The President’s cabinet is a collection of advisers that includes not only the White House Chief of Staff, the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., the Vice-President, but also the heads of the fifteen main executive departments.
The Vice-President serves on the Supreme Court when a Justice is unable or unfit to serve. Question 9 Explanation: The Constitution states that Presidents have the “power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment ...”.
The Constitution requires that the President “from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” Recent presidents have chosen to orally deliver State of the Union speeches to joint sessions of Congress. Before President Wilson, however, most State of the Union obligations were fulfilled in writing.
The U.S. Constitution established the Electoral College , whereby each state is allotted a number of electors proportionate to its population. Citizens in each state vote for their preferred candidate, and each state then uses those results to appoint their electors to cast an official vote for a candidate. On four occasions, the winner of the popular vote has not won the electoral vote and the presidency.
The President's salary is set by Congressional legislation. The Constitution states that their salary cannot be increased or decreased during their term in office.
Article II, Section 1 states that “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years , and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.” Since an American military base is considered U.S. territory, a child born to American parents there is a “natural born citizen.”
The President’s role in foreign policy is largely ceremonial. Foreign policy is a responsibility of the executive branch of U.S. government.
This list below highlights presidential pardons made recently. Know of one we missed? Email us at [email protected] and let us know.
The U.S. Constitution, in Article II, Section 2, grants the president the power of executive clemency.
Executive clemency scholar P.S. Ruckman, Jr. identified three main formal reasons for issuing a pardon:
Yes. Presidents have issued preemptive pardons for individuals who may be suspected of wrongdoing but have yet to be charged or convicted. In fact, Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Richard Nixon was a preemptive pardon. Nixon had yet to be formally charged with any wrongdoing.
A January 2020 Congressional Research Service report on presidential pardons said the power of presidential pardons originated in English law and was a subject of debate among the framers:
Note: This section is updated once per month. It was most recently updated on February 15, 2022.