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What are the most recent presidential veto overrides in 2021–2024 and which bills were affected?
Executive Summary
Congress overrode a presidential veto only once in the 2021–2024 span: lawmakers overrode President Donald Trump’s veto of the annual defense authorization bill at the end of 2020, with final congressional action recorded on January 1, 2021; that remains the most recent override affecting the 2021–2024 period. President Joe Biden issued multiple vetoes between 2021 and 2024, but none of his regular vetoes were overridden by Congress during that time, leaving the sole recent override tied to the prior administration’s veto action [1] [2] [3]. This synthesis draws on procedural summaries about veto overrides, congressional roll-call data, and compiled presidential veto lists to compare the narrow set of override events with the broader pattern of veto use and the high bar required for an override [4] [5] [2].
1. How a single New Year’s override became the last in the record — the NDAA case that stuck in 2021
Congress executed the most recent override at the very start of 2021 when both chambers mustered the two‑thirds majorities needed to override the President’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act. That override is documented as the last instance falling into the 2021–2024 timeframe because subsequent vetoes by the sitting president did not meet the two‑thirds threshold in both chambers, making the NDAA roll-call the outlier that endured into the later period [1]. The underlying sources emphasize the constitutional mechanics — a two‑thirds vote in both the House and Senate — and identify the NDAA override as an example of bipartisan consensus sufficient to clear that high bar [4]. The prominence of the NDAA override reflects both the political weight of defense policy and the relative rarity of overrides.
2. The mechanics and rarity: why overrides are hard and uncommon
The U.S. Constitution sets a high procedural hurdle for overriding vetoes — a two‑thirds majority in both chambers — which makes overrides rare and typically bipartisan when they do occur [4]. Official compilations and historical tallies show long stretches with few overrides, and institutional analyses reinforce that the political costs of joining an override are substantial for members whose party controls the presidency. Congressional archives and Senate compilations consistently report low override rates, underscoring that many vetoed bills die rather than being resurrected by supermajorities [5] [2]. These sources explain that an override requires not just numbers but cross‑aisle political will, often tied to large, broadly supported measures like the defense authorization bill rather than narrower, more partisan items [4].
3. Biden-era vetoes (2021–2024): volume of vetoes but zero successful overrides
During 2021–2024 President Joe Biden issued several regular vetoes — publicly tallied at multiple points in compendia of presidential actions — yet congressional record compilations indicate zero instances where those vetoes were overridden in the period under review [3] [2]. The databases and presidential-veto lists referenced in these analyses enumerate Biden’s vetoed measures and note the absence of successful congressional reversals, which means that while veto activity increased the number of contested items, none attracted the cross‑aisle two‑thirds support necessary to become law over the president’s objection [3]. The documentation treats these vetoes as part of routine executive-legislative friction rather than as signals of successful congressional supremacies.
4. Political calculus: why members rarely break with their president or party to override
Overrides require members to weigh electoral and institutional incentives; party discipline, presidential popularity with the party base, and the stakes of specific legislation all shape the likelihood of an override [4]. The provided analyses highlight that even when a vetoed bill has bipartisan elements, leaders in both chambers must be willing to commit political capital to persuade colleagues across the aisle to reach supermajority thresholds [1]. The single recent override — the NDAA — succeeded because the defense bill historically secures broad bipartisan support and because overriding a veto on such a high‑profile national security measure carried less partisan penalty than overturning presidential objections to more ideologically charged statutes [1] [4].
5. Missing pieces, caveats, and how to read the record going forward
The sources used here focus on procedural summaries and aggregated veto counts, and they note limitations in temporal framing — the NDAA override straddles the 2020–2021 boundary but stands as the last override relevant to 2021–2024 [1] [5]. Compilations of vetoes and overrides are reliable on counts and roll‑call outcomes, but they leave out granular political context such as individual member motives, negotiation histories, or behind‑the‑scenes deals that sometimes produce bipartisan supermajorities. Readers should therefore treat the quantitative finding — one override touching the 2021–2024 span and no successful overrides of Biden vetoes — as accurate within the legislative record, while recognizing that the broader political dynamics require additional qualitative reporting beyond roll‑call tallies [2] [6].