially in the food system.
Due to over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution and invasive alien species, more than 80 percent of protected habitats are in a poor or bad state, it said, while water resources are also under severe pressure.

EUROPE’S FASTEST-WARMING CONTINENT
“The degradation of our natural world jeopardizes the European way of life,” the agency said in its report: “Europe’s environment 2025.”
“Europe is critically dependent on natural resources for economic security, to which climate change and environmental degradation pose a direct threat.”
Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent and is experiencing worsening droughts and other extreme weather events.
But governments are grappling with other priorities including industrial competitiveness, and negotiations on EU climate targets have stoked divisions between richer and poorer countries.
EU countries last week confirmed that the bloc will miss a global deadline to set new emissions-cutting targets due to divisions over the plans among EU governments.

TIME RUNNING OUT, AGENCY SAYS
“The window for meaningful action is narrowing, and the consequences of delay are becoming more tangible,” executive director Leena Yla-Mononen said.
“We are approaching tipping points — not only in ecosystems, but also in the social and economic systems that underpin our societies.”

Kabul’s wells run dry, driving children out of class and into water queues

Kabul’s wells run dry, driving children out of class and into water queues
Updated 13 min 30 sec ago
Reuters

Kabul’s wells run dry, driving children out of class and into water queues

Kabul’s wells run dry, driving children out of class and into water queues
  • With climate change increasing the frequency of droughts and erratic rainfall in Afghanistan, aid agencies say Kabul is among the most water-stressed cities in Asia, with shortages fueling disease, malnutrition and school dropouts
Updated 13 min 30 sec ago
Reuters

KABUL: Eight-year-old Noorullah and his twin, Sanaullah, spend their days hauling yellow jerrycans on a wheelbarrow through Kabul’s dusty alleys instead of going to school — an ordeal for one family that reflects Afghanistan’s deepening water crisis.
Once supplied with water from their own well, the family of 13 has had to queue at communal taps or pool money for costly water tankers since their supply dried up four years ago.
With climate change increasing the frequency of droughts and erratic rainfall in Afghanistan, aid agencies say Kabul is among the most water-stressed cities in Asia, with shortages fueling disease, malnutrition and school dropouts.
The Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent Kabul-based research group, in a report this month warned the city’s groundwater could run out by 2030, with other Afghan cities also running dry. The crisis is deepening inequality, as poor families spend up to 30 percent of their income on tanker water while the wealthy dig ever-deeper private wells.
The twin boys queue with dozens of children at a communal tap, where shoving and shouting often flare into fights as the heat builds.

STANDING IN LINE FOR HOURS
Noorullah, who has epilepsy, said he once collapsed with a seizure while fetching water. His brother added, “Sometimes we stand in line for three hours. When the heat is too much, we feel dizzy.”
Their father, 42-year-old shopkeeper Assadullah, feels there is no choice. Sitting outside his small shop with empty water barrels stacked nearby, he said, “From morning until evening, my children go for water six or seven times a day.”
“Sometimes they cry and say they cannot fetch more, but what else can we do?“
The shortages have gutted his income too. On a good day, he earns $2–$3, however, he often closes the shop to help his sons push their loads.
“Before, we used to receive water through a company. It lasted us three or four days. Now even that option is gone,” he said.
In the family’s yard, his wife, Speray, washes dishes in a plastic basin, measuring out each jug. She said her husband has developed a stomach ulcer and she contracted H. pylori, a bacterial infection linked to unsafe water. “I boil water twice before giving it to our children, but it is still a struggle,” she said.

SNOWMELT ONCE REPLENISHED KABUL’S WATER BASIN
Kabul’s population has surged past six million in two decades, but investment in water infrastructure has lagged. War wrecked much of the supply network, leaving residents dependent on wells or costly tankers, and those are failing.
Just a few streets from Assadullah, 52-year-old community representative Mohammad Asif Ayubi said more than 380 households in the neighborhood faced the same plight. “Even wells 120 meters (nearly 400 feet) deep have dried up,” he said, a depth once considered certain to reach water.
Droughts and erratic rainfall patterns have limited the snowmelt that once replenished Kabul’s water basin and left the riverbed dry for much of the year. “Kabul is among the most water-stressed areas,” said Najibullah Sadid, a water researcher based in Germany.
UN envoy Roza Otunbayeva warned the UN Security Council earlier this month that droughts, climate shocks and migration risk turning Kabul into the first modern capital to run out of water “within years, not decades.”
For Assadullah, the wish is simple. “If we had enough water, my children wouldn’t have to run around all day,” he said. “They could go to school. Our whole life would change.”

Topics: Afghanistan

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HANOI: A typhoon that ripped roofs off homes has killed dozens of people across Vietnam and the Philippines, officials from both countries said on Monday, as a weakened storm Bualoi crossed into neighboring Laos.
The typhoon battered small islands in the center of the Philippines last week, toppling trees and power pylons, unleashing floods and forcing 400,000 people to evacuate.
A Philippine civil defense official said on Monday the death toll there had more than doubled to 24, with most of the victims either drowned or hit by debris.
Scientists warn that storms are becoming more powerful as the world warms due to the effects of human-driven climate change.
In Vietnam, Bualoi made landfall as a typhoon late on Sunday, generating winds of 130 kilometers (80 miles) per hour.
Thousands of houses and businesses were damaged or destroyed in the country’s center and north, and at least 11 people were killed, Vietnamese authorities told AFP on Monday.
Images published by AFP showed corrugated metal roofs blown off buildings and household debris strewn across saturated streets in Vietnam’s coastal Nghe An province.
“The wind blew my roof to the sky and then it fell down, breaking everything. I had to cover my head and rushed to my neighbor’s house to be safe,” Trinh Thi Le, 71, in central Quang Tri province, was quoted as saying by state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper.

- Powerful storms -

At least nine people were killed when a typhoon-related whirlwind swept through northern Ninh Binh province early on Monday, according to the local disaster agency.
One person was killed in the province of Hue and another in Thanh Hoa, while about 20 were missing, local and national disaster authorities reported.
Among those unaccounted for were nine people whose fishing boats were lost at sea Sunday night after their vessels came loose from their moorings during strong winds and currents, police said.
More than 53,000 people were evacuated to schools and medical centers converted into temporary shelters ahead of Bualoi hitting Vietnam, the environment ministry said.
Four domestic airports and part of the national highway were closed on Monday. More than 180 flights have been canceled or delayed, airport authorities said.
Parts of Nghe An and the steel-producing central province of Ha Tinh were without power and schools were closed in affected regions.
Since making landfall in Vietnam, Bualoi has weakened as it moved across the border into Laos.
It came on the heels of Super Typhoon Ragasa, which killed 14 people across the northern Philippines.
The country is hit by an average of 20 storms and typhoons each year, routinely striking disaster-prone areas where millions of people live in poverty.
In Vietnam, 175 people were killed or went missing due to natural disasters from January to August this year, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said.
Total damages were worth about $371 million, almost triple the amount of the same period in 2024, the GSO said.
Typhoon Yagi killed hundreds of people in Vietnam in September last year and caused economic losses worth $3.3 billion.

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STOCKHOLM: Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Monday Russia was likely behind mysterious drone flights over several Scandinavian airports ahead of an EU summit in Copenhagen.
Drone sightings across Norway and Denmark in particular since September 22 have prompted the closure of several airports.
Speaking to broadcaster TV4, Kristersson said “the likelihood of this being about Russia wanting to send a message to countries supporting Ukraine is quite high” but stressed that “nobody really, really knows.”.
He added that “we have confirmation” that drones that entered Polish airspace earlier in September were Russian.
“Everything points to (Russia), but then all countries are cautious about singling out a country if they are not sure. In Poland, we know that’s what it was,” he said.
Drones were also observed over Danish military sites Saturday night for a second straight day.
Copenhagen is to host an EU summit on Wednesday and Thursday.
To ensure security around the summit, Denmark on Sunday said it was closing airspace to all civilian drone flights until Friday, so that enemy drones would not be confused for legal ones.
A violation can result in a fine or imprisonment for up to two years.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said this week that “there is one main country that poses a threat to Europe’s security, and it is Russia.”
Moscow said it “firmly rejects” any suggestion of involvement.
The string of drone sightings comes on the heels of drone incursions in Polish and Romanian territory and the violation of Estonian airspace by Russian fighter jets, which raised tensions in light of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
NATO has said it has “enhanced vigilance” in the Baltic following the intrusions.

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