The United States presidential line of succession is the order in which the vice president of the United States and other officers of the U.S. federal government assume the powers and duties of the U.S. presidency (or the office itself, in the instance of succession by the vice president) upon an elected president's death, resignation, removal from office, or incapacity.
The order of succession specifies that the office passes to the vice president; if the vice presidency is simultaneously vacant, the powers and duties of the presidency pass to the speaker of the House of Representatives, president pro tempore of the Senate, and then Cabinet secretaries, depending on eligibility.
Presidential succession is referred to multiple times in the U.S. Constitution: Article II, Section 1, Clause 6, and the 12th, 20th, and 25th Amendments. The vice president is designated as first in the presidential line of succession by the Article II succession clause, which also authorizes Congress to provide for a line of succession beyond the vice president. It has done so on three occasions. The Presidential Succession Act was adopted in 1947, and last revised in 2006. The 25th Amendment, adopted in 1967, also establishes procedures for filling an intra-term vacancy in the office of the vice president.
The Presidential Succession Act refers specifically to officers beyond the vice president acting as president rather than becoming president when filling a vacancy. The Cabinet has 15 members, of which the secretary of state is highest and fourth in line (after the president pro tempore of the Senate); the other Cabinet secretaries follow in the order of when their departments (or the department of which their department is the successor) were created. Those heads of department who are constitutionally not "eligible to the Office of President" are disqualified from assuming the powers and duties of the president through succession and skipped to the next in line. Since 1789, the vice president has succeeded to the presidency intra-term on nine occasions: eight times due to the incumbent's death, and once due to resignation. No one lower in the line of succession has ever been called upon to act as president.
Widely considered a settled issue during the late 20th century, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, demonstrated the potential for a decapitation strike that would kill or incapacitate multiple individuals in the presidential line of succession in addition to many members of Congress and the federal judiciary. In the years immediately following the attacks, numerous wide-ranging discussions were started, in Congress, among academics and within the public policy community about continuity of government concerns including the existing constitutional and statutory provisions governing presidential succession. These discussions remain ongoing. One effort put forward by the Continuity of Government Commission, a nonpartisan think tank, produced three reports (2003, 2009, and 2011), the second of which focused on the implicit ambiguities and limitations in the succession act, and contained recommendations for amending the laws for succession to the presidency.
Current order of succession The presidential order of succession is set by the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, as amended. The order consists of congressional officers, followed by the members of the cabinet in the order of the establishment of each department, provided that each officer satisfies the constitutional requirements for serving as president. In the table below, the absence of a number in the first column indicates that the office is either vacant, or that the incumbent is ineligible.
No. Office IncumbentParty 1 Vice President JD Vance Republican 2 Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson Republican 3 President pro tempore of the Senate Chuck Grassley Republican 4 Secretary of State Marco Rubio Republican 5 Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent Republican 6 Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Republican 7 Attorney General Todd Blanche Republican 8 Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum Republican 9 Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins Republican 10 Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick Republican 11 Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling Republican 12 Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Independent 13 Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner Republican 14 Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy Republican 15 Secretary of Energy Chris Wright Republican 16 Secretary of Education Linda McMahon Republican 17 Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins Republican 18 Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin Republican
Constitutional provisions
Presidential eligibility Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution sets three qualifications for holding the presidency: One must be a natural-born citizen of the United States (or a citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, in 1788), be at least 35 years of age and have been a resident in the United States for at least fourteen years.
Presidential succession
The presidential line of succession is mentioned in four places in the Constitution:
Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 makes the vice president first in the line of succession and allows the Congress to provide by law for cases in which neither the president nor vice president can serve. The 12th Amendment provided that the vice president would also fill any vacancy of the presidency arising from failure of the House of Representatives to choose a president in a contingent election. The 20th Amendment, Section 3, supersedes the above 12th Amendment provision, by declaring that if the president-elect dies before his term begins, the vice president-elect becomes president on Inauguration Day and serves for the full term to which the president-elect was elected, and also that, if on Inauguration Day, a president has not been chosen or the president-elect does not qualify for the presidency, the vice president-elect acts as president until a president is chosen or the president-elect qualifies. It also authorizes Congress to provide for instances in which neither a president-elect nor a vice president-elect have qualified. The 25th Amendment, Section 1, clarifies Article II, Section 1, Clause 6, by stating unequivocally that the vice president is the successor of the president, and becomes president if the incumbent dies, resigns or is removed from office. It also, in sections 3 and 4, provides for situations where the president is temporarily disabled, such as if the president has a surgical procedure or becomes mentally unfit, establishing procedures whereby the vice president can become acting president. Additionally, in Section 2, the amendment provides a mechanism for intra-term vice presidential succession, establishing that a vice presidential vacancy will be filled by a president's nominee upon confirmation by a majority vote of both houses of Congress. Previously, whenever a vice president had succeeded to the presidency or had died or resigned from office, the vice presidency remained vacant until the next presidential and vice presidential terms began; there were 16 such vacancies prior to 1967.
Succession acts
Act of 1792 The Presidential Succession Act of 1792 () provided for succession after the president and vice president: first, the president pro tempore of the Senate, followed by the speaker of the House. The statute provided that the presidential successor would serve in an acting capacity, holding office only until a new president could be elected. A special election was to be held in November of the year in which dual vacancies occurred (unless the vacancies occurred after the first Wednesday in October, in which case the election would occur the following year; or unless the vacancies occurred within the last year of the presidential term, in which case the next election would take place as regularly scheduled). The persons elected president and vice president in such a special election would have served a full four-year term beginning on March 4 of the next year. No such election ever took place.
Various framers of the Constitution, such as James Madison, criticized the arrangement as being contrary to their intent. The decision to build the line of succession around those two officials was made after a long and contentious debate. In addition to the president pro tempore and the speaker, both the secretary of state and the chief justice of the Supreme Court were also suggested. Including the secretary of state was unacceptable to most Federalists, who did not want the then secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, who had become the leader of the opposition Democratic-Republicans, to follow the vice president in the succession, and many objected to including the chief justice due to separation of powers concerns.
Act of 1886 The Presidential Succession Act of 1886 () established succession to include the members of the president's cabinet in the order of the establishment of the various departments, beginning with the secretary of state, and stipulated that any official discharging the powers and duties of the presidency must possess the constitutional qualifications to hold the office. The president pro tempore and speaker were excluded from the new line, and the provision mandating a special presidential election when a double vacancy arose was also dropped.
The need for increasing the number of presidential successors was abundantly clear to Congress, for twice within the span of just over four years it happened that there was no one in the presidential line of succession. In September 1881, when Chester A. Arthur succeeded to the presidency following James A. Garfield's death, there was no vice president, no president pro tempore of the Senate, and no speaker of the House of Representatives. Then, in November 1885, Grover Cleveland faced a similar situation, following the death of Vice President Thomas A. Hendricks, as the Senate and the House had not convened yet to elect new officers.
Act of 1947 The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (), which was signed into law on July 18, 1947, restored the speaker of the House and president pro tempore of the Senate to the line of succession—but in reverse-order from their 1792 positions—and placed them ahead of the members of the Cabinet, positioned, as before, in the order of the establishment of their department.
Placing the speaker and the president pro tempore (both elected officials) back in the succession and placing them ahead of cabinet members (all of whom are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate), was Harry S. Truman's idea. Personally conveyed to Congress in June 1945, two months after becoming president upon Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, the proposal reflected Truman's belief that the president should not have the power to appoint to office "the person who would be my immediate successor in the event of my own death or inability to act", and that the presidency should, whenever possible, "be filled by an elective officer."
Further amendments The 1947 act has been modified several times, with changes being made as the face of the federal bureaucracy has changed over the ensuing years. Its most recent change came about in 2006, when the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act added the secretary of homeland security to the presidential line of succession.
Ambiguities regarding succession and inability