1

The United States has a predefined presidential plan of succession should both the President and Vice President be removed from office (encapsulating all reasons here). For example, it goes as follows:

  1. Speaker of the House
  2. President pro tempore of the senate
  3. Secretary of State
  4. Secratary of the Treasury

In order for one to be president, a particular condition is that they have American Citizenship by birth. My question is, should one of these cabinet members be foreign born, does the line of succession skip them?

This question here here says that successors can be skipped, but this is in the case that the successor does not want to assume the Presidency. It doesn't cover the situation where a confirmed cabinet member wants the job but is foreign born.

3
  • Not a direct duplicate, but the answers to this question answer yours: Does someone who already served two terms as president get “skipped” in the presidential line of succession?
    – divibisan
    Commented Feb 13, 2021 at 21:55
  • As a software developer, I would suggest a code review + related bug fixes :-) Something along the lines of "the next person in the line of successors who is eligible to be elected as president, and willing to take the job". That would eliminate both the cases of a secretary of state who isn't US born, and a secretary of state who was president twice.
    – gnasher729
    Commented Feb 13, 2021 at 23:52
  • @gnasher729 if you look at the actual law, I think you'll find that that is precisely how it works.
    – phoog
    Commented Feb 14, 2021 at 2:10

0

Browse other questions tagged .