Trump's presidency ends on January 20. The Constitution is clear. Not one more day

Donald Nieman - The Conversation

Following the assault on Capitol Hill that disrupted the routine validation of the Electoral College result by Congress, as a historian who has taught and written about the Constitution for more than 40 years I know one thing is certain: the term of President Donald Trump,

will conclude at noon on January 20, 2021

.

At that very moment, the country will have a new chief executive.

The framers of the Constitution did not establish a specific day when the presidential term should end, but they were very clear that the president "must head his office for a four-year term."

Not four years and a day.

Not three years and 364 days.

Four years.

"The Civil War is the only precedent" to what happened in Washington, says political analyst

Jan. 6, 202104: 44

How long should a president serve?

There is nothing magical about that number.

The editors debated whether the presidential term should be four, five or six years;

if the president could serve for only one term, or if it should be for life.

Finally, they decided for four years and allowed re-election.

However, they were emphatic that the president would serve for a defined term.

Why?

Because kings didn't.

They were creating a republic, where the people are sovereign, and neither they nor the American people wanted a monarchy.

[Trump resignations and criticism: voices grow to impeach him with the 25th Amendment]

In September 1788, after the Constitution was ratified, the Congress of the Confederacy ordered the new government to begin on March 4, 1789. That seemed like enough time to hold elections for representatives, senators, president, and vice president. , and for them to travel to New York, the seat of the new government.

It was not.

The House of Representatives reached a quorum on April 1, the Senate on April 6, and George Washington was sworn in as president on April 30.

[Congress declares Joe Biden's victory as US President]

However, every four years after that, and for more than 140 years, presidents began their term - whether it was the first or the second - on

March 4

because Congress established it as the day of inauguration in 1792. and never changed it.

Electoral crises - the tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr in 1800, the crisis of secession in 1860-61, and the disputed election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden in 1876 - did not prevent one term from ending and another from beginning. on March 4.

The full chronicle of the day Trump supporters stormed the Capitol

Jan. 7, 202102: 56

Did the transition of power take a long time?

The

20th Amendment

, adopted in 1933, changed the day and time of the presidential inaugurations to noon on January 20.

The amendment was the result of a 16-year crusade by Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska.

Norris believed that the

lame duck

congresses

 that met between November and March after the elections did not reflect the will of the people and should not legislate.

This was especially true, he argued, if the party that controlled the

lame duck session 

had lost in the November elections.

[Trump, blocked by Facebook and Instagram until Biden takes office.

He is also temporarily off Twitter]

The defeated presidents who served months after voters had rejected their reelection represented another problem.

In an emergency like the crisis of secession, the four-month interval between the election and the inauguration of a new president had delayed a decisive response to disunity.

The Constitution established the duration of the terms of presidents, senators and representatives.

Changing the date they started and ended invited a constitutional challenge, in a way that could only be accomplished by an amendment.

Beginning in 1934, Congress would meet, with newly elected members of the House and Senate, on January 3 - and

beginning in 1937

, the president would be sworn in at noon on January 20.

Assault on the Capitol: this is what it looks like a day after being invaded by a mob of Trump supporters

Jan. 7, 202103: 34

What if there were other problems?

The 20th Amendment also offered a way forward if things didn't go well in the run-up to Opening Day.

If the president-elect died before the election and on January 20,

the vice president would become president

.

The amendment also established what should happen if Congress could not agree on who had won the presidential election, either because of the stagnation in the electoral vote count or because the House could not choose a winner because no candidate obtained a majority of electoral votes.

If that happened, or if the person elected was not at least 35 years of age and was not what the Constitution calls a "naturally born citizen" in the country, the vice president would serve until Congress elected someone else.

If there was no vice president-elect or the person did not meet the criteria of the Constitution, then Congress could determine who would serve as the interim president until it decided how to elect a new president.

[Biden was confirmed as president-elect after a violent assault on the Capitol.

This is how it was lived minute by minute]

Fortunately for the nation, those provisions were never tested.

Some are very direct, like allowing a vice president-elect to take the place of a president-elect who has passed away.

But if a winner is not declared by January 20, partisan division is probably part of the problem, and that means that a consensus after January 20 might not be possible.

However, one thing is clear.

The 20th.

amendment creates a final halt.

The term of the acting president ends at noon on January 20

.

If Congress cannot determine a winner, the Presidential Succession Act, adopted in 1947, would make the Speaker of the House of Representatives the new chief executive, at least for a time.

Like it or not, Trump's term as president will end on January 20.

What will happen next is still unknown, but at least that's for sure.