The 2028 presidential election seems like a long way away, but in reality, the early moves are already underway by some Democrats with likely national ambitions.

And one Republican politician is already selling 2028 merchandise.

‘Trump 2028’ hats are available for $50 and T-shirts that read, ‘Trump 2028 (Re-write the Rules),’ sell for $36 on the Trump Organization’s website. 

But the rules are quite clear: The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution restricts presidents to two terms in office. 

And after months of flirting with running for a third term in the White House, President Donald Trump appears to be ruling out another campaign.

Despite touting strong support in the MAGA world for a 2028 run for re-election, the president in an interview this month on NBC News’ ‘Meet the Press’ said, ‘I’m not looking at that.’

‘I’ll be an eight-year president,’ Trump added. ‘I’ll be a two-term president. I always thought that was very important.’ 

But Trump’s 2028 flirtations, which he said weren’t a joke, and his sweeping moves since the start of his second tour of duty in the White House are keeping the spotlight firmly on him, averting any lame-duck talk and putting a damper on any early moves by those in the Republican Party hoping to succeed the president.

The race for the next GOP presidential nomination won’t get underway until Trump’s ready to share the spotlight, and he recently said it’s ‘far too early’ to begin holding those discussions.

But Trump also added, ‘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.’

With that in mind, here’s a look at the potential 2028 Republican White House contenders.

Vice President JD Vance

Vice President JD Vance appears to be the heir apparent to the ‘America First’ movement and the Republican Party’s powerful MAGA base. It was a point driven home by Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, MAGA rockstar and powerful ally of the vice president.

‘We are getting four more years of Trump and then eight years of JD Vance,’ Trump Jr. said on the campaign trail in Ohio a few weeks ahead of the November 2024 election.

As sitting vice president, Vance enjoys plenty of perks that could boost him to frontrunner status. Among them, a large staff that comes with the job, and Air Force Two, which he has repeatedly used to make stops across the U.S. and the globe since the start of the second Trump administration.

And Vance is now finance chair of the Republican National Committee, the first sitting vice president to hold such a position with a national party committee. The posting puts Vance in frequent contact with the GOP’s top donors.

But while Trump has hinted that Vance could be his successor and called him ‘a fantastic, brilliant guy’ in the ‘Meet the Press’ interview, he has avoided anointing his vice president as the party’s next nominee.

Vance has taken no steps toward a 2028 presidential run and isn’t seriously thinking about it at this time, a source in the vice president’s political orbit told Fox News.

‘I really am just not focused on politics,’ Vance said in early April in a ‘Fox and Friends’ interview. ‘I’m not focused on the midterm elections in 2026, much less the presidential election in 2028. When we get to that point, I’ll talk to the president. We’ll figure out what we want to do.’ 

And the 40-year-old vice president added, ‘The way I think about it is, if we do a good job, the politics take care of themselves.’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio

In his ‘Meet the Press’ interview, besides Vance, Trump also named Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a ‘great’ potential GOP leader.

‘Marco’s doing an outstanding job,’ the president said.

Rubio, a one-time rival who clashed with Trump during the combustible 2016 Republican presidential nomination battle, became a leading Trump ally in the U.S. Senate during the president’s first term in office.

And besides serving as secretary of state, the 53-year-old former senator from Florida is also acting national security advisor, acting head of the National Archives and acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

While Rubio’s expanding portfolio in the second Trump administration is fueling speculation about a potential 2028 presidential bid, he still faces skepticism from parts of MAGA world who question his ‘America First’ credentials.

Florida Gov Ron DeSantis

Conservative Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was flying high after a landslide re-election in 2022, but an unsuccessful 2024 presidential primary run and a bruising battle with Trump knocked him down in stature.

However, the term-limited 46-year-old governor, who has a year and a half left in office steering Florida, proved in the past few years his fundraising prowess and retains plenty of supporters across the country.

DeSantis was also able, to a degree, to repair relations with Trump, helped raise money for the GOP ticket during the general election and earned a prime-time speaking slot at the 2024 Republican convention. And in December 2024, the governor was seen as a possible replacement when now-Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s nomination briefly faltered.

While DeSantis is certain to still harbor national ambitions, his feud this year with the Republican-dominated Florida legislature and the controversy over a charity tied to Florida first lady Casey DeSantis are seen as potential hurdles.

Virginia Gov Glenn Youngkin

Thanks to his 2021 gubernatorial victory, the first by a Republican in Virginia in a dozen years, Gov. Glenn Youngkin instantly became a GOP rising star.

In Virginia, governors are limited to one four-year term, which means Youngkin has seven months left in office.

The 58-year-old governor, who hails from the Republican Party’s business wing but has been able to thrive in a MAGA-dominated party, likely harbors national ambitions. 

And Youngkin’s trip to Iowa, the state that for a half century has kicked off the GOP’s presidential nominating calendar, in July to headline a state party fundraising gala is sparking 2028 speculation.

Asked in late 2024 in a Fox News Digital interview about a White House run, Youngkin pointed to his job as governor, saying, ‘I need to finish strong so Virginia can really continue to soar. And that’s what I’m going to spend my time on.’

After that, he said, ‘We’ll see what’s next.’

Georgia Gov Brian Kemp

The popular conservative governor is one of the few in the GOP who can claim he faced Trump’s wrath and not only survived, but thrived.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who is term-limited, has two years left in office and enjoys strong favorable ratings in a crucial battleground state.

Kemp was heavily recruited by national Republicans to run in 2026 to try and flip a Democrat-controlled Senate seat. And the announcement earlier in May by the 61-year-old governor that he would pass on a 2026 Senate run, fueled buzz that Kemp may instead be mulling a 2028 White House run.

Asked in November 2024 about a potential presidential run, Kemp told Fox News Digital, ‘I try to keep all doors open in politics.’

Sen Ted Cruz

Sen. Ted Cruz was the runner-up to Trump in the blockbuster 2016 Republican presidential battle.

The controversial conservative firebrand passed on challenging Trump again in 2024 as he ran for what was thought to be another difficult re-election bid after narrowly surviving his 2018 re-election.

However, the 54-year-old senator ended up winning a third six-year term in the Senate by nearly nine points.

Since the start of Trump’s second administration, Cruz has reaffirmed his conservative credentials by voicing opposition to the president’s controversial tariffs.

Honorable mentions

Among the others to keep an eye on is Nikki Haley. 

The former two-term South Carolina governor, who served as U.N. ambassador in Trump’s first term, was the first GOP challenger to jump into the race against the former president in the 2024 nomination race. 

Haley outlasted the rest of the field, becoming the final challenger to Trump before ending her White House bid in March 2024.

While the 53-year-old Haley ended up backing Trump in the general election, her earlier clashes with the president during the primaries left their mark. Even though she addressed the GOP faithful at the 2024 convention, her political future in a party dominated by Trump is uncertain.

Also, not to be discounted are three politicians who considered but passed on 2024 runs: Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

And besides Haley, we’ll put three other 2024 candidates on the large list of possible 2028 contenders. Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy is the Republican frontrunner in the 2026 campaign for Ohio governor but likely still has strong national ambitions.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is a very visible player in Trump’s Cabinet.

And former Vice President Mike Pence, when asked earlier this month by Fox News Digital if he might consider another White House run, reiterated that he intends to ‘be a voice’ for traditional and conservative values and ‘we’ll let the future take care of itself.’

President Donald Trump is the first president since Ronald Reagan to run and get elected on a peace through strength platform. To date, the president has executed this vision by leveraging America’s forward presence across the Middle East and Asia — aircraft carriers, fighters and bombers, and a global network of American military installations — to project power and restore deterrence.  

The next challenge in realizing a peace through strength program is more fundamental: it will require addressing critical military vulnerabilities, including an overextended force, an industrial base at capacity, and severe readiness challenges.  

To his credit, the president has lived up to his security goals on a number of fronts. Just as he dismantled ISIS shortly after entering office in 2017, the president targeted the Houthis to cripple their ability to interfere with international shipping transiting the Red Sea. 

Operation Rough Rider, the largest air campaign since Trump’s operation against ISIS, went beyond President Joe Biden’s targeted pinprick attacks. U.S. airstrikes hit more than 800 targets and significantly reduced Houthi missile and drone launches. The president subsequently announced a ceasefire ending Houthi attacks on ships navigating Middle Eastern waters. 

As for Iran, the primary source of instability in the Middle East, the president’s maximum pressure campaign includes arming Israel and bolstering deterrence in the region, by deploying a second carrier strike group, a THAAD missile battery, Patriot missile battalions and B-2 bombers. 

In East Asia, the theater many Trump administration officials would like to prioritize, Trump has deployed anti-ship cruise missiles overlooking the critical waterways between the Philippines and Taiwan. It is the closest to the Chinese mainland that U.S. land-based cruise missiles have been deployed.  

Trump has also ordered two freedom of navigation missions through the Taiwan Strait. The second operation on April 23, China’s Navy Day, was a direct rebuke to Chinese claims over Taiwan. 

Now comes the harder part — addressing that trifecta of fundamental pressure points facing the military. 

In the Red Sea, the Navy has performed admirably in its longest surface engagement since World War II. However, a friendly fire incident, the loss of several drones and two F/A-18s, one falling overboard during an evasive maneuver and another due to a failed arrest, reveal the limitations of a historically small fleet that is overworked and highly exposed. 

Operations in the Middle East have also compromised readiness in Asia. In addition to air defense redeployments, the Pentagon may have to dip into stockpiles in Asia to replenish munition supplies in the Middle East. The shortage reveals a larger issue: transferring munitions gives up existing capability in Asia that won’t be replenished for years given the state of the industrial base.  

Industrial challenges affect every munition from JASSM-ERs to 155mm shells. For example, in 2023 the Pentagon bought 55 Tomahawk missiles, yet 68% of that annual purchase was expended in one single day against the Houthis. Each new Tomahawk faces a two-year lead time, underscoring the urgent need for industrial expansion.  

Trump’s application of peace through strength in the Western Hemisphere, while laudable, is adding new pressures to a force already at its breaking point. The USS Gravely, a destroyer that recently completed a nine-month tour in the Red Sea, was quickly redeployed to assist with border protection. 

Some of the strain can be addressed with smart policy choices, such as how U.S. forces are organized in Europe. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently ordered a major restructuring of the Army, replacing some armored and attack helicopter formations with drone swarms and precision munitions which have proven their worth in Ukraine. Hegseth’s 8% budget reallocation plan is another opportunity to reinvest low-priority budget items into next generation warfighting technology needed elsewhere. 

Unfortunately, there are signs that techno-optimism may be interfering with prudent budgeting: the administration requested a $893 billion base defense budget for FY26, well below the $1 trillion budget the administration promised which does not keep pace with inflation.  

As a percentage of GDP, the president’s budget would be the lowest since the Clinton years, when the U.S. cashed a peace dividend at the end of the Cold War. The administration will find it challenging to implement a peace through strength program with a shrinking defense budget that would fall short of providing the necessary resources to sustain a forward presence that provides the president with military options and negotiating leverage over adversaries.  

Fortunately, President Trump has congressional partners ready to pair his ambitious strategy with an ambitious buildup and budget. The chairs of the Armed Services Committees are determined to provide significant real growth to the president’s budget request, and the House reconciliation bill includes $150 billion for shipbuilding, Golden Dome, and other administration priorities.  

As Reagan warned in 1986, ‘blueprints alone don’t deter aggression. We have to translate our lead in the lab to a lead in the field. But when our budget is cut, we can’t do either.’  

Flanked by large ‘Peace through Strength’ banners at al-Udeid Air Base, a major staging area during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump recently declared that ‘America’s military will soon be bigger, better, stronger and more powerful than ever.’  

With the right budget and right focus, he has a historic opportunity to fulfill that promise and cement himself as a peace-through-strength president. As the president confronts an ascending axis of China, Russia and Iran, he can move beyond employing the tools of strength to rebuilding that strength and delivering a lasting peace. 

Michael Stanton is a research assistant at the Reagan Institute. 

House Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., is taking aim at Georgia’s senior senator in a new ad highlighting the vulnerable Democrat’s stance on transgender student athletes.

Carter, who is running for Senate, is releasing a 30-second advertisement titled, ‘Ossoff Fan,’ which features a purported transgender woman complaining about Carter’s own Republican stances. It opens by showing a transgender woman, played by a stubble-chinned biological male wearing a wig and a dress, sitting in a living room beside a dumbbell watching Carter on Fox News.

‘He’s been MAGA from the beginning,’ the person says on the phone. ‘He’s been loyal to Trump, defended him during impeachment.’

The person on the other line says, ‘And Buddy helped Trump at the border with deportations.’

The transgender person picks up a trophy and says, ‘And preventing people like me from competing in women’s sports. Buddy Carter even believes there’s only two genders.’ 

‘Now Buddy wants to help Trump in the Senate and beat Jon Ossoff,’ the individual says. ‘It’s just not fair.’ Meanwhile, the voice on the phone quips, ‘After all Ossoff has done for us!’

The ad ends with the transgender person picking up a sign with pink lettering that says, ‘Ossoff for Senate,’ putting on a pair of wedge sandals, and stomping to their car.

The short but punchy advertisement signals that Republicans still believe the debate surrounding transgender inclusion is a potent issue for turning out voters in favor of the GOP. It proved to be a key issue in the 2024 general election, with moderate Democrats spending weeks after the fact decrying their own party’s intolerance to differing views.

Ossoff is a first-term lawmaker who was the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in the Peach State in roughly two decades. Republicans now view Ossoff’s seat as one of the most viable flip opportunities in the upcoming 2026 midterm cycle, when the GOP hopes to keep and expand upon its thin majority in the upper chamber. 

Carter was the first Republican to jump into the contest after Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who was considered a heavy favorite to run against Ossoff, opted to forgo a Senate bid. Georgia Insurance Commissioner John King is also running in the race as a Republican.

Ossoff joined with all other Democratic senators to filibuster the bill from Sens. Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt, both Alabama Republicans, in March, effectively killing the legislation after it advanced out of the House earlier this year. 

Their bill, called the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, is designed to bar transgender athletes from participating in federally funded school athletics at all levels, from elementary school to college.

It would amend Title IX to make it a violation for any school athletic program that receives federal funding to allow a biological male to participate in sports or activities that are meant for women or girls, and defines a person’s sex by their reproductive biology and genetics at birth. 

The measure is similar to an executive order from President Donald Trump in February that argued that the participation of biological men in women’s and girls’ sports was ‘demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports.’

Ossoff campaign communications director Ellie Dougherty argued in a statement after this report was published that athletic associations and local school districts could ensure fair and safe competition in school athletics, and accused the GOP’s bill of threatening to usher in ‘extremely intrusive’ federal investigations of children’s bodies.

‘American parents don’t need federal bureaucrats confirming our children’s genitalia,’ Dougherty said. 

The Carter campaign’s ad is also not the first time in the early days of the looming midterm cycle that the vulnerable senator has been targeted for his vote against the measure. 

One Nation, a nonprofit advocacy group closely aligned with Senate Republican leadership, ran an ad last month that accused Ossoff of ‘running point for the radical left’ with his vote to block the men in women’s sports bill. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Ossoff’s campaign for comment on Carter’s ad but did not hear back by press time.