4:48
Listen to the broadcast version of this story from NHPR s climate change reporting project, By Degrees.
The Mountain West always felt like home for Judith and Doug Saum. Until recently, they lived in the hills above Reno, Nevada.
“It was with a view of the Sierra [Nevada Mountains] that was just to die for,” Judith said in an interview. “We had a lot of friends, musician friends, we d get together and play music with them often. It wasn t easy to leave all that.”
The Saums had been thinking, several years ago, of moving when they retired – maybe to Colorado, or Montana to be near Doug s parents. But around that time, they were also noticing a change. Wildfires in the increasingly hot western summers were becoming a serious threat to their home and health.
The peaceful transition of power is a central tenet of American democracy. It has long been a point of pride for this nation that even in times of deep political strife the sitting president accepts the election of a new leader, and, if abashedly, steps down without protest.
Shortly before he left office in 2017, President Barack Obama gave a speech to his supporters in which he promised a peaceful and assisted transfer of power from his administration to then President-elect Trump and his administration. The crowed booed in response. President Obama, rather than addressing the root of their displeasure, just short of scolded his audience. The peaceful transition of power was an essential element, he insisted, of a functioning democratic government:
Credit Sara Plourde | NHPR
Today we re answering a question about one way a President can be legally removed from office. There s impeachment. and then there s the 25th amendment. What is the 25th amendment? And how does it work?
Do you have a question for the Civics 101 team? Submit it here
The 25th amendment to the Constitution lays out the transition of power if a President is unfit or unable to serve. It also outlines the process for selecting a new Vice President in the case of a vacancy.
The 25th amendment was enacted after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, officially passing Presidential power to the Vice President, a power the Vice President did not necessarily have until this amendment.
Today we re answering a listener question about certifying the Electoral College vote. Namely: what is with all of the downtime between the date when the electors meet to vote and the day those votes get counted in Congress? Is it a holdover from the days of slow travel and horse drawn carriage? Is it about our molasses bureaucracy?
Read on or listen to this short episode for the answer.
Do you have a question for the team at Civics 101? Ask us!
Civics 101 has actually danced around this question in a few ways from our episode on the lame duck period to the process of counting your ballot to how the Electoral College votes. But the why of it all is a great question.
Credit Sara Plourde / NHPR
Today we re answering a listener question about nominating conventions: would a contested convention be similar to a caucus? Read on or listen to this short episode for the answer.
During a nominating convention, states cast votes for their preferred candidate for presidential nomination. Given the primary and caucus process in the United States today, it isn t terribly common that a candidate fails to recieve the majority of votes. We typically know who the candidate will be before the convention is held. Though a true contested convention has not occurred since 1952, we have seen party infighting in the modern era.