Good morning and happy Halloween eve. Does Halloween get an Eve? Either way, as we all transition from Spooky Season to Stretchy Pants Season, we wanted to again thank you for reading. If you’re enjoying The Elective, please share it with a friend. If you hate it, well … you could still share it with a friend and, with any luck, actively make their day worse.

On a related note, if you have a sibling you’d like to insult this morning: Authorities are searching for three missing monkeys that escaped when a truck overturned in Mississippi..

POLITICS

🗳️ Can Donald Trump run again in 2028?

America’s troll-in-chief is at it again. Or is he serious?

President Trump has been openly toying with the idea of running for a third term as president in 2028. As you might expect, Democrats are having a field day with this since it’s pretty brazenly unconstitutional. Well. Probably.

The Twenty-Second Amendment was ratified and became part of the Constitution in 1951. It says, in part, that "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice."

• This happened only a few years after Frankie D. Roosevelt became the first president ever to serve a third term. And a fourth! (Okay, part of a fourth. RIP.)

• Until then, everyone had followed George Washington's example by serving no more than two.

That seems straightforward, no? This is a goofy legal debate. Nothing is straightforward. Trump obviously can't run for a third term in 2028. He's already been elected twice. But what if he gets elected vice president and then the person elected president (JD Vance, perhaps) resigns immediately after taking office? Boom. Trump 3.0.

• Even if this is legal, no one’s going to get elected president and immediately bail. Especially for a guy who'd be 82 by then.

That’s not the only argument against this. The Twelfth Amendment says that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” So if Trump can’t be president, he can’t be elected VP, either.

• Except he’s not ineligible to serve as president. He’s only ineligible to be elected president. It’s like a president-for-life cheat code.

We can do this all day. But the 22nd Amendment’s intent is pretty clear. And no Supreme Court justice has ever given any indication that they’d be chill with a three-term president. Not to mention how many states likely wouldn’t let Trump on the ballot if he tried to run again.

Maybe Trump was serious about this. Maybe he was just trying to avoid becoming a lame duck. Or maybe he was just trolling and purposely whipping Democrats into a frenzy. It’s a moot point now, though.

• He admitted on Air Force One this week that "Based on what I read, I guess, I’m not allowed to run."

• He even rejected that whole VP switcheroo idea, saying, “It’s too cute. It wouldn’t be right.”

For the record, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) thinks Trump was just trolling.

Elsewhere in the political world:

1. A bipartisan group of lawmakers is promoting a bill to block Trump from putting more tariffs on coffee.

2. Democratic-controlled Maryland declined to redraw its congressional map to try to push out its lone Republican congressman.

3. Over in Republican-controlled Indiana, state lawmakers are pushing back on the governor’s plan to redistrict out one or both of the state’s Democrats.

4. The Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating whether then-President Biden was senile after a Republican House committee issued a 100-page report on the issue.

GOVERNMENT

🔒 Food banks and program recipients around the country are preparing for the potential loss of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits on Saturday. The low-income food program, formerly known as food stamps, is run by the Department of Agriculture (USDA). It helps feed ~12% of Americans. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins blamed the government shutdown and said benefits can’t be dispersed on November 1 “without the government being open.” We’re on Day #30 of the shutdown now, but vibes could be shifting in Congress. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said talks have "picked up" due to the SNAP cutoff and other incoming deadlines. Meanwhile, airlines are helping feed paycheck-free air traffic controllers (they're federal employees), and House staffers are set to miss their monthly paychecks starting tomorrow.

💰️ The Department of Defense (DOD) is planning some boring but dramatic changes in how it builds new weapons and sells them to allies. The problem? America sells tons of weapons to its allies ($845 billion). But those allies have started buying weapons elsewhere because getting them from us is too slow. The DOD's Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) runs this show. And it's currently controlled by the DOD’s policy division (giving weapons to allies is a policy thing). Hegseth’s solution? Take the DSCA away from the policy nerds and give it to the acquisitions department — a change defense contractors have been begging for. Hegseth is set to announce the changes on November 7.

DIPLOMACY

🌏️ Trump’s Asia trip continues in Japan, South Korea, and China

Trump’s whirlwind swing through Asia culminates today in a meeting with the world’s most famous commie, Chinese President Xi Jinping. Before we jump into the thrilling details on that, let’s touch on his big trip so far:

Japan: Trump befriended Japan's new conservative prime minister. Sanae Takaichi, the country's first female leader, joined him for a speech aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier and promised to increase Japan’s defense budget.

• They vowed to launch a "golden age" of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Backing that will be a 15% U.S. tariff on Japanese goods and $550 billion in Japanese investment in the U.S.

• The plan is light on details for now. But it does include some sort of cooperation on critical minerals, too.

South Korea: According to Trump, this trade deal is “pretty much finalized.” South Korea agreed to invest $350 billion in the U.S. About $150 billion of that will be aimed at America's struggling shipbuilding industry, and will include the purchase of a nuclear submarine built in Philly (nuclear power, not weapons).

• In exchange, the U.S. will lower its tariffs (import taxes) on South Korean goods from 25% to 15%.

China: What Trump and Xi (his last name is Xi, by the way) decide could influence everything from soybean farmers in Iowa to which app you scroll during your 20-minute bathroom breaks.

• Rare earth minerals: They’re critical to building basically all modern tech. We get most of them from China, but China has started restricting how many they’ll export.

• TikTok: If TikTok doesn’t sell to an American owner ASAP, it’ll be banned in the U.S. China will have to sign off on that, and the White House says it could be finalized this week (likely to Oracle).

• AI: China wants a piece of the advanced AI pie. California-based chipmaker Nvidia makes that possible, but chip sales between the U.S. and China are currently restricted by both sides for security reasons.

• Soybeans: Aah, yes, A key piece of the diplomatic puzzle. In response to the trade war, China stopped importing U.S. soybeans. This has cost American farmers — a key political constituency for Trump — billions in sales.

Combine all that with a debate over tariffs, and you’ve got yourself a fun little lunch date between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies.

Meanwhile, back at home, the Supreme Court asked both sides for additional arguments in a case over whether Trump can deploy the National Guard to Chicago, likely pushing back its timeline for a decision.

TRIVIA

If you ever pay attention to the news, you’ll see NATO come up constantly. Just yesterday, the U.S. decided to pull out some troops and downsize its presence on "NATO's eastern flank” (aka: Romania) while NATO fighter jets (aka: the Polish Air Force) intercepted a Russian spy plane in the Baltic Sea.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is really just a mutual defense pact, so it has no military of its own. Any news reference to “NATO troops” is just shorthand for a member country’s troops when they do something, y’know, NATO-y. And that point brings us to today’s question: How many countries are members of NATO?

Hint: NATO launched in 1949 with 12 members. It now has … more.

BRIEFS

● The Caribbean is recovering after Hurricane Melissa tore through the region on Tuesday and Wednesday. The State Department is managing the U.S. response and has deployed Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DART) to affected countries.

● The fragile, three-week-old ceasefire with Hamas is back on after the Israeli military carried out a round of deadly airstrikes in Gaza on Wednesday. President Trump defended the strikes, agreeing with Israel that Hamas shot first on Tuesday.

● The Federal Reserve on Wednesday cut interest rates by 0.25% to their lowest level in three years. In a 10-2 vote, the Fed's interest rate pros — that's the Open Market Committee — lowered the benchmark rate to the 3.75%-4.00% range.

● The number of people believed dead after a massive police raid in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has risen to 132. Police targeted gang-controlled areas of the city and were met with a "war-like" response, including explosive drones and flaming barricades.

● Fueled by the AI frenzy, AI chipmaker Nvidia’s stock soared on Wednesday to make it the first-ever $5 trillion company. That rise might continue on Thursday if the big Trump-Xi meeting results in China lifting its ban on Nvidia imports.

QUOTE

ANSWER

If you guessed 30, you’d be correct … if it were still 2022. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Finland and Sweden finally broke down and joined the club. That expansion brought NATO up to 32 member states, including almost all of Europe plus the U.S. and Canada.