Former President Joe Biden urged Americans to remain hopeful as the nation faces “dark days” in his first public appearance since completing a round of radiation therapy for prostate cancer.

After receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Boston on Sunday, Biden warned against what he called attacks on free speech and tests on the limits of executive power by President Donald Trump.

“Friends, I can’t sugar coat any of this. These are dark days,” the 82-year-old said, according to the Associated Press.

But, he said, America is “more powerful than any dictator.”

The former president went on to list people who are standing their ground against threats from the Trump administration, including comedians who have been targeted by Trump.

“The late night hosts continue to shine a light on free speech knowing their careers are on the line,” Biden said.

Last month, late-night talk show hosts rallied around comedian Jimmy Kimmel after his show was briefly pulled off the air following comments he made after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Kimmel expressed regret for his remarks, and his show eventually resumed. Late-night talk show hosts have accused Trump of trekking toward authoritarianism.

“America is not a fairy tale,” Biden said Sunday. “For 250 years, it’s been a constant push and pull, an existential struggle between peril and possibility.”

Biden said he still believes in the promise of America. Though it may be easy to “check out,” he said, it is not time to give up.

“We are one of the only countries in the world that time and again has come out of every crisis we faced, stronger than we went into that crisis,” Biden said. “I still believe we will emerge, as we always have, stronger, wiser, more resilient, more just.”

In response, White House assistant press secretary Liz Huston said in a statement: “The real ‘dark days’ were under Joe Biden’s failed leadership – when millions of illegal alien criminals poured into our cities, inflation crushed working families, and men played in women’s sports.”

All the times Trump has promoted 2028 run with merch and rhetoric

While members of Congress have brushed off the possibility of President Trump running for a third term, his public comments are full of mixed messages.

Why it matters: The Constitution explicitly prohibits a president from seeking a third term, but some MAGA loyalists have publicly floated the idea, and Trump 2028 campaign merch hints that the concept is still alive and well in conservative circles.

Driving the news: On Monday, Trump declined to definitively rule out a third term, instead saying he “would love to do it.”

• He also floated the idea of Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio running on the same ticket, after falsely claiming that his poll numbers are so high that another run could be on the table.
• The White House did not respond to a request to comment on this story.

Reality check: Presidential term limits are specifically laid out in the 22nd Amendment, which states that “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”

Yes, but: A pro-Trump group known as the Third Term Project has been laying out the arguably unfeasible groundwork for another Trump presidency.

• They’ve suggested that a coalition of states could call a Constitutional convention to strike the 22nd Amendment, which is unlikely to happen before 2028, as 34 states would have to agree to request one.
• Alternatively, they suggest Congress could get involved, passing a law that amends the Constitution. There’s little appetite for this route on the Hill, as evidenced by Rep. Andy Ogles’ (R-Tenn.) stalled resolution to do just that.
• The project also endorses the idea that if Vance ran as president with Trump as VP, Vance could resign on Day 1 and let Trump take over.
• Trump called the idea “too cute” when speaking to reporters on Monday.

Nonetheless, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon shocked the Beltway last week when he said there was “a plan” to keep Trump in the Oval Office for a third term.

• Although the White House has dismissed a third term as a harmless attempt to troll the left, Trump’s official merch site offers Trump 2028 hats, T-shirts and can coolers.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of all the times Trump has toyed publicly about running for a third term.

March 2018: Maybe someday

President Trump praised Chinese President Xi Jinping for being a “president for life” in a private speech for Republican donors during his first term, adding that “maybe we’ll give that a shot someday.”

• His comments were met with applause and laughter, according to a PBS News report of his remarks.

December 2019: More than three terms

Trump encouraged students at a summit hosted by Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA to up their expectations of how long he will serve as president.

• “Four more years,” the attendees chanted.
• “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now, if you want to drive them crazy, go, ’16 more years.’ Sixteen more years,” Trump replied.

August 2020: “Redo” required

Trump told a crowd of fervent supporters in 2020 that he should get a redo of his first presidency and additional years in office.

• “We are going to win four more years. And then after that we’ll go for another four years, because they spied on my campaign,” he said, referencing the probe that found Russian operatives had worked to boost his 2016 campaign.
• “We should get a redo of four years,” Trump said.

August 2020: How to drive Democrats “crazy”

During a 53-minute campaign speech in Charlotte, North Carolina, the president told supporters that the best way to enrage Democrats is to tease a potential third term.

• At one point in this speech, the crowd chanted, “Four more years.”

• Trump responded, “If you really wanna drive ’em crazy, say 12 more years.'”

April 2025: Exploring methods

Trump said “there are methods“ that could allow him to serve again, in an NBC interview in April, but he declined to elaborate on what those methods could be.

• “We have almost four years to go, and that’s a long time but despite that so many people are saying you’ve got to run again,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.
• He also said that he was “not joking.”

April 2025: Unspecified loopholes to the Constitution

The president again confirmed that members of his team were discussing a third term during an extensive interview with Time magazine in April.

• “There are some loopholes that have been discussed. But I don’t believe in loopholes,” Trump said.

May 2025: Walking it back

Trump put a damper on a potential third term in May as well.

• “This is not something I’m looking to do. I’m looking to have four great years and turn it over to somebody, ideally a great Republican, a great Republican to carry it forward,” Trump told NBC anchor Kristen Welker.
• He also said “I don’t know” when asked if he was required to follow the Constitution.

August 2025: Check this out

The president showed off a “four more years” hat to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron when they visited the White House in August.

• The hat is displayed in the building’s gift shop, alongside other Trump 2028 hats.

October 2025: You’ll have to tell me

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday that he hasn’t “really thought about” running for a third term.

• When pressed to elaborate, he responded, “Am I not ruling it out? You’ll have to tell me.”

The bottom line: The White House’s position on another four years of Trump is unclear. But in the meantime, he’ll still be selling $50 Trump 2028 hats.

Trump administration urges Supreme Court to overturn lower court order reinstating federal official

The Trump administration on Monday afternoon asked the Supreme Court to pause an order by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., that temporarily reinstated the top U.S. copyright official after her firing earlier this year. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer called the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit “another case of improper judicial interference with the President’s power to remove executive officers.”

The head of the U.S. Copyright Office is known as the Register of Copyrights, and she is the primary adviser to Congress on copyright issues. The Register of Copyrights is housed within the Library of Congress; she is appointed by the Librarian of Congress, who is in turn nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve a 10-year term.

In October 2020, Carla Hayden, then the Librarian of Congress, appointed Shira Perlmutter to serve as the Register. On May 8 of this year, Trump fired Hayden; he later appointed Todd Blanche, the deputy U.S. attorney general who had also served as his personal lawyer, to succeed her as the Acting Librarian of Congress. On May 9, the U.S. Copyright Office released a pre-publication version of a report on artificial intelligence that made recommendations with which Trump allegedly disagreed. Perlmutter received an email the following day from the White House Presidential Personnel Office notifying her that she had been removed from her position “effective immediately.”

Perlmutter went to federal court, seeking to block her removal. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly turned down her plea for an order that would temporarily reinstate her while her challenge to her firing continued. But in an order on Sept. 10, a divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit granted Perlmutter’s request.

Judge Florence Pan, joined by Judge Michelle Childs, wrote a concurring opinion in which she acknowledged the Supreme Court’s statement in Trump v. Wilcox, allowing the president to remove members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board from office while their challenges to their firings continued, that the government is more likely to be harmed when a fired official remains in office than when a wrongly fired official is removed from office. But Pan sought to distinguish Perlmutter’s case, writing that Trump’s “alleged blatant interference with the work of a Legislative Branch official, as she performs statutorily authorized duties to advise Congress, strikes us as a violation of the separation of powers that is significantly different in kind and in degree from the cases that have come before.” Moreover, Pan added, “Perlmutter’s removal was likely unlawful because the President has no direct authority to fire her, and his installment of an Acting Librarian of Congress was likely ineffective.”

Judge Justin Walker would have denied Perlmutter’s request. He wrote that “repeatedly, and unequivocally, the Supreme Court has stayed lower-court injunctions that barred the President from removing officers exercising executive power.” And even if the Register of Copyrights is labeled as part of the legislative branch, he argued, it is still part of the Library of Congress, which “‘is squarely a component of the Executive Branch’” – and the court’s decision in Wilcox should apply to Perlmutter as well.

After the full D.C. Circuit declined to rehear the Trump administration’s appeal, Sauer came to the Supreme Court on Monday afternoon, asking the justices to intervene. Like Walker, he contended that the Register is part of the executive branch, rather than the legislative branch, because she issues regulations, adjudicates applications for copyright registration and royalty proceedings, enforces copyright laws, and participates in international copyright organizations and meetings – “all exercises of executive power.”

Other evidence that the Librarian of Congress and the Register are part of the executive branch, so that the president can remove the Librarian and the Librarian can fire the Register, can be found in the Constitution, Sauer told the justices. Because Congress only has the power to legislate, for example, and cannot give itself or its agents the power to execute the laws, “[i]f the Librarian and Register were legislative officers,” he wrote, “much of federal copyright law would violate the Constitution.”

And in any event, Sauer continued, the D.C. Circuit did not have the power to order Perlmutter’s reinstatement. “The traditional remedy for the unlawful removal of an executive officer is back pay,” he wrote, “not a preliminary injunction granting interim reinstatement.”

The Supreme Court on Monday afternoon instructed Perlmutter to respond to the government’s request by Monday, Nov. 10, at 4 p.m. EST.

 

Kamala Harris reveals what Biden told her just before crucial debate with Trump that left her ‘angry’

Former Vice President Kamala Harris revealed in her upcoming book, “107 Days,” that then-President Joe Biden rattled her right before she went head-to-head with then-candidate Donald Trump on the debate stage.

Biden reportedly called Harris as she sat in a hotel room preparing for the only debate of her abbreviated campaign. He apparently wanted to wish her luck — and to scold her.

The then-president said, “My brother called. He’s been talking to a group of real power brokers in Philly,” according to an excerpt of the book in The Guardian. He then allegedly asked if Harris was familiar with several people related to the matter, but she was not.

 

Former Vice President Kamala Harris revealed in her book, “107 Days,” what then-President Joe Biden said when he called right before her debate with now-President Donald Trump. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images for BET; Mandel Ngan – Pool/Getty Images)

“His brother had told him that those guys were not going to support me because I’d been saying bad things about him. He wasn’t inclined to believe it, he claimed, but he thought I should know in case my team had been encouraging me to put daylight between the two of us,” Harris wrote in the book, according to an excerpt of the book in The Guardian.

Biden then went on to talk about his past debate performances, leaving Harris confused, “angry and disappointed,” according to The Guardian. She was upset that her boss had called before a critical moment in her political career and made “it all about himself.” Harris added that Biden was “distracting me with worry about hostile power-brokers in the biggest city of the most important state.”

Then-second gentleman Doug Emhoff apparently noticed his wife was in distress and advised her to “let it go” before facing off against Trump.

Then-Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris visits a watch party after participating in a presidential debate with Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 10, 2024. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)

 

While Harris avoided criticizing Biden during her campaign, she has used her upcoming book to shed light on the tensions between them as she took his place as the Democratic presidential nominee. Harris’ book is set to hit shelves on Sept. 23, but it has already sparked conversations about the 2024 election cycle.

In another section, Harris said while “It’s Joe and Jill’s decision” became a mantra ahead of the 2024 election cycle, she said it was “recklessness,” rather than “grace,” according to an excerpt released by The Atlantic.

Outgoing President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris stand together at the White House ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C.  (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

 

“‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision,” Harris wrote.

Harris also revealed in her book that then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was her “first choice” as running mate, not Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. However, she said it was “too big of a risk” because the campaign was “already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man.”

Fox News Digital’s Deirdre Heavey and Greg Norman contributed to this report.

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