title: Alpha Centauri

text: Calculated proper motion of the centre of mass for Alpha Centauri AB is about 3620 mas/y (milliarcseconds per year) toward the west and 694 mas/y toward the north, giving an overall motion of 3686 mas/y in a direction 11° north of west. The motion of the centre of mass is about 6.1 arcmin each century, or 1.02° each millennium. The speed in the western direction is and in the northerly direction . Using spectroscopy the mean radial velocity has been determined to be around towards the Solar System. This gives a speed with respect to the Sun of , very close to the peak in the distribution of speeds of nearby stars.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Since Alpha Centauri AB is almost exactly in the plane of the Milky Way as viewed from Earth, many stars appear behind it. In early May 2028, Alpha Centauri A will pass between the Earth and a distant red star, when there is a 45% probability that an Einstein ring will be observed. Other conjunctions will also occur in the coming decades, allowing accurate measurement of proper motions and possibly giving information on planets.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Based on the system's common proper motion and radial velocities, Alpha Centauri will continue to change its position in the sky significantly and will gradually brighten. For example, in about 6,200 AD, α Centauri's true motion will cause an extremely rare first-magnitude stellar conjunction with Beta Centauri, forming a brilliant optical double star in the southern sky. It will then pass just north of the Southern Cross or Crux, before moving northwest and up towards the present celestial equator and away from the galactic plane. By about 26,700 AD, in the present-day constellation of Hydra, Alpha Centauri will reach perihelion at away, though later calculations suggest that this will occur in 27,000 AD. At nearest approach, Alpha Centauri will attain a maximum apparent magnitude of −0.86, comparable to present-day magnitude of Canopus, but it will still not surpass that of Sirius, which will brighten incrementally over the next 60,000 years, and will continue to be the brightest star as seen from Earth (other than the Sun) for the next 210,000 years.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Alpha Centauri is a triple star system, with its two main stars, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, together comprising a binary component. The "AB" designation, or older "A×B", denotes the mass centre of a main binary system relative to companion star(s) in a multiple star system. "AB-C" refers to the component of Proxima Centauri in relation to the central binary, being the distance between the centre of mass and the outlying companion. Because the distance between Proxima (C) and either of Alpha Centauri A or B is similar, the AB binary system is sometimes treated as a single gravitational object.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: The A and B components of Alpha Centauri have an orbital period of 79.762 years. Their orbit is moderately eccentric, as it has an eccentricity of almost 0.52; their closest approach or periastron is , or about the distance between the Sun and Saturn; and their furthest separation or apastron is , about the distance between the Sun and Pluto. The most recent periastron was in August 1955 and the next will occur in May 2035; the most recent apastron was in May 1995 and will next occur in 2075.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Viewed from Earth, the "apparent orbit" of A and B means that their separation and position angle (PA) are in continuous change throughout their projected orbit. Observed stellar positions in 2019 are separated by 4.92 arcsec through the PA of 337.1°, increasing to 5.49 arcsec through 345.3° in 2020. The closest recent approach was in February 2016, at 4.0 arcsec through the PA of 300°. The observed maximum separation of these stars is about 22 arcsec, while the minimum distance is 1.7 arcsec. The widest separation occurred during February 1976, and the next will be in January 2056.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Alpha Centauri C is about from Alpha Centauri AB, equivalent to about 5% of the distance between Alpha Centauri AB and the Sun. Until 2017, measurements of its small speed and its trajectory were of too little accuracy and duration in years to determine whether it is bound to Alpha Centauri AB or unrelated.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Radial velocity measurements made in 2017 were precise enough to show that Proxima Centauri and Alpha Centauri AB are gravitationally bound. The orbital period of Proxima Centauri is approximately years, with an eccentricity of 0.5, much more eccentric than Mercury's. Proxima Centauri comes within of AB at periastron, and its apastron occurs at .


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Asteroseismic studies, chromospheric activity, and stellar rotation (gyrochronology) are all consistent with the Alpha Centauri system being similar in age to, or slightly older than, the Sun. Asteroseismic analyses that incorporate tight observational constraints on the stellar parameters for the Alpha Centauri stars have yielded age estimates of Gyr, Gyr, 5.2 ± 1.9 Gyr, 6.4 Gyr, and Gyr. Age estimates for the stars based on chromospheric activity (Calcium H & K emission) yield 4.4 ± 2.1 Gyr, whereas gyrochronology yields Gyr. Stellar evolution theory implies both stars are slightly older than the Sun at 5 to 6 billion years, as derived by their mass and spectral characteristics.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: From the orbital elements, the total mass of Alpha Centauri AB is about – or twice that of the Sun. The average individual stellar masses are about and , respectively, though slightly different masses have also been quoted in recent years, such as and , totalling . Alpha Centauri A and B have absolute magnitudes of +4.38 and +5.71, respectively.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Alpha Centauri A, also known as Rigil Kentaurus, is the principal member, or primary, of the binary system. It is a solar-like main-sequence star with a similar yellowish colour, whose stellar classification is spectral type G2-V; it is about 10% more massive than the Sun, with a radius about 22% larger. When considered among the individual brightest stars in the night sky, it is the fourth-brightest at an apparent magnitude of +0.01, being slightly fainter than Arcturus at an apparent magnitude of −0.05.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: The type of magnetic activity on Alpha Centauri A is comparable to that of the Sun, showing coronal variability due to star spots, as modulated by the rotation of the star. However, since 2005 the activity level has fallen into a deep minimum that might be similar to the Sun's historical Maunder Minimum. Alternatively, it may have a very long stellar activity cycle and is slowly recovering from a minimum phase.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Alpha Centauri B, also known as Toliman, is the secondary star of the binary system. It is a main-sequence star of spectral type K1-V, making it more an orange colour than Alpha Centauri A; it has around 90% of the mass of the Sun and a 14% smaller diameter. Although it has a lower luminosity than A, Alpha Centauri B emits more energy in the X-ray band. Its light curve varies on a short time scale, and there has been at least one observed flare. It is more magnetically active than Alpha Centauri A, showing a cycle of compared to 11 years for the Sun, and has about half the minimum-to-peak variation in coronal luminosity of the Sun. Alpha Centauri B has an apparent magnitude of +1.35, slightly dimmer than Mimosa.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Alpha Centauri C, better known as Proxima Centauri, is a small main-sequence red dwarf of spectral class M6-Ve. It has an absolute magnitude of +15.60, over 20,000 times fainter than the Sun. Its mass is calculated to be . It is the closest star to the Sun but is too faint to be visible to the naked eye.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: The Alpha Centauri system as a whole has three confirmed planets, all of them around Proxima Centauri. While other planets have been claimed to exist around all of the stars, none of the discoveries have been confirmed.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Proxima Centauri b is a terrestrial planet discovered in 2016 by astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO). It has an estimated minimum mass of 1.17 (Earth masses) and orbits approximately 0.049 AU from Proxima Centauri, placing it in the star's habitable zone.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Proxima Centauri c is a planet that was formally published in 2020 and could be a super-Earth or mini-Neptune. It has a mass of roughly 7 and orbits about 1.49 AU from Proxima Centauri with a period of . In June 2020, a possible direct imaging detection of the planet hinted at the potential presence of a large ring system. However, a 2022 study disputed the existence of this planet.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: A 2020 paper refining Proxima b's mass excludes the presence of extra companions with masses above at periods shorter than 50 days, but the authors detected a radial-velocity curve with a periodicity of 5.15 days, suggesting the presence of a planet with a mass of about . This planet, Proxima Centauri d, was confirmed in 2022.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: In 2021, a candidate planet named Candidate 1 (abbreviated as C1) was detected around Alpha Centauri A, thought to orbit at approximately 1.1 AU with a period of about one year, and to have a mass between that of Neptune and one-half that of Saturn, though it may be a dust disk or an artifact. The possibility of C1 being a background star has been ruled out. If this candidate is confirmed, the temporary name C1 will most likely be replaced with the scientific designation Alpha Centauri Ab in accordance with current naming conventions.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: GO Cycle 1 observations are planned for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to search for planets around Alpha Centauri A. The observations are planned to occur at a date between July and August 2023. Pre-launch estimates predicted that JWST will be able to find planets with a radius of 5 at 1–3 au. Multiple observations every 3–6 months could push the limit down to 3 . Post-processing techniques could push the limit down to 0.5 to 0.7 . Post-launch estimates based on observations of HIP 65426 b find that JWST will be able to find planets even closer to Alpha Centauri A and could find a 5 planet at 0.5 to 2.5 au. Candidate 1 has an estimated radius between 3.3 and 11 and orbits at 1.1 au. It is therefore likely within the reach of JWST observations.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: In 2012, a planet around Alpha Centauri B was reported, Alpha Centauri Bb, but in 2015 a new analysis concluded that that report was an artifact of the datum analysis.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: A possible transit of a separate planet in 2013 has been observed. The transit event could correspond to a planetary body with a radius around . This planet would most likely orbit Alpha Centauri B with an orbital period of 20.4 days or less, with only a 5% chance of it having a longer orbit. The median of the likely orbits is 12.4 days. Its orbit would likely have an eccentricity of 0.24 or less. It likely has lakes of molten lava and would be far too close to Alpha Centauri B to harbour life.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Additional planets may exist in the Alpha Centauri system, either orbiting Alpha Centauri A or Alpha Centauri B individually, or in large orbits around Alpha Centauri AB. Because both stars are fairly similar to the Sun (for example, in age and metallicity), astronomers have been especially interested in making detailed searches for planets in the Alpha Centauri system. Several established planet-hunting teams have used various radial velocity or star transit methods in their searches around these two bright stars. All the observational studies have so far failed to find evidence for brown dwarfs or gas giants.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: In 2009, computer simulations showed that a planet might have been able to form near the inner edge of Alpha Centauri B's habitable zone, which extends from 0.5 to 0.9 AU from the star. Certain special assumptions, such as considering that the Alpha Centauri pair may have initially formed with a wider separation and later moved closer to each other (as might be possible if they formed in a dense star cluster), would permit an accretion-friendly environment farther from the star. Bodies around Alpha Centauri A would be able to orbit at slightly farther distances due to its stronger gravity. In addition, the lack of any brown dwarfs or gas giants in close orbits around Alpha Centauri make the likelihood of terrestrial planets greater than otherwise. A theoretical study indicates that a radial velocity analysis might detect a hypothetical planet of in Alpha Centauri B's habitable zone.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Radial velocity measurements of Alpha Centauri B made with the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher spectrograph were sufficiently sensitive to detect a planet within the habitable zone of the star (i.e. with an orbital period P = 200 days), but no planets were detected.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Current estimates place the probability of finding an Earth-like planet around Alpha Centauri at roughly 75%. The observational thresholds for planet detection in the habitable zones by the radial velocity method are currently (2017) estimated to be about for Alpha Centauri A, for Alpha Centauri B, and for Proxima Centauri.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Early computer-generated models of planetary formation predicted the existence of terrestrial planets around both Alpha Centauri A and B, but most recent numerical investigations have shown that the gravitational pull of the companion star renders the accretion of planets difficult. Despite these difficulties, given the similarities to the Sun in spectral types, star type, age and probable stability of the orbits, it has been suggested that this stellar system could hold one of the best possibilities for harbouring extraterrestrial life on a potential planet.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: In the Solar System, it was once thought that Jupiter and Saturn were probably crucial in perturbing comets into the inner Solar System, providing the inner planets with a source of water and various other ices. However, since isotope measurements of the deuterium to hydrogen (D/H) ratio in comets Halley, Hyakutake, Hale–Bopp, 2002T7, and Tuttle yield values approximately twice that of Earth's oceanic water, more recent models and research predict that less than 10% of Earth's water was supplied from comets. In the Alpha Centauri system, Proxima Centauri may have influenced the planetary disk as the Alpha Centauri system was forming, enriching the area around Alpha Centauri with volatile materials. This would be discounted if, for example, Alpha Centauri B happened to have gas giants orbiting Alpha Centauri A (or vice versa), or if Alpha Centauri A and B themselves were able to perturb comets into each other's inner systems as Jupiter and Saturn presumably have done in the Solar System. Such icy bodies probably also reside in Oort clouds of other planetary systems. When they are influenced gravitationally by either the gas giants or disruptions by passing nearby stars, many of these icy bodies then travel star-wards. Such ideas also apply to the close approach of Alpha Centauri or other stars to the Solar System, when, in the distant future, the Oort Cloud might be disrupted enough to increase the number of active comets.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: To be in the habitable zone, a planet around Alpha Centauri A would have an orbital radius of between about 1.2 and so as to have similar planetary temperatures and conditions for liquid water to exist. For the slightly less luminous and cooler Alpha Centauri B, the habitable zone is between about 0.7 and .


title: Alpha Centauri

text: With the goal of finding evidence of such planets, both Proxima Centauri and Alpha Centauri-AB were among the listed "Tier-1" target stars for NASA's Space Interferometry Mission (S.I.M.). Detecting planets as small as three Earth-masses or smaller within two AU of a "Tier-1" target would have been possible with this new instrument. The S.I.M. mission, however, was cancelled due to financial issues in 2010.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Based on observations between 2007 and 2012, a study found a slight excess of emissions in the 24-µm (mid/far-infrared) band surrounding , which may be interpreted as evidence for a sparse circumstellar disc or dense interplanetary dust. The total mass was estimated to be between to the mass of the Moon, or 10–100 times the mass of the Solar System's zodiacal cloud. If such a disc existed around both stars, disc would likely be stable to 2.8 AU, and would likely be stable to 2.5 AU This would put A's disc entirely within the frost line, and a small part of B's outer disc just outside.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: The sky from Alpha Centauri AB would appear much as it does from the Earth, except that Centaurus would be missing its brightest star. The Sun would appear as a yellow star of apparent magnitude +0.48, roughly the same as the average brightness of Betelgeuse from Earth. It would be at the antipodal point of Alpha Centauri AB's current right ascension and declination, at (2000), in eastern Cassiopeia, easily outshining all the rest of the stars in the constellation. With the placement of the Sun east of the magnitude 3.4 star Epsilon Cassiopeiae, nearly in front of the Heart Nebula, the "W" line of stars of Cassiopeia would have a "/W" shape.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: A planet around either α Centauri A or B would see the other star as a very bright secondary. For example, an Earth-like planet at 1.25 AU from α Cen A (with a revolution period of 1.34 years) would get Sun-like illumination from its primary, and α Cen B would appear 5.7 to 8.6 magnitudes dimmer (−21.0 to −18.2), 190 to 2,700 times dimmer than α Cen A but still 150 to 2,100 times brighter than the full Moon. Conversely, an Earth-like planet at 0.71 AU from α Cen B (with a revolution period of 0.63 years) would get nearly Sun-like illumination from its primary, and α Cen A would appear 4.6 to 7.3 magnitudes dimmer (−22.1 to −19.4), 70 to 840 times dimmer than α Cen B but still 470 to 5,700 times brighter than the full Moon.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: In modern literature, colloquial alternative names of Alpha Centauri include "Rigil Kent" (also "Rigel Kent" and variants; ) and "Toliman" (the latter of which became the proper name of Alpha Centauri B on 10 August 2018 by approval of the International Astronomical Union).


title: Alpha Centauri

text: "Rigil Kent" is short for "Rigil Kentaurus", which is sometimes further abbreviated to "Rigil" or "Rigel", though that is ambiguous with Beta Orionis, which is also called Rigel.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: The name "Toliman" originates with Jacobus Golius' 1669 edition of Al-Farghani's "Compendium". "Tolimân" is Golius' latinisation of the Arabic name "the ostriches", the name of an asterism of which Alpha Centauri formed the main star.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: During the 19th century, the northern amateur popularist Elijah H. Burritt used the now-obscure name "Bungula", possibly coined from "β" and the Latin "ungula" ("hoof").


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Together, Alpha and Beta Centauri form the "Southern Pointers" or "The Pointers", as they point towards the Southern Cross, the asterism of the constellation of Crux.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: In Chinese astronomy, "Nán Mén", meaning "Southern Gate", refers to an asterism consisting of Alpha Centauri and Epsilon Centauri. Consequently, the Chinese name for Alpha Centauri itself is "Nán Mén Èr", the Second Star of the Southern Gate.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: To the Australian aboriginal Boorong people of northwestern Victoria, Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri are "Bermbermgle", two brothers noted for their courage and destructiveness, who speared and killed "Tchingal" "The Emu" (the Coalsack Nebula). The form in Wotjobaluk is "Bram-bram-bult".


title: Alpha Centauri

text: Alpha Centauri is a likely first target for crewed or robotic interstellar exploration. Using current spacecraft technologies, crossing the distance between the Sun and Alpha Centauri would take several millennia, though the possibility of nuclear pulse propulsion or laser light sail technology, as considered in the Breakthrough Starshot program, could make the journey to Alpha Centauri in 20 years. An objective of such a mission would be to make a fly-by of, and possibly photograph, planets that might exist in the system. The existence of Proxima Centauri b, announced by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in August 2016, would be a target for the Starshot program.


title: Alpha Centauri

text: NASA announced in 2017 that it plans to send a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri in 2069, scheduled to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing in 1969, Apollo 11. Even at speed 10% of the speed of light (67 million mph), which NASA experts say may be possible, it would take a spacecraft 44 years to reach the constellation, by the year 2113, and will take another 4 years for a signal, by the year 2117 to reach Earth.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The vice president of the United States (VPOTUS) is the second-highest officer in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government, after the president of the United States, and ranks first in the presidential line of succession. The vice president is also an officer in the legislative branch, as the president of the Senate. In this capacity, the vice president is empowered to preside over Senate deliberations at any time, but may not vote except to cast a tie-breaking vote. The vice president is indirectly elected together with the president to a four-year term of office by the people of the United States through the Electoral College.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The modern vice presidency is a position of significant power and is widely seen as an integral part of a president's administration. While the exact nature of the role varies in each administration, most modern vice presidents serve as a key presidential advisor, governing partner, and representative of the president. The vice president is also a statutory member of the National Security Council and thus plays a significant role in national security matters. As the vice president's role within the executive branch has expanded, the legislative branch role has contracted; for example, vice presidents now preside over the Senate only infrequently.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The role of the vice presidency has changed dramatically since the office was created during the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Originally something of an afterthought, the vice presidency was considered an insignificant office for much of the nation's history, especially after the Twelfth Amendment meant that vice presidents were no longer the runners-up in the presidential election. The vice president's role began steadily growing in importance during the 1930s, with the Office of the Vice President being created in the executive branch in 1939, and has since grown much further. Due to its increase in power and prestige, the vice presidency is now often considered to be a stepping stone to the presidency. Since the 1970s, the vice president has been afforded an official residence at Number One Observatory Circle.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The Constitution does not expressly assign the vice presidency to a branch of the government, causing a dispute among scholars about which branch the office belongs to (the executive, the legislative, both, or neither). The modern view of the vice president as an officer of the executive branch—one isolated almost totally from the legislative branch—is due in large part to the assignment of executive authority to the vice president by either the president or Congress. Nevertheless, many vice presidents have often previously served in Congress, and are often tasked with helping to advance an administration's legislative priorities.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Kamala Harris is the 49th and current vice president of the United States. She is the first African American, first Asian American, and first female occupant of the office. She assumed office on January 20, 2021.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: No mention of an office of vice president was made at the 1787 Constitutional Convention until near the end, when an eleven-member committee on "Leftover Business" proposed a method of electing the chief executive (president). Delegates had previously considered the selection of the Senate's presiding officer, deciding that "the Senate shall choose its own President", and had agreed that this official would be designated the executive's immediate successor. They had also considered the mode of election of the executive but had not reached consensus. This all changed on September 4, when the committee recommended that the nation's chief executive be elected by an Electoral College, with each state having a number of presidential electors equal to the sum of that state's allocation of representatives and senators.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Recognizing that loyalty to one's individual state outweighed loyalty to the new federation, the Constitution's framers assumed individual electors would be inclined to choose a candidate from their own state (a so-called "favorite son" candidate) over one from another state. So they created the office of vice president and required the electors to vote for two candidates, at least one of whom must be from outside the elector's state, believing that the second vote would be cast for a candidate of national character. Additionally, to guard against the possibility that electors might strategically waste their second votes, it was specified that the first runner-up would become vice president.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The resultant method of electing the president and vice president, spelled out in , allocated to each state a number of electors equal to the combined total of its Senate and House of Representatives membership. Each elector was allowed to vote for two people for president (rather than for both president and vice president), but could not differentiate between their first and second choice for the presidency. The person receiving the greatest number of votes (provided it was an absolute majority of the whole number of electors) would be president, while the individual who received the next largest number of votes became vice president. If there were a tie for first or for second place, or if no one won a majority of votes, the president and vice president would be selected by means of contingent elections protocols stated in the clause.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The first two vice presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom gained the office by virtue of being runners-up in presidential contests, presided regularly over Senate proceedings and did much to shape the role of Senate president. Several 19th-century vice presidents—such as George Dallas, Levi Morton, and Garret Hobart—followed their example and led effectively, while others were rarely present.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The emergence of political parties and nationally coordinated election campaigns during the 1790s (which the Constitution's framers had not contemplated) quickly frustrated the election plan in the original Constitution. In the election of 1796, Federalist candidate John Adams won the presidency, but his bitter rival, Democratic-Republican candidate Thomas Jefferson came second and thus won the vice presidency. As a result, the president and vice president were from opposing parties; and Jefferson used the vice presidency to frustrate the president's policies. Then, four years later, in the election of 1800, Jefferson, and fellow Democratic-Republican Aaron Burr each received 73 electoral votes. In the contingent election that followed, Jefferson finally won the presidency on the 36th ballot, leaving Burr the vice presidency. Afterward, the system was overhauled through the Twelfth Amendment in time to be used in the 1804 election.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: For much of its existence, the office of vice president was seen as little more than a minor position. John Adams, the first vice president, was the first of many frustrated by the "complete insignificance" of the office. To his wife Abigail Adams he wrote, "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man... or his imagination contrived or his imagination conceived; and as I can do neither good nor evil, I must be borne away by others and met the common fate." Thomas R. Marshall, who served as vice president from 1913 to 1921 under President Woodrow Wilson, lamented: "Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea; the other was elected Vice President of the United States. And nothing was heard of either of them again." His successor, Calvin Coolidge, was so obscure that Major League Baseball sent him free passes that misspelled his name, and a fire marshal failed to recognize him when Coolidge's Washington residence was evacuated. John Nance Garner, who served as vice president from 1933 to 1941 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, claimed that the vice presidency "isn't worth a pitcher of warm piss". Harry Truman, who also served as vice president under Franklin Roosevelt, said the office was as "useful as a cow's fifth teat". Walter Bagehot remarked in "The English Constitution" that "[t]he framers of the Constitution expected that the "vice"-president would be elected by the Electoral College as the second wisest man in the country. The vice-presidentship being a sinecure, a second-rate man agreeable to the wire-pullers is always smuggled in. The chance of succession to the presidentship is too distant to be thought of."


title: Vice President of the United States

text: When the Whig Party asked Daniel Webster to run for the vice presidency on Zachary Taylor's ticket, he replied "I do not propose to be buried until I am really dead and in my coffin." This was the second time Webster declined the office, which William Henry Harrison had first offered to him. Ironically, both the presidents making the offer to Webster died in office, meaning the three-time candidate would have become president had he accepted either. Since presidents rarely die in office, however, the better preparation for the presidency was considered to be the office of Secretary of State, in which Webster served under Harrison, Tyler, and later, Taylor's successor, Fillmore.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: In the first hundred years of the United States' existence no fewer than seven proposals to abolish the office of vice president were advanced. The first such constitutional amendment was presented by Samuel W. Dana in 1800; it was defeated by a vote of 27 to 85 in the United States House of Representatives. The second, introduced by United States Senator James Hillhouse in 1808, was also defeated. During the late 1860s and 1870s, five additional amendments were proposed. One advocate, James Mitchell Ashley, opined that the office of vice president was "superfluous" and dangerous.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Garret Hobart, the first vice president under William McKinley, was one of the very few vice presidents at this time who played an important role in the administration. A close confidant and adviser of the president, Hobart was called "Assistant President". However, until 1919, vice presidents were not included in meetings of the President's Cabinet. This precedent was broken by Woodrow Wilson when he asked Thomas R. Marshall to preside over Cabinet meetings while Wilson was in France negotiating the Treaty of Versailles. President Warren G. Harding also invited Calvin Coolidge, to meetings. The next vice president, Charles G. Dawes, did not seek to attend Cabinet meetings under President Coolidge, declaring that "the precedent might prove injurious to the country." Vice President Charles Curtis regularly attended Cabinet meetings on the invitation of President Herbert Hoover.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt raised the stature of the office by renewing the practice of inviting the vice president to cabinet meetings, which every president since has maintained. Roosevelt's first vice president, John Nance Garner, broke with him over the "court-packing" issue early in his second term, and became Roosevelt's leading critic. At the start of that term, on January 20, 1937, Garner had been the first vice president to be sworn into office on the Capitol steps in the same ceremony with the president, a tradition that continues. Prior to that time, vice presidents were traditionally inaugurated at a separate ceremony in the Senate chamber. Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller, who were each appointed to the office under the terms of the 25th Amendment, were inaugurated in the House and Senate chambers respectively.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: At the 1940 Democratic National Convention, Roosevelt selected his own running mate, Henry Wallace, instead of leaving the nomination to the convention, when he wanted Garner replaced. He then gave Wallace major responsibilities during World War II. However, after numerous policy disputes between Wallace and other Roosevelt Administration and Democratic Party officials, he was denied re-nomination at the 1944 Democratic National Convention. Harry Truman was selected instead. During his -day vice presidency, Truman was never informed about any war or post-war plans, including the Manhattan Project. Truman had no visible role in the Roosevelt administration outside of his congressional responsibilities and met with the president only a few times during his tenure as vice president. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, and Truman succeeded to the presidency (the state of Roosevelt's health had also been kept from Truman). At the time he said, "I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets fell on me." Determined that no future vice president should be so uninformed upon unexpectedly becoming president, Truman made the vice president a member of the National Security Council, a participant in Cabinet meetings and a recipient of regular security briefings in 1949.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The stature of the vice presidency grew again while Richard Nixon was in office (1953–1961). He attracted the attention of the media and the Republican Party, when Dwight Eisenhower authorized him to preside at Cabinet meetings in his absence and to assume temporary control of the executive branch, which he did after Eisenhower suffered a heart attack on September 24, 1955, ileitis in June 1956, and a stroke in November 1957. Nixon was also visible on the world stage during his time in office.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Until 1961, vice presidents had their offices on Capitol Hill, a formal office in the Capitol itself and a working office in the Russell Senate Office Building. Lyndon B. Johnson was the first vice president to be given an office in the White House complex, in the Old Executive Office Building. The former Navy Secretary's office in the OEOB has since been designated the "Ceremonial Office of the Vice President" and is today used for formal events and press interviews. President Jimmy Carter was the first president to give his vice president, Walter Mondale, an office in the West Wing of the White House, which all vice presidents have since retained. Because of their function as President of the Senate, vice presidents still maintain offices and staff members on Capitol Hill.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Another factor behind the rise in prestige of the vice presidency was the expanded use of presidential preference primaries for choosing party nominees during the 20th century. By adopting primary voting, the field of candidates for vice president was expanded by both the increased quantity and quality of presidential candidates successful in some primaries, yet who ultimately failed to capture the presidential nomination at the convention.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: At the start of the 21st century, Dick Cheney (2001–2009) held a tremendous amount of power and frequently made policy decisions on his own, without the knowledge of the president. During the 2008 presidential campaign, both vice presidential candidates, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, said the office had expanded too much under Cheney's tenure; both said they would reduce the role to simply being an adviser to the president. This rapid growth led to calls for abolition of the vice presidency from various constitutional scholars and political commentators such as Matthew Yglesias and Bruce Ackerman.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Although delegates to the constitutional convention approved establishing the office, with both its executive and senatorial functions, not many understood the office, and so they gave the vice president few duties and little power. Only a few states had an analogous position. Among those that did, New York's constitution provided that "the lieutenant-governor shall, by virtue of his office, be president of the Senate, and, upon an equal division, have a casting voice in their decisions, but not vote on any other occasion." As a result, the vice presidency originally had authority in only a few areas, although constitutional amendments have added or clarified some matters.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: confers upon the vice president the title "President of the Senate", authorizing the vice president to preside over Senate meetings. In this capacity, the vice president is responsible for maintaining order and decorum, recognizing members to speak, and interpreting the Senate's rules, practices, and precedent. With this position also comes the authority to cast a tie-breaking vote. In practice, the number of times vice presidents have exercised this right has varied greatly. John C. Calhoun holds the record at 31 votes, followed closely by John Adams with 29 and the incumbent Kamala Harris with 26 as of August 2022. Nine vice presidents, most recently Joe Biden, did not cast a single tie-breaking vote.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: As the framers of the Constitution anticipated that the vice president would not always be available to fulfill this responsibility, the Constitution provides that the Senate may elect a president pro tempore (or "president for a time") in order to maintain the proper ordering of the legislative process. In practice, since the early 20th century, neither the president of the Senate nor the pro tempore regularly presides; instead, the president pro tempore usually delegates the task to other Senate members. Rule XIX, which governs debate, does not authorize the vice president to participate in debate, and grants only to members of the Senate (and, upon appropriate notice, former presidents of the United States) the privilege of addressing the Senate, without granting a similar privilege to the sitting vice president. Thus, "Time" magazine wrote in 1925, during the tenure of Vice President Charles G. Dawes, "once in four years the Vice President can make a little speech, and then he is done. For four years he then has to sit in the seat of the silent, attending to speeches ponderous or otherwise, of deliberation or humor."


title: Vice President of the United States

text: In their capacity as president of the Senate, the vice president may preside over most impeachment trials of federal officers, although the Constitution does not specifically require it. However, whenever the president of the United States is on trial, the Constitution requires that the chief justice of the United States must preside. This stipulation was designed to avoid the possible conflict of interest in having the vice president preside over the trial for the removal of the one official standing between them and the presidency. In contrast, it is not stipulated which federal official presides when the vice president is tried; thus leaving it unclear whether an impeached vice president could, as President of the Senate, preside at his or her own impeachment trial. The Constitution is silent on the issue.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The Twelfth Amendment provides that the vice president, in their capacity as the president of the Senate, receives the Electoral College votes, and then, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, opens the sealed votes. The votes are counted during a joint session of Congress as prescribed by the Electoral Count Act, which also specifies that the president of the Senate presides over the joint session. The next such joint session will next take place following the 2024 presidential election, on January 6, 2025 (unless Congress sets a different date by law).


title: Vice President of the United States

text: In this capacity, four vice presidents have been able to announce their own election to the presidency: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, and George H. W. Bush. Conversely, John C. Breckinridge, in 1861, Richard Nixon, in 1961, and Al Gore, in 2001, all had to announce their opponent's election. In 1969, Vice President Hubert Humphrey would have done so as well, following his 1968 loss to Richard Nixon; however, on the date of the congressional joint session, Humphrey was in Norway attending the funeral of Trygve Lie, the first elected Secretary-General of the United Nations. The president pro tempore, Richard Russell, presided in his absence. On February 8, 1933, Vice President Charles Curtis announced the election of his successor, House Speaker John Nance Garner, while Garner was seated next to him on the House . Most recently, on January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence announced the election of his successor, Kamala Harris.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: stipulates that the vice president takes over the "powers and duties" of the presidency in the event of a president's removal, death, resignation, or inability. Even so, it does not clearly state whether the vice president became the president of the United States or simply acted as president in a case of succession. Debate records from the 1787 Constitutional Convention, along with various participants' later writings on the subject, show that the framers of the Constitution intended that the vice president would temporarily exercise the powers and duties of the office in the event of a president's death, disability or removal, but not actually become the president of the United States in their own right.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: This understanding was first tested in 1841, following the death of President William Henry Harrison, only days into his term. Harrison's vice president, John Tyler, asserted that he had succeeded to the office of president, not just to its powers and duties. He took the presidential oath of office, and declined to acknowledge documents referring to him as "Acting President". Although some in Congress denounced Tyler's claim as a violation of the Constitution, he adhered to his position. His view ultimately prevailed as both the Senate and House voted to acknowledge him as president. The "Tyler Precedent" that a vice president assumes the full title and role of president upon the death of their predecessor was made part of the Constitution through the Twenty-fifth Amendment in 1967. Altogether, nine vice presidents have succeeded to the presidency intra-term. In addition to Tyler, they are Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Gerald Ford.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Four sitting vice presidents have been elected president, most recently George H. W. Bush in 1988. Likewise, two former vice presidents have won the presidency, Richard Nixon in 1968 and Joe Biden in 2020. Also, in recent decades three incumbent vice presidents lost in close elections: Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and Al Gore in 2000. Additionally, former vice president Walter Mondale lost in 1984. In total, 15 vice presidents have become president.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Sections 3 and 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment provide for situations where the president is temporarily unable to lead, such as if the president has a surgical procedure, becomes seriously ill or injured, or is otherwise unable to discharge the powers or duties of the presidency. Section3 deals with self-declared incapacity, and Section4 addresses incapacity declared by the joint action of the vice president and of a majority of the Cabinet. While Section4 has never been invoked, Section3 has been invoked on four occasions by three presidents, first in 1985. When invoked on November 19, 2021, Kamala Harris became the first woman in U.S. history to have presidential powers and duties.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Sections 3 and 4 were added because there was ambiguity in the ArticleII succession clause regarding a disabled president, including what constituted an "inability", who determined the existence of an inability, and if a vice president became president for the rest of the presidential term in the case of an inability or became merely "acting president". During the 19th and first half of the 20th century several presidents experienced periods of severe illness, physical disability or injury, some lasting for weeks or months. During these times, even though the nation needed effective presidential leadership, no vice president wanted to seem like a usurper, and so power was never transferred. After President Dwight D. Eisenhower openly addressed his health issues and made it a point to enter into an agreement with Vice President Richard Nixon that provided for Nixon to act on his behalf if Eisenhower became unable to provide effective presidential leadership (Nixon did informally assume some of the president's duties for several weeks on each of three occasions when Eisenhower was ill), discussions began in Congress about clearing up the Constitution's ambiguity on the subject.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The present-day power of the office flows primarily from formal and informal delegations of authority from the president and Congress. These delegations can vary in significance; for example, the vice president is a statutory member of both the National Security Council and the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. The extent of the roles and functions of the vice president depend on the specific relationship between the president and the vice president, but often include tasks such as drafter and spokesperson for the administration's policies, adviser to the president, and being a symbol of American concern or support. The influence of the vice president in these roles depends almost entirely on the characteristics of the particular administration.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Most recent vice presidents have been viewed as important presidential advisors. Walter Mondale wrote President Jimmy Carter a memo following the 1976 election stating his belief that his most important role would be as a "general adviser" to the president. Al Gore was an important adviser to President Bill Clinton on matters of foreign policy and the environment. Dick Cheney was widely regarded as one of President George W. Bush's closest confidants. Joe Biden asked President Barack Obama to let him always be the "last person in the room" when a big decision was made and to have a weekly lunch with the president; later, as president himself, Biden adopted this model with his own vice president, Kamala Harris.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Recent vice presidents have been delegated authority by presidents to handle significant issue areas independently. Joe Biden, who both held the office himself and selected a candidate for it as his running mate, has observed that the presidency is "too big anymore for any one man or woman". Dick Cheney was considered to hold a tremendous amount of power and frequently made policy decisions on his own, without the knowledge of the president. Biden was assigned by Barack Obama to oversee Iraq policy; Obama was said to have said, "Joe, you do Iraq." In February 2020, Donald Trump appointed Mike Pence to lead his response to COVID-19 and, upon his ascension to the presidency, Biden put Kamala Harris in charge of controlling migration at the US–Mexico border.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The vice president is often an important liaison between the administration and Congress, especially in situations where the president has not previously served in Congress or served only briefly. Vice presidents are often selected as running mates in part due to their legislative relationships, notably including Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Walter Mondale, Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, and Mike Pence among others. In recent years, Dick Cheney held weekly meetings in the Vice President's Room at the United States Capitol, Joe Biden played a key role in bipartisan budget negotiations, and Mike Pence often met with House and Senate Republicans. Kamala Harris, the current vice president, presides over a 50–50 split Senate, potentially providing her with a key role in passing bills.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Under the American system of government the president is both head of state and head of government, and the ceremonial duties of the former position are often delegated to the vice president. The vice president will on occasion represent the president and the U.S. government at state funerals abroad, or at various events in the United States. This often is the most visible role of the vice president. The vice president may also meet with other heads of state at times when the administration wishes to demonstrate concern or support but cannot send the president personally.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Since 1949, the vice president has legally been a member of the National Security Council. Harry Truman, having not been told about any war or post-war plans during his vice presidency (notably the Manhattan Project), recognized that upon assuming the presidency a vice president needed to be already informed on such issues. Modern vice presidents have also been included in the president's daily intelligence briefings and frequently participate in meetings in the Situation Room with the president.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: To be constitutionally eligible to serve as the nation's vice president, a person must, according to the Twelfth Amendment, meet the eligibility requirements to become president (which are stated in ). Thus, to serve as vice president, an individual must:


title: Vice President of the United States

text: A person who meets the above qualifications is still disqualified from holding the office of vice president under the following conditions:


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The vice presidential candidates of the major national political parties are formally selected by each party's quadrennial nominating convention, following the selection of the party's presidential candidate. The official process is identical to the one by which the presidential candidates are chosen, with delegates placing the names of candidates into nomination, followed by a ballot in which candidates must receive a majority to secure the party's nomination.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: In modern practice, the presidential nominee has considerable influence on the decision, and since the mid 20th century it became customary for that person to select a preferred running mate, who is then nominated and accepted by the convention. Prior to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940, only two presidents—Andrew Jackson in 1832 and Abraham Lincoln in 1864—had done so. In recent years, with the presidential nomination usually being a foregone conclusion as the result of the primary process, the selection of a vice presidential candidate is often announced prior to the actual balloting for the presidential candidate, and sometimes before the beginning of the convention itself. The most recent presidential nominee not to name a vice presidential choice, leaving the matter up to the convention, was Democrat Adlai Stevenson in 1956. The convention chose Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver over Massachusetts Senator (and later president) John F. Kennedy. At the tumultuous 1972 Democratic convention, presidential nominee George McGovern selected Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton as his running mate, but numerous other candidates were either nominated from the floor or received votes during the balloting. Eagleton nevertheless received a majority of the votes and the nomination, though he later resigned from the ticket, resulting in Sargent Shriver of Maryland becoming McGovern's final running mate; both lost to the Nixon–Agnew ticket by a wide margin, carrying only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: During times in a presidential election cycle before the identity of the presidential nominee is clear, including cases where the presidential nomination is still in doubt as the convention approaches, campaigns for the two positions may become intertwined. In 1976, Ronald Reagan, who was trailing President Gerald Ford in the presidential delegate count, announced prior to the Republican National Convention that, if nominated, he would select Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker as his running mate. Reagan was the first presidential aspirant to announce his selection for vice president before the beginning of the convention. Reagan's supporters then unsuccessfully sought to amend the convention rules so that Gerald Ford would be required to name his vice presidential running mate in advance as well. This move backfired to a degree, as Schweiker's relatively liberal voting record alienated many of the more conservative delegates who were considering a challenge to party delegate selection rules to improve Reagan's chances. In the end, Ford narrowly won the presidential nomination and Reagan's selection of Schweiker became moot.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: In the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries which pitted Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama, Clinton suggested a Clinton–Obama ticket with Obama in the vice president slot as it would be "unstoppable" against the presumptive Republican nominee. Obama rejected the offer outright, saying, "I want everybody to be absolutely clear. I'm not running for vice president. I'm running for president of the United States of America" while noting "With all due respect. I won twice as many states as Senator Clinton. I've won more of the popular vote than Senator Clinton. I have more delegates than Senator Clinton. So, I don't know how somebody who's in second place is offering vice presidency to the person who's in first place." Obama said the nomination process would have to be a choice between himself and Clinton, saying "I don't want anybody here thinking that 'Somehow, maybe I can get both, by nominating Clinton and assuming he would be her running mate. Some suggested that it was a ploy by the Clinton campaign to denigrate Obama as less qualified for the presidency. Later, when Obama became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, former president Jimmy Carter cautioned against Clinton being picked as the vice presidential nominee on the ticket, saying "I think it would be the worst mistake that could be made. That would just accumulate the negative aspects of both candidates", citing opinion polls showing 50% of US voters with a negative view of Hillary Clinton.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Though the vice president does not need to have any political experience, most major-party vice presidential nominees are current or former United States senators or representatives, with the occasional nominee being a current or former governor, a high-ranking military officer, or a holder of a major post within the Executive Department. In addition, the vice presidential nominee has always been an official resident of a different state than the presidential nominee. While nothing in the Constitution prohibits a presidential candidate and his or her running mate being from the same state, the "inhabitant clause" of the Twelfth Amendment does mandate that every presidential elector must cast a ballot for at least one candidate who is not from their own state. Prior to the 2000 election, both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney lived in and voted in Texas. To avoid creating a potential problem for Texas's electors, Cheney changed his residency back to Wyoming prior to the campaign.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Often, the presidential nominee will name a vice presidential candidate who will bring geographic or ideological balance to the ticket or appeal to a particular constituency. The vice presidential candidate might also be chosen on the basis of traits the presidential candidate is perceived to lack, or on the basis of name recognition. To foster party unity, popular runners-up in the presidential nomination process are commonly considered. While this selection process may enhance the chances of success for a national ticket, in the past it often resulted in the vice presidential nominee representing regions, constituencies, or ideologies at odds with those of the presidential candidate. As a result, vice presidents were often excluded from the policy-making process of the new administration. Many times their relationships with the president and his staff were aloof, non-existent, or even adversarial.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Historically, the vice presidential nominee was usually a second-tier politician, chosen either to appease the party's minority faction, satisfy party bosses, or to secure a key state. Factors playing a role in the selection included: geographic and ideological balance, widening a presidential candidate's appeal to voters from outside their regional base or wing of the party. Candidates from electoral-vote rich states were usually preferred. However, in 1992, moderate Democrat Bill Clinton (of Arkansas) chose moderate Democrat Al Gore (of Tennessee) as his running mate. Despite the two candidates' near-identical ideological and regional backgrounds, Gore's extensive experience in national affairs enhanced the appeal of a ticket headed by Clinton, whose political career had been spent entirely at the state level of government. In 2000, George W. Bush chose Dick Cheney of Wyoming, a reliably Republican state with only three electoral votes, and in 2008, Barack Obama mirrored Bush's strategy when he chose Joe Biden of Delaware, a reliably Democratic state, likewise one with only three electoral votes. Cheney and Biden were each chosen for their experience in national politics (experience lacked by both Bush and Obama) rather than the ideological balance or electoral vote advantage they would provide.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The ultimate goal of vice presidential candidate selection is to help and not hurt the party's chances of getting elected; nonetheless, several vice presidential selections have been controversial. In 1984, Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale's groundbreaking choice of Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate (the first woman in U.S. history nominated for vice president by a major political party), became a drag on the ticket due to repeated questions about her husband's finances. A selection whose positive traits make the presidential candidate look less favorable in comparison or which can cause the presidential candidate's judgment to be questioned often backfire, such as in 1988 when Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis chose experienced Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen; Bentsen was considered a more seasoned statesman in federal politics and somewhat overshadowed Dukakis. Questions about Dan Quayle's experience were raised in the 1988 presidential campaign of George H. W. Bush, but the Bush–Quayle ticket still won handily. James Stockdale, the choice of third-party candidate Ross Perot in 1992, was seen as unqualified by many and Stockdale had little preparation for the vice presidential debate, but the Perot–Stockdale ticket still won about 19% of the vote. In 2008, Republican John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate over his primary rivals and/or campaign surrogates such as Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty or Tom Ridge. This surprise move would, it was hoped, draw women voters disappointed by Hillary Clinton's defeat in the Democratic presidential primaries into the McCain camp. Palin's selection soon came to be seen as a negative for McCain, due to her several controversies during her gubernatorial tenure which were highlighted by the press, and her feuding with McCain campaign chairman Steve Schmidt. This perception continued to grow throughout the campaign, especially after her interviews with Katie Couric led to concerns about her fitness for the presidency.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The vice president is elected indirectly by the voters of each state and the District of Columbia through the Electoral College, a body of electors formed every four years for the sole purpose of electing the president and vice president to concurrent four-year terms. Each state is entitled to a number of electors equal to the size of its total delegation in both houses of Congress. Additionally, the Twenty-third Amendment provides that the District of Columbia is entitled to the number it would have if it were a state, but in no case more than that of the least populous state. Currently, all states and D.C. select their electors based on a popular election held on Election Day. In all but two states, the party whose presidential-vice presidential ticket receives a plurality of popular votes in the state has its entire slate of elector nominees chosen as the state's electors. Maine and Nebraska deviate from this practice, awarding two electors to the statewide winner and one to the winner in each congressional district.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: On the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, about six weeks after the election, the electors convene in their respective states (and in Washington D.C.) to vote for president and, on a separate ballot, for vice president. The certified results are opened and counted during a joint session of Congress, held in the first week of January. A candidate who receives an absolute majority of electoral votes for vice president (currently 270 of 538) is declared the winner. If no candidate has a majority, the Senate must meet to elect a vice president using a contingent election procedure in which senators, casting votes individually, choose between the two candidates who received the most electoral votes for vice president. For a candidate to win the contingent election, they must receive votes from an absolute majority of senators (currently 51 of 100).


title: Vice President of the United States

text: There has been only one vice presidential contingent election since the process was created by the Twelfth Amendment. It occurred on February 8, 1837, after no candidate received a majority of the electoral votes cast for vice president in the 1836 election. By a 33–17 vote, Richard M. Johnson (Martin Van Buren's running mate) was elected the nation's ninth vice president over Francis Granger (William Henry Harrison's and Daniel Webster's running mate).


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Pursuant to the Twentieth Amendment, the vice president's term of office begins at noon on January 20, as does the president's. The first presidential and vice presidential terms to begin on this date, known as Inauguration Day, were the second terms of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Vice President John Nance Garner in 1937. Previously, Inauguration Day was on March 4. As a result of the date change, both men's first terms (1933–1937) were short of four years by days.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Also in 1937, the vice president's swearing-in ceremony was held on the Inaugural platform on the Capitol's east front immediately before the president's swearing in. Up until then, most vice presidents took the oath of office in the Senate chamber, prior to the president's swearing-in ceremony. Although the Constitution contains the specific wording of the presidential oath, it contains only a general requirement, in ArticleVI, that the vice president and other government officers shall take an oath or affirmation to support the Constitution. The current form, which has been used since 1884 reads:


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The term of office for both the vice president and the president is four years. While the Twenty-Second Amendment sets a limit on the number of times an individual can be elected to the presidency (two), there is no such limitation on the office of vice president, meaning an eligible person could hold the office as long as voters continued to vote for electors who in turn would reelect the person to the office; one could even serve under different presidents. This has happened twice: George Clinton (1805–1812) served under both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison; and John C. Calhoun (1825–1832) served under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Additionally, neither the Constitution's eligibility provisions nor the Twenty-second Amendment's presidential term limit explicitly disqualify a twice-elected president from serving as vice president, though it is arguably prohibited by the last sentence of the Twelfth Amendment: "But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States." As of the 2020 election cycle, however, no former president has tested the amendment's legal restrictions or meaning by running for the vice presidency.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: of the Constitution allows for the removal of federal officials, including the vice president, from office for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors". No vice president has ever been impeached.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Prior to the ratification of the Twenty-fifth Amendment in 1967, no constitutional provision existed for filling an intra-term vacancy in the vice presidency.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: As a result, when one occurred, the office was left vacant until filled through the next ensuing election and inauguration. Between 1812 and 1965, the vice presidency was vacant on sixteen occasions, as a result of seven deaths, one resignation, and eight cases of the vice president succeeding to the presidency. With the vacancy that followed the succession of Lyndon B. Johnson in 1963, the nation had been without a vice president for a cumulative total of 37 years.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Section 2 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment provides that "whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress." This procedure has been implemented twice since the amendment came into force: the first instance occurred in 1973 following the October 10 resignation of Spiro Agnew, when Gerald Ford was nominated by President Richard Nixon and confirmed by Congress. The second occurred ten months later on August 9, 1974, on Ford's accession to the presidency upon Nixon's resignation, when Nelson Rockefeller was nominated by President Ford and confirmed by Congress.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Had it not been for this new constitutional mechanism, the vice presidency would have remained vacant after Agnew's resignation; the speaker of the House, Carl Albert, would have become Acting President when Nixon resigned under the terms of the Presidential Succession Act of 1947.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The vice president's salary is $235,100. The salary was set by the 1989 Government Salary Reform Act, which also provides an automatic cost of living adjustment for federal employees. The vice president does not automatically receive a pension based on that office, but instead receives the same pension as other members of Congress based on their position as president of the Senate. The vice president must serve a minimum of two years to qualify for a pension.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The home of the vice president was designated in 1974, when Congress established Number One Observatory Circle as the official temporary residence of the vice president of the United States. In 1966 Congress, concerned about safety and security and mindful of the increasing responsibilities of the office, allotted money ($75,000) to fund construction of a residence for the vice president, but implementation stalled and after eight years the decision was revised, and One Observatory Circle was then designated for the vice president. Up until the change, vice presidents lived in homes, apartments, or hotels, and were compensated more like cabinet members and members of Congress, receiving only a housing allowance.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The three-story Queen Anne style mansion was built in 1893 on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., to serve as residence for the superintendent of the Observatory. In 1923, the residence was reassigned to be the home of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), which it was until it was turned over to the office of the vice president fifty years later.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: The vice president is supported by personnel in the Office of the Vice President of the United States. The office was created in the Reorganization Act of 1939, which included an "office of the Vice President" under the Executive Office of the President. Salary for the staff is provided by both legislative and executive branch appropriations, in light of the vice president's roles in each branch.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: In the modern era, the vice president makes use of at least four different office spaces. These include an office in the West Wing, a ceremonial office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building near where most of the vice president's staff works, the Vice President's Room on the Senate side of the United States Capitol for meetings with members of Congress, and an office at the vice president's residence.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Since 1977, former presidents and vice presidents who are elected or re-elected to the Senate are entitled to the largely honorific position of Deputy President pro tempore. To date, the only former vice president to have held this title is Hubert Humphrey. Also, under the terms of an 1886 Senate resolution, all former vice presidents are entitled to a portrait bust in the Senate wing of the United States Capitol, commemorating their service as presidents of the Senate. Dick Cheney is the most recent former vice president to be so honored.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: Unlike former presidents, whose pension is fixed at the same rate, regardless of their time in office, former vice presidents receive their retirement income based on their role as president of the Senate. Additionally, since 2008, each former vice president and their immediate family is entitled (under the Former Vice President Protection Act of 2008) to Secret Service protection for up to six months after leaving office, and again temporarily at any time thereafter if warranted.


title: Vice President of the United States

text: There are five living former vice presidents. The most recent death of a former vice president was that of Walter Mondale (1977–1981), on April 19, 2021.


title: Alisha Lehmann

text: Alisha Lehmann (born 21 January 1999) is a Swiss professional footballer who plays as a forward for English FA WSL club Aston Villa and the Switzerland national team. She previously played for BSC YB Frauen of the Nationalliga A, for West Ham United of the FA WSL and on loan with Everton of the FA WSL.


title: Alisha Lehmann

text: Lehmann started her professional club career at Swiss club BSC YB Frauen and went on to score 25 goals in 52 league appearances during her time at the club.


title: Alisha Lehmann

text: Newly-professional FA Women's Super League's West Ham United signed Lehmann from BSC YB Frauen in August 2018. It was reported that West Ham manager Matt Beard had been impressed by Lehmann's performances at the 2018 UEFA Women's Under-19 Championship, which Switzerland hosted. In April 2019 West Ham extended Lehmann's contract after she scored nine goals in 30 appearances in all competitions and helped the club reach the Women's FA Cup final. By scoring the equalising goal in the semi final match against Reading.


title: Alisha Lehmann

text: On 27 January 2021, it was announced that Lehmann had moved to Everton on loan until the end of the season.


title: Alisha Lehmann

text: Lehmann then joined Aston Villa for the 2021–22 season. In July 2022, she signed a one-year contract extension with Aston Villa for the 2022–23 season, having made 23 appearances and scored four goals during her first season at the club.


title: Alisha Lehmann

text: Lehmann won her first cap for the Switzerland national team in October 2017. She scored her first international goal on 2 March 2018 against Finland at the 2018 Cyprus Women's Cup.


title: Alisha Lehmann

text: Lehmann was not available for the Switzerland national team at the 2022 UEFA European Women's Football Championship because she felt that she was not "mentally ready" to be involved in the tournament.


title: Alisha Lehmann

text: Lehmann is openly bisexual. She formerly identified as lesbian. She previously dated Swiss national teammate Ramona Bachmann. She was in a relationship with Aston Villa midfielder Douglas Luiz.


title: Alisha Lehmann

text: In 2019, Lehmann was featured in the BBC Three series "Britain's Youngest Football Boss" with her then girlfriend Ramona.


title: Alisha Lehmann

text: As of November 2022, she has more than 9.6m followers on Instagram and more than 131,000 followers on Twitter making her one of the world's most followed women's footballers on social media.


title: Willis Tower

text: The Willis Tower (originally the Sears Tower) is a 108-story, skyscraper in the Loop community area of Chicago in Illinois, United States. Designed by architect Bruce Graham and engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), it opened in 1973 as the world's tallest building, a title that it held for nearly 25 years. It is currently the third-tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, as well as the 23rd-tallest in the world. Each year, more than 1.7 million people visit the Skydeck observation deck, the highest in the United States, making it one of Chicago's most popular tourist destinations.


title: Willis Tower

text: The building occupies a site bounded by Franklin Street, Jackson Boulevard, Wacker Drive, and Adams Street. Graham and Khan designed the building as nine square "tubes", clustered in a 3×3 matrix; seven of the tubes set back at upper floors. The tower has 108 stories as counted by standard methods, though the building's owners count the main roof as 109 and the mechanical penthouse roof as 110. The facade is made of anodized aluminum and black glass. The base of the building contains a retail complex known as the Catalog. The lower half of the tower was originally occupied by retail company Sears, which had its headquarters there until 1994, while the upper stories were rented out.


title: Willis Tower

text: The structure was known as the Sears Tower from its construction until the naming rights were included in a 2009 lease with the Willis Group. Local area residents still refer to the building by its old name. , the building's largest tenant is United Airlines, which occupies around 20 floors. Other major tenants include the building's namesake Willis Towers Watson and law firms Schiff Hardin and Seyfarth Shaw. Morgan Stanley became the building's fourth-largest tenant in 2017.


title: Willis Tower

text: Sears, Roebuck & Co. had occupied an office complex on Chicago's west side since 1906. The existing offices were inadequate by 1966, prompting Sears executives to begin searching for a new site. By 1969, Sears was the largest retailer in the world, with about 350,000 employees. Sears executives quickly determined that a new headquarters complex in the suburbs was infeasible, since it would require relocating about 7,000 employees. Instead, Sears executives decided to consolidate the thousands of employees in offices distributed throughout the Chicago area into one building on the western edge of Chicago's Loop.


title: Willis Tower

text: Sears asked its outside counsel, Arnstein, Gluck, Weitzenfeld & Minow (now known as Arnstein & Lehr, LLP) to suggest a location. The firm consulted with local and federal authorities and the applicable law, then offered Sears two options. The first option was the Goose Island area northwest of the Loop, but Sears's vice president of real estate, Matthew J. Stacom, rejected this proposal. The other was a two-block area in the Loop, bounded by Franklin Street on the east, Jackson Boulevard on the south, Wacker Drive on the west, and Adams Street on the north. Though the site was more centrally located, it was also relatively small, with about . Bernard Feinberg, Albert I. Rubenstein, and Philip Teinowitz had assembled that site over the previous five years, but they had failed to acquire a neighboring lot from bus company Greyhound Lines.


title: Willis Tower

text: Feinberg, Rubenstein, and Teinowitz then bought options for three adjacent lots. Under the terms of each option, unless the three men were able to acquire at least one of the lots within 90 days, all three options would be forfeited. Ultimately, Sears acquired the Loop site in 1970. Sears then obtained permits to close down one block of Quincy Street, which bisected the site from east to west. Attorneys from the Arnstein firm, headed by Andrew Adsit, began buying the properties parcel by parcel. Sears purchased 15 buildings from 100 owners and paid the government of Chicago $2.7 million for the block of Quincy Street that was to be closed down.


title: Willis Tower

text: Sears executives estimated that their new building would need about , split into 70 stories with each or 60 stories with each. Sears commissioned architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) to design the tower. Sears planned to move its merchandise group into the building initially, renting out the remaining space to other tenants until needed. Sears executives were accustomed to large floor areas of at least , but SOM architects raised concerns that the large floors would be unattractive to smaller tenants. A subsequent proposal called for two buildings connected by a footbridge, which would respectively contain and on each floor, but this was also infeasible.


title: Willis Tower

text: Some floors were designed with smaller footprints to attract prospective lessees, so the building's height was increased to meet Sears's floor-area requirements. Architect Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan proposed a tower with floors in the lower part of the building, as well as a series of setbacks with gradually tapering floor plates, giving the tower its distinctive look. During the design process, one of the architects reportedly pulled out nine cigars and staggered them vertically until the pair both agreed to the arrangement. This allowed Sears to occupy the large lower stories, while providing more conventional office space that could be rented out on the upper stories. The firm of Saphier, Lerner, Schindler was responsible for determining Sears's space requirements and designing furniture for the company. It conducted a year-long study to determine how 16 of the company's departments should be laid out within the building.


title: Willis Tower

text: As Sears continued to offer optimistic growth projections, the height of the proposed tower also increased. Under Chicago's relatively lax zoning laws, the site could theoretically accommodate a 300-story building with . In practice, most potential tenants did not want excessively high offices. Additionally, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) restricted the height of structures in the area to protect air traffic. FAA officials publicly denied that they had imposed a height limit; however, the area's minimum safe altitude would need to be raised by if the building was just taller. Plans for the tower were announced on July 27, 1970. The building would contain 109 stories as measured from Wacker Drive and 110 stories as measured from Franklin Street. This would make Sears's new tower the tallest in the world, as measured by roof height, although New York City's under-construction World Trade Center Twin Towers would have a taller antenna. Although the Sears Tower would contain of space, only about would be used as offices.


title: Willis Tower

text: Work on the building's foundation commenced in August 1970. Contractors excavated the lot to a depth of , and they removed of dirt from the site. By that November, Spencer, White & Prentis Inc. was excavating a trench around the site, measuring deep and across. The contractors then built a slurry wall within the trench, made of concrete and reinforced steel. Workers used steel bracing to prevent the slurry wall from collapsing inward, then used caissons to drill 201 holes into the ground. They also rerouted a sewer that had run underneath Quincy Street, which was to be closed permanent as part of the tower's construction.


title: Willis Tower

text: The Diesel Construction Company was hired as the Sears Tower's general contractor. Sears, Roebuck & Co. chairman Gordon M. Metcalf installed the building's first steel beam at a ceremony on June 7, 1971. The project employed 2,000 workers. To accelerate the building's construction, a concrete plant was built in the building's basement, allowing workers to pour one-third of a concrete floor every day. Contractors built two temporary kitchens on the site for workers, and telephone and loudspeaker systems were installed on every floor to allow workers to communicate. In addition, contractors installed temporary generators that could supply up to simultaneously; during the winter, most of this electricity was used to heat the exposed steel beams on the lowest five floors.


title: Willis Tower

text: By late 1971, Chicagoland residents and broadcasters had raised concerns that the new Sears Tower would disrupt television broadcasts. According to one estimate, the building would obstruct television signals for 15 percent of Chicagoans and cause "double images" for another 20 percent, primarily affecting communities to the northwest and southeast. The same year, officials of the village of Skokie, northwest of Chicago, threatened to request an injunction to prevent further construction. In response to these concerns, Sears started researching methods to reduce the tower's effect on broadcast signals. "Variety" magazine stated that the Sears Tower did not interfere with broadcasts on its own, since several shorter towers in the Loop also interfered with broadcast signals. Nonetheless, the Illinois Citizens' Committee for Broadcasting filed a formal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in February 1972.


title: Willis Tower

text: The first lawsuit against the building was filed by the state attorney in neighboring Lake County on March 17, 1972. A second suit was filed on March 28 in Cook County Circuit Court by the villages of Skokie, Northbrook, and Deerfield, Illinois. Sears filed motions to dismiss the Lake and Cook County lawsuits, which both sought to cap the building at 67 stories. Sears studied the possibility of erecting antennas atop its tower in April 1972, and the tower's construction continued, even as decisions on both lawsuits were delayed. At the end of the month, the company applied for permission to increase the building's height limit by and install a new antenna, although eight of Chicago's ten television stations criticized the plan. On May 17, 1972, Judge LaVerne Dickson, Chief of the Lake County Circuit Court, dismissed the suit, saying, "I find nothing that gives television viewers the right to reception without interference." By then, the building had reached the 58th story. The Lake County attorney appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court. In his decision on June 12, Judge Charles R. Barrett contended the plaintiffs did not have a right to undistorted television reception.


title: Willis Tower

text: Meanwhile, the FCC declined to act on the height dispute on the grounds it did not have jurisdiction. The FAA approved the antennas atop the tower in June 1972, and the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the previous rulings by Lake and Cook County circuit courts at the end of the month. Work was temporarily paused that July due to a labor strike. The next month, Sears formally announced plans for broadcast antennas on the tower's roof, and the company offered to spend $5 million to help relocate broadcast stations to the Sears Tower. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld the FCC's decision in September, and the United States Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the Seventh Circuit's decision that November.


title: Willis Tower

text: In November 1972, the Sears Tower became Chicago's tallest building, surpassing the Standard Oil Building, which had held the record for one month. At the time, the Sears project employed 1,600 workers in three shifts; one worker had been killed during the project so far. The building's final completion had been delayed significantly due to labor strikes and bad weather. The concrete work had reached the 77th floor, while the steel superstructure had reached the 84th floor; the remainder of the steelwork would be difficult to construct because of high winds at higher altitudes. Local television stations WTTW and WLS-TV were planning to install temporary broadcast antennas atop the tower when the steel frame was completed. The tower's superstructure had reached the 100th floor in February 1973, at which point it was taller than the Empire State Building in New York City.


title: Willis Tower

text: The building was topped out on May 3, 1973. The day before the event, the "Chicago Tribune" editorial board wrote: "Move aside, New York. After tomorrow, when schoolchildren dream of big buildings, they'll no longer think of you and the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center." The frame was still not technically complete, as three to four stories remained to be built. One week after the ceremony, four workers died after an elevator shaft caught fire. A fifth worker died after falling from the tower in an unrelated incident four days later. Work was halted again that June due to a labor strike, and Sears began moving furniture into the building that month. The construction cost was about US$150 million, equivalent to $ million in dollars. Despite the size of the project, Sears executives said the building could not accommodate Sears' annual shareholder meetings, and the company continued to rent space in other structures.


title: Willis Tower

text: The first Sears employees began moving into the tower during the weekend of September 9, 1973. Flashing beacons on the building's roof, the first to be installed at any building in Chicago, were activated the same month. Upon the tower's opening, broadcasters at the John Hancock Center, Chicago's second-tallest building, had to decide whether to relocate to the Sears Tower. Two television stations decided to relocate. Six other stations remained at the John Hancock Center, citing a study which showed that relocating to the Sears Tower would provide only minimal benefits. Documents released in late 1973 indicated that the Sears Tower would cause much more interference than either Sears or the television stations had disclosed. WLS-TV moved to the Sears Tower in February 1974, followed by WTTW the next month.


title: Willis Tower

text: By March 1974, three-fourths of the space in the building was occupied; Sears had leased the upper stories to tenants such as Goldman Sachs, Northwest Industries, and Schiff Hardin. A mobile sculpture by Alexander Calder was dedicated in the lobby in October 1974. Sears' optimistic growth projections were not realized; instead, in late 1974, the company fired 500 workers, about seven percent of the 7,000 Sears employees that worked in the tower. Competition beyond its traditional rivals such as Montgomery Ward arose from emerging retail giants including Kmart, Kohl's, and Walmart. As a result of a surplus of office space that emerged in the 1980s, the tower did not draw as many tenants as projected and so stood half-vacant for a decade.


title: Willis Tower

text: In February 1984, Sears announced that it would renovate the building to attract visitors to the lower floors. At the time, 6,500 Sears employees occupied more than half of the building, taking up the lowest 48 stories. The remainder of the tower was occupied by 5,500 employees from about 70 companies. As part of the project, the main entrance was covered with a four-story glass dome, and the first four stories were converted into a shopping atrium. In addition, a visitor center for the building's Skydeck was constructed. The renovations, designed by SOM, were completed in mid-1985. Paul Gapp of the "Chicago Tribune" wrote that SOM had "scaled the new entrance skillfully, in keeping with the main building's height" and that the new atrium "relieves the formerly cramped feeling from just inside the Franklin entrance".


title: Willis Tower

text: Sears announced in 1988 that it would sell the tower and relocate its merchandising division from the lower half of the building. The company wanted to earn at least $1 billion from the sale of the Sears Tower, so it offered multiple concessions to potential buyers, including a guarantee that Sears would continue to pay rent on the lower half of the building until tenants were found for these stories. Four large firms were negotiating to buy the tower by July 1989. The company had difficulties finding a buyer, in part because the lower stories were too large for many potential tenants. Sears nearly sold the tower to Canadian company Olympia & York, but the deal was canceled in September 1989 because the two firms could not agree on who would pay the property taxes. In November 1989, Sears decided to instead refinance the building. The next year, Sears took out a mortgage loan on the tower for $850 million from MetLife and AEW Capital Management, with MetLife as the holder of the mortgage note; the loan would mature in 2005.


title: Willis Tower

text: In 1990, the law firm of Keck, Mahin & Cate decided to move into a development that would become 77 West Wacker Drive, rebuffing Sears' attempts to entice the firm to stay. Just two years later, Sears began moving its own offices out of the building to a new campus in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, which was completed in 1995. As the maturation of the mortgage approached, Sears renegotiated the loan in 1994. The negotiations resulted in an agreement where Sears would no longer be liable for the $850 million loan, although it would only nominally own the building, while AEW and MetLife effectively had total control. As part of the 1994 agreement, AEW and MetLife would be able to take official ownership of the building in 2003. In 1997, Toronto-based TrizecHahn, at the time the lessee of the CN Tower, acquired AEW's holdings in the building for $110 million, assuming $4 million in liabilities and a $734 million mortgage.


title: Willis Tower

text: Trizec had projected that the Sears Tower would quickly reach a value of $1 billion. These projections were not met, with the tower facing the same vacancy and other problems it saw under Sears, although Trizec made somewhat successful efforts to attract new tenants. Following the September 11 attacks, two of the largest tenants, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, immediately announced plans for vacating 300,000 ft of space. In 2003, Trizec sold its holdings of the tower to MetLife for $9 million.


title: Willis Tower

text: In March 2004, MetLife announced that it would sell the building to a group of investors, including Joseph Chetrit, Joseph Moinian, Lloyd Goldman, Joseph Cayre, and Jeffrey Feil of New York, as well as American Landmark Properties of Skokie, Illinois. The quoted price was $840 million, with $825 million held in a mortgage. Two years later, in February 2007, the Sears Tower's owners obtained a $780 million loan from UBS. At the time, UBS valued the tower at $1.2 billion.


title: Willis Tower

text: Since 2007, the owners had considered plans for the construction of a hotel on the north side of Jackson Boulevard, between Wacker Drive and Franklin Street, close to the entrance of the observation deck, above the tower's underground parking garage. According to the tower's owners, the second building was considered in the original design. The plan was eventually cancelled as city zoning did not permit construction of such a tall building in that location. In February 2009, the owners announced they were considering a plan to paint the structure silver, an idea that was later abandoned. It was hoped that a new, silver, paint-job would "rebrand" the building and highlight its advances in energy efficiency for an estimated cost of $50 million.


title: Willis Tower

text: Although Sears' naming rights expired in 2003, the building continued to be called the Sears Tower for several years, despite multiple changes in ownership. In March 2009, London-based insurance broker Willis Group Holdings agreed to lease a portion of the building and obtained the naming rights. On July 16, 2009, the building was officially renamed the Willis Tower. By 2011, the building's owners were considering selling a partial ownership stake, or even the entire building, to an investor. The next year, United Airlines announced it would move its corporate headquarters from 77 West Wacker Drive to Willis Tower.


title: Willis Tower

text: By March 2015, the Willis Tower was being marketed at a price of $1.5 billion. The same month, the Blackstone Group purchased the tower for a reported $1.3 billion, the highest price ever paid for a property in the U.S. outside of New York City. Blackstone announced a $500 million renovation in January 2017, which would include the construction of the Catalog, a six-story commercial complex, replacing a plaza on Jackson Boulevard and the entrance on Wacker Drive. Architectural firm Gensler designed the renovation. A rooftop terrace was built atop the Catalog, and the building's HVAC systems were overhauled. Most of the building's elevators, excluding those that served the Skydeck, were also renovated for the first time in the tower's history. The new elevators would be faster than the original elevators and would use use 35 percent less energy. The building's owners installed artwork by Olafur Eliasson, Jacob Hashimoto, and other artists.


title: Willis Tower

text: To fund these improvements, in February 2017, Blackstone obtained a $1 billion loan from a group of banks including Goldman Sachs. The new loan replaced $750 million of CMBS debt that was maturing. The following year, because of the increasing costs of the renovation, Blackstone received a new $1.3 billion loan from Deutsche Bank and Barclays. The Wacker Drive entrance was demolished in early 2018 to make way for the Catalog. A steel globe next to the entrance, manufactured by the Poblocki Sign Company and installed in 2010, was relocated to Elmhurst, Illinois. A private club on the 66th and 67th stories opened in June 2018. The club included a restaurant named Craftsman and a lounge named Frame, both of which exclusively served the tower's tenants, as well as a public restaurant known as the East Room. That September, Urbanspace announced that it would operate a food hall on the lower stories.


title: Willis Tower

text: In 2020, insurance company Aon had proposed acquiring Willis Towers Watson (which had succeeded the Willis Group as the building's owner), prompting speculation that the building could be renamed again. The planned merger was canceled in 2021 following an antitrust lawsuit from the United States Department of Justice. The building's renovation was completed in May 2022. At the time, although the Willis Tower was nearly 85 percent leased, the number of tenants and visitors entering the building had decreased significantly since 2019, in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Chicago.


title: Willis Tower

text: In June 2006, seven men were arrested by the FBI and charged with plotting to destroy the tower. Deputy FBI Director John Pistole described their plot as "more aspirational than operational". The case went to court in October 2007. After three trials, five of the suspects were convicted and two acquitted. The alleged leader of the group, Narseal Batiste, was sentenced to years in prison. In response to the perceived threat of an attack, the building's largest tenant at this time, Ernst & Young, moved to North Wacker Drive in early 2009.


title: Willis Tower

text: In May 2020, heavy rains caused three of the basement levels to flood, knocking out power to the building. This also resulted in many TV and radio stations going off the air.


title: Willis Tower

text: The Willis Tower was designed by architect Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Graham and Khan designed the building as nine square "tubes", clustered in a 3×3 matrix forming a square base with sides. The building's total area is . The structure was intended to accommodate 16,500 employees.