President Trump’s speech Tuesday night will take place in front of members of both Houses of Congress and the entire presidential line of succession — with one notable exception. Each year, one Cabinet member is chosen as the “designated survivor” who will sit out the speech in case of a catastrophic event.
The name of the designated survivor is not usually revealed to the public until shortly before the speech starts — or even sometimes after it starts.
What is a designated survivor?
The designated survivor is the informal name used for the person in the line of succession who does not attend the joint session of Congress so that there would be a leader available to step up in case of a catastrophic event.
The line of succession was first determined by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, but the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 set the modern line of succession if something should happen to the president and he or she cannot undertake his or her duties. First in line for the presidency is Vice President JD Vance. Second in line after the vice president is House Speaker Mike Johnson, third in line is Senate pro tempore Chuck Grassley, fourth in line is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and fifth in line is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The line continues through other members of the Cabinet, in the order their departments were created, with the secretary of Homeland Security — currently Kristi Noem — at 18th in line.
Since all of those people would normally be in attendance at the joint session of Congress, a designated survivor is chosen to stay away.
Why does the practice of choosing a designated survivor exist?
Unlike the line of succession, the designated survivor is not something determined by the Constitution. The practice is believed to have started during the Cold War in the 1950s, but it was not until 1981 that the first official designated survivor was named as then-Education Secretary Terrel Bell.
How do they choose the designated survivor?
It’s not clear how the administration chooses a designated survivor since the process is classified. The person must be eligible to serve as president, so they must be a native-born American citizen and at least 35 years old. There have been several Cabinet members over the years who did not fit those criteria, including former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright, who was born in what is now the Czech Republic, and German-born Henry Kissinger.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who was named as designated survivor by President Bill Clinton in 1996, told ABC News in 2014 that she was shown the Situation Room and the White House staff “talked seriously about the responsibility of the designated survivor.”
What does the designated survivor do during the speech?
There have been a few designated survivors who have been willing to discuss what they did during the speech. Then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who was tapped by Clinton to be designated survivor in 2000, told ABC News in 2014 that he watched the speech from a friend’s house in Sherwood, Maryland, about 90 miles outside Washington.
“It’s fun. You’re sitting there, you’re being watched. You got security. And there are a few thrills,” he told ABC News. “My wife and my friends were impressed the fire trucks were there.”
Former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman wrote an essay in 2017 in Politico about his own experience after being chosen. According to Glickman, he was taken a secure location outside Washington (in his case, his daughter’s New York apartment), where he writes that he was “accompanied by key military staff and Secret Service, including a military officer carrying what I presumed to be the nuclear football — a black, leather-encased aluminum briefcase that would be used to authenticate the person ordering a nuclear strike.”
“I don’t recall getting any specific instructions on what to do if the doomsday scenario happened,” Glickman wrote. “All I knew is that if necessary, I could turn to that military officer accompanying me, holding that 45-pound bag, and trigger a military response, including a nuclear strike.”
Shalala, meanwhile, told ABC News that she stayed in Washington, waited it out at the White House and ordered pizza for her staff
“I saw the president when he left and when he came back,” Shalala said. “He said, ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.'”
Who has been named designated survivor in the past?
The designated survivor is usually a member of the Cabinet, although the Secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury have never been chosen. There was no no designated survivor in 2021, since only 200 members of Congress attended the joint session of Congress amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here are the last few designated survivors and the positions they held at the time:
