The labor secretary under President Barack Obama, Chris Lu, shared details of how the designated survivor for the State of the Union is selected.
Lu was never a designated survivor himself, but he says he played a role in selecting the seven different designated survivors, according to a series of tweets posted Tuesday.
STATE OF THE UNION 2023: TRUMP RELEASES PRERECORDED REBUTTAL TO BIDEN SPEECH
The second factor is if someone is already traveling outside the D.C. metro area during the speech. That only happened once for us, but even if the potential #DesignatedSurvivor is traveling, they need to be in a secure location during the actual speech.
— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) February 8, 2023
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The former secretary said the designated survivor must be eligible to serve as president, meaning they must be a natural-born citizen and they must not be traveling at the time of the speech. The designated survivor may be traveling in the time before the address, but they must be in a secure location during the speech itself.
Lu also stated that Cabinet secretaries who had their departments discussed in the speech were typically not selected.
Lastly, given the importance of getting our legislative agenda passed in 2009-10, we avoided asking the former members of Congress who were in the Cabinet to sit out. We thought the schmoozing they did with their former colleagues on the floor was beneficial to our agenda.
— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) February 8, 2023
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He also stated that in the early Obama addresses, they tried to avoid having former members of congress who were serving in the Cabinet be designated survivors. He said they "thought the schmoozing they did with their former colleagues on the floor was beneficial to our agenda."
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The address by the president took place Tuesday in the House chamber at the Capitol in Washington. It was Biden's first State of the Union before a Republican-led House of Representatives.