Examples of vetoes span from a president rejecting an act of Congress to a single Security Council member killing a UN resolution. In American government alone, presidents have used the veto power roughly 2,600 times since 1789, and the tool takes different forms depending on who wields it and how. The clearest way to understand each type is through the moments it actually shaped history.
Regular Presidential Vetoes
The U.S. Constitution gives the president a straightforward choice when Congress sends over a bill: sign it, or send it back. Article I, Section 7 requires the president to return a rejected bill to the chamber that introduced it, with a written explanation, within ten days (Sundays excluded).1Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Article 1 – Section 7 Congress can then attempt an override or let the bill die. This is sometimes called a return veto, because the bill physically goes back.
Andrew Jackson supplied one of the most famous examples in 1832 when he rejected the bill to recharter the Second Bank of the United States. Jackson returned it to the Senate with a message arguing the bank held too much power over the national economy and benefited a narrow class of wealthy investors at the public’s expense.2Avalon Project. President Jackson’s Veto Message Regarding the Bank of the United States The message became a landmark document in the debate over federal economic power and helped define his presidency.
A more recent example came in February 2015, when President Obama vetoed the Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Act. His veto message said the bill tried to bypass longstanding executive branch procedures for evaluating whether a cross-border pipeline serves the national interest, cutting short review of security, safety, and environmental concerns.3The White House Archives. Veto Message to the Senate: S. 1, Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Act The Senate tried to override and fell short, mustering 62 votes against the 67 needed.4Congress.gov. S.1 – Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Act 114th Congress (2015-2016)
The veto pen stays busy in the modern era. President Biden issued 13 vetoes during his single term, mostly blocking congressional resolutions that tried to overturn executive agency rules on topics from student loan policy to endangered species protections.5United States Senate. Vetoes by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. President Trump, in his second term, vetoed two bills before the end of 2025, both of which the House sustained.6United States Senate. Vetoes by President Donald J. Trump
Pocket Vetoes
A pocket veto is the quieter cousin of the return veto, and Congress cannot override it. If a bill reaches the president’s desk and Congress adjourns before the ten-day signing window expires, the president can simply do nothing. Because Congress isn’t in session to receive a returned bill, the legislation dies without any formal objection or opportunity for override.7Constitution Annotated. Constitution Annotated – Article I, Section 7, Clause 2
The most famous pocket veto in American history hit the Wade-Davis Bill in 1864. Congress passed the bill on July 2, the last day of its session, intending to impose strict conditions on the readmission of Confederate states. President Lincoln, who favored a more lenient approach, simply declined to sign it before Congress adjourned.8United States Senate. The Wade-Davis Bill The bill vanished without Lincoln having to defend his objections through the normal return process, though he later issued a proclamation explaining his decision.
There is a persistent legal gray area over what kind of adjournment triggers the pocket veto. The Constitution says it applies when “the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return,” but exactly what that means has never been settled. Breaks between sessions of Congress are generally accepted as qualifying. Breaks in the middle of a session are murkier. Presidents Ford and Carter largely avoided pocket vetoes during shorter breaks, but administrations from Reagan onward have pushed the boundaries, sometimes returning vetoed bills to Congress while simultaneously claiming the pocket veto applied.
Vetoes That Congress Overrode
Congress can push past a presidential veto, but the bar is deliberately high. Both the House and the Senate must vote to override by a two-thirds margin. The process starts in whichever chamber originated the bill and moves to the second chamber for its own vote.1Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Article 1 – Section 7 If either chamber falls short, the veto stands.
In 1947, Congress overrode President Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act, a sweeping labor-management law that Truman called “dangerous” and “unworkable.” Both chambers assembled wide bipartisan margins within days of the veto, and the law took effect over his objections.9National Labor Relations Board. 1947 Taft-Hartley Passage and NLRB Structural Changes It remains one of the most significant pieces of labor legislation in American history.
The 1972 Clean Water Act followed a similar path. President Nixon vetoed the bill, calling its $24 billion price tag “unconscionable,” but bipartisan majorities in both chambers overrode him, producing one of the landmark environmental laws of the twentieth century.10U.S. Capitol – Visitor Center. President Nixon’s Veto Message for S. 2770, October 17, 1972
The most recent successful override came in September 2016, when Congress enacted the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act over President Obama’s veto. The Senate voted 97–1 and the House voted 348–77, making it the only override of Obama’s presidency.11Congress.gov. S.2040 – Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act 114th Congress (2015-2016) No presidential veto has been overridden since.12United States Senate. Vetoes, 1789 to Present
Line-Item Vetoes in the States
Governors in 44 states have a power the president does not: the line-item veto, which lets them strike individual spending items from a budget bill while signing the rest into law. Instead of rejecting an entire appropriations package over one objectionable earmark, a governor can cut that earmark and approve everything else.
The federal government briefly experimented with a presidential version under the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, but the Supreme Court struck it down two years later in Clinton v. City of New York. The Court held the Act violated the Presentment Clause because it let the president effectively amend or repeal portions of a law after signing it. Under the Constitution, the president must accept or reject a bill as a whole; canceling individual provisions after the fact amounts to unilateral lawmaking the framers never authorized.13Justia Law. Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417 (1998)
Some states take the line-item veto further than others. Wisconsin’s version, called the partial veto, became notorious for a practice nicknamed the “Vanna White veto” after the Wheel of Fortune letter-turner. Starting with Governor Tony Earl in 1983, Wisconsin governors discovered they could strike individual letters and words from bill text to rearrange the remaining language into entirely new provisions the legislature never intended. Earl once vetoed a five-sentence, 121-word paragraph down to a single 22-word sentence, completely changing where municipal waste appeals were directed.14Wisconsin State Legislature. The Wisconsin Governor’s Partial Veto after Bartlett v. Evers Governor Tommy Thompson continued the practice. Voters put a stop to the letter-striking trick in 1990 with a constitutional amendment prohibiting the governor from creating new words by deleting individual letters, though the broader partial veto power survived.
Vetoes in the UN Security Council
The veto isn’t only a domestic tool. Article 27 of the United Nations Charter gives each of the five permanent Security Council members — the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France — the power to block any substantive resolution with a single “no” vote. Even if all fourteen other council members vote in favor, one permanent member’s objection kills the measure.15United Nations. Charter of the United Nations – Article 27
The framers of the Charter designed this structure in 1945 to prevent the council from authorizing military action or sanctions that could pull the world’s major powers into direct conflict with each other. Russia has repeatedly blocked resolutions on territorial disputes and human rights investigations, and the United States has frequently vetoed resolutions involving the Middle East. When a permanent member casts that veto, the resolution fails immediately, no matter how lopsided the rest of the vote. Changing the system would require amending the Charter, which is itself subject to veto by the permanent five.