The Presidential Succession Act at 75 | Proposals to Reform the 1947 Act and How Reform Could Be Effectuated

These remarks were delivered as part of the program entitled The Presidential Succession Act at 75: Praise It or Bury It?, which was held on April 6, 2022, and hosted by the Fordham University School of Law. The Presidential Succession Act sets out the presidential line of succession and other procedures for situations in which the president and vice president have both died, resigned, been removed, or become unable to discharge the presidency’s powers and duties. The Act also addresses succession scenarios before Inauguration Day. In light of the statute’s seventy-fifth anniversary, this program explored relevant history and analyzed whether reform to the statute is needed. In these remarks, Dr. John C. Fortier, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Executive Director of the Continuity of Government Commission, discusses possible reforms to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 and some of the challenges of accomplishing reform

Theoretical models of planetary system formation: mass vs semi-major axis

Planet formation models have been developed during the last years in order to try to reproduce the observations of both the solar system, and the extrasolar planets. Some of these models have partially succeeded, focussing however on massive planets, and for the sake of simplicity excluding planets belonging to planetary systems. However, more and more planets are now found in planetary systems. This tendency, which is a result of both radial velocity, transit and direct imaging surveys, seems to be even more pronounced for low mass planets. These new observations require the improvement of planet formation models, including new physics, and considering the formation of systems. In a recent series of papers, we have presented some improvements in the physics of our models, focussing in particular on the internal structure of forming planets, and on the computation of the excitation state of planetesimals, and their resulting accretion rate. In this paper, we focus on the concurrent effect of the formation of more than one planet in the same protoplanetary disc, and show the effect, in terms of global architecture and composition of this multiplicity. We use a N-body calculation including collision detection to compute the orbital evolution of a planetary system. Moreover, we describe the effect of competition for accretion of gas and solids, as well as the effect of gravitational interactions between planets. We show that the masses and semi-major axis of planets are modified by both the effect of competition and gravitational interactions. We also present the effect of the assumed number of forming planets in the same system (a free parameter of the model), as well as the effect of the inclination and eccentricity damping.Comment: accepted in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Continuity of Government: Presidential Succession

Questions about the continuity of our key institu­tions have arisen at pivotal moments through­out our nation's history. Watershed events such as the Cold War, the death of President Franklin D. Roos­evelt, and the assassination of President John F. Ken­nedy brought continuity-of-government issues into sharp public relief. Ultimately, these events led to sig­nificant reforms, including the 25th Amendment and a new Presidential Succession Act.A decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, the 9/11 attacks forced continuity issues back into the public consciousness. One result was the creation of the first Continuity of Government Commission, the predecessor to the current commission. More than two decades after 9/11, we still have to ask ourselves, Do we have the legal and constitutional framework in place to ensure that our key institutions of govern­ment could recover from a catastrophic event?America has in place legal and constitutional pro­visions that address presidential succession. These provisions serve us well in the straightforward case of a president's death while in office. However, the cur­rent system does not adequately address less straight­forward scenarios, such as a mass attack on multiple people in the line of succession, the simultaneous incapacity of the president and vice president, and unique succession issues that could arise between Election Day and Inauguration Day.In this report, the Continuity of Government Com­mission recommends several changes to the Presiden­tial Succession Act that address these vulnerabilities. These recommendations would not require constitu­tional amendments; they are achievable through sim­ple legislative changes

The Absentee Ballot and the Secret Ballot: Challenges for Election Reform

Reforms in the recently enacted federal election reform legislation primarily address improving voting at a polling place, but there is a growing share of the electorate who vote away from the polling place through increased use of absentee ballots and vote-by-mail systems. Voters who vote away from the polling place do not have the same protections as those at the polling place. In particular, these voters do not have a secret ballot, as any ballot cast without a drawn curtain behind oneself is potentially subject to coercion, vote buying and fraud. This Article looks at the tension between the Australian Ballot and absentee voting. Both the Australian Ballot and the Absentee Ballot were electoral reforms of previous generations. The Australian Ballot was instituted by almost all of the states in the 1880s and 90s to combat abuses at the ballot box such as vote buying and coercion by party machines. There were two major periods of absentee ballot reform. In both periods of absentee ballot reform, there was recognition of the dangers of casting a ballot away from a home polling place. Since these early periods of adoption of absentee voting laws, there has been a significant rise in voting away from the polling place. In addition, many of the safeguards implemented by early legislation have been repealed. There are a number of advocates for easier absentee balloting, vote by mail, or even voting over the Internet. Although they emphasize the convenience of such measures, these advocates do not seem to appreciate the privacy concerns that the originators of the absentee ballot did. 7b the extent that election reform legislation is to be successful in improving the electoral system, it must take note of the trend toward voting away from the polling place and consider the importance of the secret ballot as well as convenience

The Continuity of Congress

The Continuity of Government Commission was originally formed after 9/11 to address how our key institutions can reconstitute themselves after a catastrophic attack. A new version of the commission, including previous members and new ones, who have experience in all three branches of government, met in 2021 and 2022 to consider continuity-of-government issues in light of the recent pandemic and other developments. In this report, the commission issues its recommendations on the continuity of Congress.The core continuity problem for Congress is that if many members of the House of Representatives were killed in an attack or other catastrophe, the House would likely have no quorum and be unable to meet for months after the event. Unlike the Senate, the House can fill its vacancies only by special election, and those elections are likely to take months to conduct.The key recommendation is for a constitutional amendment to allow for temporary replacements to be appointed to fill the seats of deceased members until special elections are held to elect a permanent replacement. With immediate successors to fill the seats of deceased members of Congress, a Congress with nearly full representation could be reconstituted within days to work with the president to face the challenges of the present emergency.The commission makes several other recommendations that deal with other continuity-of-Congress issues:Creating a limited provision for allowing remote proceedings when members of Congress cannot meet in person in Washington,Allowing temporary replacement members to fill in for incapacitated members in the extreme case when deceased and incapacitated members number more than a majority of the House or Senate, andAdopting procedures to ensure that a new Congress could commence, perhaps even remotely, if a catastrophic emergency prevented the regular opening of a new Congress

Lessons Learned From the 2020 Election

The 2020 primaries and presidential election took place against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitated changes to how states planned and held their elections, and how they protected voters, poll workers, and administrators.From political and institutional battles over procedural changes, to record-high turnout levels, administering elections in 2020 proved to be a series of anticipated — and unanticipated — challenges. Surges in voting by mail meant many states were breaking new ground; maintaining access to in-person voting also proved uniquely challenging during a global pandemic. Our new report looks at how well the challenges of 2020 were met, from the first primary election to the last vote counted. It also examines the technologies employed, the costs involved in running elections, and the confidence voters ultimately had in the results

Measurement of excited-state transitions in cold calcium atoms by direct femtosecond frequency-comb spectroscopy

We apply direct frequency-comb spectroscopy, in combination with precision cw spectroscopy, to measure the ${\rm 4s4p} ^3P_1 \to {\rm 4s5s} ^3S_1$ transition frequency in cold calcium atoms. A 657 nm ultrastable cw laser was used to excite atoms on the narrow ($\gamma \sim 400$ Hz) ${\rm 4s^2} ^1S_0 \to {\rm 4s4p} ^3P_1$ clock transition, and the direct output of the frequency comb was used to excite those atoms from the ${\rm 4s4p} ^3P_1$ state to the ${\rm 4s5s} ^3S_1$ state. The resonance of this second stage was detected by observing a decrease in population of the ground state as a result of atoms being optically pumped to the metastable ${\rm 4s4p} ^3P_{0,2}$ states. The ${\rm 4s4p} ^3P_1 \to {\rm 4s5s} ^3S_1$ transition frequency is measured to be $\nu = 489 544 285 713(56)$ kHz; which is an improvement by almost four orders of magnitude over the previously measured value. In addition, we demonstrate spectroscopy on magnetically trapped atoms in the ${\rm 4s4p} ^3P_2$ state.Comment: 4 pages 5 figure

Efficient 1 GHz Ti:sapphire laser with improved broadband continuum in the infrared

We demonstrate a 1 GHz prismless femtosecond Ti:sapphire ring laser which emits 890 mW for 7.6W of pump power over a continuum extending from 585 to 1200 nm at -20 dB below the maximum. A broadband continuum is obtained without careful mirror dispersion compensation, with the net cavity group-delay-dispersion having -50 to +100 fs2 oscillations from 700 to 900 nm. Further broadening is obtained by use of a slightly convex cavity mirror that increases self-phase modulation. 17% (75%) of the intracavity (output) power is generated in single-pass through the crystal, outside the cavity bandwidth and concentrated in the low gain infrared region from 960 to 1200 nm. This laser seems well suited for optical frequency metrology, possibly allowing easier stabilization of the carrier-to-envelope offset frequency without use of photonic fibers