Who is the designated survivor? Here's who was selected for Trump's address to Congress

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins will serve as designated survivor during President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday.

Collins will not be in attendance for the speech at the U.S. Capitol, watching it instead from a secure location afar, to preserve the Constitutional line of succession to the presidency in the event of a cataclysmic event.

When government officials gather for big events — such as the State of the Union, inaugurations, and presidential speeches to joint sessions of Congress — a “designated survivor” is kept away to make sure someone in the line of presidential succession stays alive in case of a catastrophic or mass-casualty event.

For Trump’s second inauguration, no designated survivor was selected.

The identity of the designated survivor is often kept secret for security seasons. The identity typically will be revealed during or shortly after the event while the designated survivor is at an undisclosed location.

Selecting a failsafe that has become informally known as a designated survivor dates to the late 1950s during the Cold War amid the threat of the Soviet targeting Washington D.C. with nuclear weapons.

The last person to carry out the role was Miguel Cardona, the former Secretary of Education under former President Joe Biden, in March 2024 during the State of the Union address.

Collins, 58, holds a master’s degree in divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and pastored a church for 11 years. He served as a U.S. Navy chaplain for two years in the late 1980s. He was elected to the Georgia state House in 2007 and served three two-year terms. Collins won a seat in Congress in 2012 representing northeast Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, one of the most Republican districts in the country. 

Collins acquired a national reputation while defending Trump as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee during the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into whether Russia improperly influenced Trump’s 2016 election victory.

Collins wrote a book about Trump’s first impeachment over allegations that he improperly withheld military aid from Ukraine in order to push Ukraine into announcing an investigation into Joe Biden, who went on to beat Trump in 2020. That book, “The Clock and the Calendar,” argued that Democrats were impeaching Trump to get revenge for him beating Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to prevent him from being reelected in 2020.

The Associated Press contributed to this report