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.’

A pro-energy group is renewing its call for an investigation into over half a dozen Biden administration executive actions related to climate that it believes should be deemed null and void due to them being signed by an autopen without any public comment from former President Joe Biden confirming his knowledge of them. 

Power the Future, a nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs, reviewed eight Biden executive orders that it says were significant shifts in domestic energy policy and said it found no evidence of the president speaking about any of them publicly, raising concerns that the orders were signed by autopen and that he was not aware of them. 

‘These are not obscure bureaucratic memos; these were foundational shifts in American energy policy, yet not once did Joe Biden speak about them publicly,’ Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of Power The Future, told Fox News Digital. 

The executive orders reviewed by Power the Future include an Arctic drilling ban in 2023, a 2021 executive order committing the federal government to net-zero emissions by 2050, an executive order mandating ‘clean energy’ AI centers and an offshore drilling ban executive order shortly before leaving office in 2025. 

Finding no evidence of Biden publicly speaking about the executive orders on climate, Power the Future sent letters this week to the DOJ, EPA, DOI, DOE, along with the House and Senate Oversight Committees, calling for an investigation to determine who made the decisions, drafted the executive orders and ultimately signed them. 

‘In light of the growing evidence that actions purportedly taken by the former president may not have been approved or signed by him, but instead promulgated by a small coterie of advisers in his name without his knowledge or over his signature using an ‘autopen,’ the need for congressional access to information has grown in importance with these revelations,’ the letter to GOP House Oversight Chair James Comer states. 

‘Congress deserves to know how or whether these executive actions were authorized, and whether the former President was aware of such orders before they were implemented by the federal bureaucracy. Were these actions taken on behalf of the president and purporting to execute his authority undertaken with the president’s knowledge and approach? It appears incumbent upon Congress to inquire, about all parties involved in these actions, who instructed them to do what, when.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Biden’s office for comment but did not hear back by press time.

The presidential autopen has been a topic of conversation with Republicans in recent weeks and months as questions continue about Biden’s mental acuity during his presidency, particularly the last few years, which have faced increased scrutiny after the release of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book ‘Original Sin.’

‘Power The Future remains concerned that key policies of major economic and national security significance directed by the White House during the Biden administration may have been undertaken without presidential awareness and approval, but perhaps instead by a small coterie of staff,’ the letter states.

‘Although this likelihood has become more apparent by claims made in a recent book titled Original Sin, those claims merely support information that had already emerged.’

An autopen is a device that physically holds a pen and is programmed to replicate a person’s signature. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel determined in 2005 that the president is permitted to use an autopen to sign bills into law, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a ruling in February that said the absence of ‘a writing does not equate to proof that a commutation did not occur.’

In March, President Donald Trump claimed that Biden’s pardons of lawmakers who served on the House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, and others, are ‘VOID,’ alleging that they had been signed via an autopen and that Biden did not even know about them.

Despite Trump’s concerns over the validity of Biden’s pardons due to the alleged use of an autopen, constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley told Fox News Digital that the odds of successfully legally challenging them in court are ‘vanishingly low.’ 

‘Presidents are allowed to use the autopen, and courts will not presume a dead-hand conspiracy,’ Turley said. 

Power the Future’s letter references House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who in January shared that Biden, during a meeting, appeared to forget that he signed an order to pause LNG exports.

A report published by an arm of the Heritage Foundation claimed that the majority of official documents signed by Biden were allegedly an autopen signature.

‘During the Biden administration, hundreds of billions of dollars were funneled towards pet green projects, while the American fossil fuels industry was punished, and there is no evidence that Biden ordered it, directed it, or was even aware it was happening in his name,’ Turner told Fox News Digital, adding that the American people ‘deserve to know’ who was signing the executive orders ‘behind closed doors.’

‘This autopen scandal is evidence that these green EOs are invalid, and the instigators should be thoroughly investigated by the DOJ for violating the trust of the American people and perpetuating a great fraud on the nation.’

Fox News Digital’s Diana Stancy contributed to this report.

Republicans are ripping progressive New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for renewing her call to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a recent fundraising email. 

‘I believe that ICE, an agency that was just formed in 2003 during the Patriot Act era, is a rogue agency that should not exist,’ Ocasio-Cortez said in a fundraising email obtained by Fox News Digital. 

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), House Republicans’ campaign arm, criticized the potential 2028 presidential candidate in an X post for fundraising on wanting to abolish ICE, a progressive rallying cry that rejects President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. 

‘House Democrat Minority Leader AOC is doubling down on their party’s most extreme, unhinged agenda, while the rest of her party is bending their knee to the radical wing. At this rate, the Democrat platform in 2026 will be a fever dream of defunding the police, wide open borders, and far-left hellscapes,’ NRCC Spokesman Mike Marinella told Fox News Digital in a statement. 

‘Why are you considered to be extreme?’ Ocasio-Cortez asked in the fundraising email. It’s a strategy often deployed by the progressive New Yorker, according to a Fox News Digital review of Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign emails. 

Ocasio-Cortez says she is considered ‘extreme’ because she supports Medicare for All, champions the Green New Deal, challenges Democratic Party leadership, believes in ‘democratic socialism,’ is funded by small-dollar donations and believes ICE should ‘not exist.’

The potential 2028 candidate was at the forefront of the ‘abolish ICE’ movement, a rejection of Trump’s immigration policies in his first administration, during her 2018 congressional campaign when she unseated longtime Democrat incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley. 

While older, moderate Democrats haven’t been as vocal about abolishing ICE, another young progressive, who has faced heat within his party for a plan to primary challenge older Democratic incumbents in safe blue districts who are ‘asleep at the wheel,’ DNC vice chair David Hogg, has also called to ‘abolish ICE.’

‘We must acknowledge the terrifying moment that we are in right now, and that what we are hearing and seeing with our own eyes is, in fact, happening. We are watching as our neighbors, students and friends are being fired, targeted and disappeared. It is real. People we love are being targeted and harassed for being LGBTQ. Our co-workers, U.S. citizens and immigrants alike are being disappeared off the street by men in vans with no uniform,’ Ocasio-Cortez told a crowd in Montana on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ Tour. 

Ocasio-Cortez has an ongoing feud with Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, as the New York congresswoman instructs her constituents how to impede ICE arrests. Ocasio-Cortez is facing a potential Department of Justice probe for a webinar she hosted in February on how to handle ICE agents. 

The Trump administration has led a robust crackdown on illegal immigration since returning to the White House this year. During the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, ICE arrested 66,463 illegal immigrants and removed 65,682, according to ICE.

The agency said three in four of those arrests of illegal immigrants involved someone accused of committing a crime. 

The Fox News Voter Analysis in 2024 found that 52% of voters said Trump was the better candidate to handle immigration, while just 36% said Harris. Additionally, it was a top issue for voters, with 20% saying it was the most important issue facing the country. 

Ocasio-Cortez, Homan, DHS and the DCCC did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment. 

Fox News Digital’s Alexandra Koch contributed to this report.