State of the Union 2023: who is the designated survivor?

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh will be this year’s designated survivor.

When US President Joe Biden takes the podium in the US Capitol for his State of the Union address on Tuesday, a “who’s who” of Washington rulers — lawmakers, Supreme Court justices and senior military officials — will be yards away.

But one player will be absent in particular – the so-called “designated survivor,” tasked with taking charge should an unforeseen tragedy wipe out or incapacitate the rest of the government officials assembled for the speech.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh will be the designated survivor this year. Last year it was Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.

According to the nonprofit National Constitution Center, the tradition began in the 1950s as the specter of possible nuclear war between the U.S. and Soviet Union loomed at the start of the Cold War.

It was not until 1981 that the US government publicly identified the designated survivor for the first time. This year it was Terrel Bell, then President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of education.

Since then, designated survivors have been chosen from a number of government agencies, including the Attorney General in the Department of Justice and a number of Cabinet-level secretaries.

Under former President Donald Trump, the State of the Union-designated survivors were the secretaries of agriculture, energy and home affairs.

For the President’s traditional address to a joint session of Congress after his election, Mr Trump’s designated survivor was Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin.

Designated survivors must be eligible for the presidency to be appointed to the position and will only assume the role of commander-in-chief if every senior official in the line of succession is incapacitated.

Eligibility requirements require the person to be a born US citizen, meaning naturalized citizens like current Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm cannot fill the position.

The role was also partially brought into the public consciousness by Hollywood.

Designated Survivor, a TV show, has actor Kiefer Sunderland play the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and take the helm of the US government after an explosion destroys the Capitol during State of the Union.

The reality, however, is far more mundane. Last year Ms Raimondo watched the speech from a safe place but otherwise had a normal day.

In a 2017 Politico essay, one of Bill Clinton’s designated survivors, former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, recalled spending the State of the Union at his daughter’s New York apartment, along with a military officer who carried codes needed to launch the US nuclear arsenal.

“I sometimes wonder if I would have had the courage to give the order,” he wrote.

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