WASHINGTON — When President Donald Trump delivers his speech Tuesday night to a joint session of Congress, one of his Cabinet secretaries will be the “designated survivor.”
Doug Collins — who is the current administration’s veterans affairs secretary — was chosen as the designated survivor for Tuesday’s address.
The “designated survivor” tradition dates back to the Cold War, according to the Constitution Center. It typically calls for a member of the president’s cabinet to be absent from the State of the Union, inaugurations and presidential speeches to joint sessions of Congress in case a catastrophic disaster strikes the U.S. Capitol to ensure someone in the line of presidential succession stays alive.
The designated survivor is taken to an undisclosed location by Secret Service before the address.
When Trump first spoke to a joint session of Congress in February of 2017, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin sat out the event as the designated survivor.
In 2018, for Trump’s first official State of the Union, it was Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. He was followed by Energy Secretary Rick Perry in 2019 and Interior Secretary David Bernhard in 2020.
The first time that a Cabinet member being kept away from a presidential speech to Congress was publicly divulged was President Ronald Reagan’s Education Secretary Terrel Bell in 1981. But Bell wasn’t identified until afterward.
Until the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, designated survivors had more control over where they went outside Washington. President Bill Clinton’s energy secretary, the late Bill Richardson, was picked in 2000 and simply moved up a planned weekend trip with his wife to Oxford, Maryland, a waterfront town about 80 miles away, so he’d be there during the State of the Union.
How to watch Trump’s address to Congress
You can find Trump’s address to Congress Tuesday on all major networks, which will be carrying it live. It will also be streamed online right here on this website.
The speech starts at 9 p.m. ET (8 p.m. CT, 7 p.m. MT, 6 p.m. PT)
Who is in the presidential line of succession?
If the U.S. president were to die, become incapacitated, resign or be removed from office, the U.S. Constitution and Presidential Succession Act of 1947 outlines who would be next in the line of succession:
- Vice President
- Speaker of the House
- President Pro Tempore of the Senate
- Secretary of State
- Secretary of the Treasury
- Secretary of Defense
- Attorney General
- Secretary of the Interior
- Secretary of Agriculture
- Secretary of Commerce
- Secretary of Labor
- Secretary of Health and Human Services
- Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
- Secretary of Transportation
- Secretary of Energy
- Secretary of Education
- Secretary of Veterans Affairs
- Secretary of Homeland Security
The Associated Press contributed to this report.