The president's cabinet is one of the most powerful and least understood parts of the federal government. Cabinet secretaries run agencies that touch nearly every aspect of American life — the food you eat, the air you breathe, the roads you drive on, the schools your children attend, the benefits you may depend on. Understanding who they are and how they get their positions is essential civic knowledge.
What the Cabinet Is
The cabinet is not mentioned in the Constitution by name. Article II gives the president the right to require the opinion in writing of the principal officer in each of the executive departments. Washington's cabinet had four members — the secretaries of state, treasury, and war, plus the attorney general. Today the cabinet consists of the vice president and the heads of 15 executive departments.
The 15 executive departments are: State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security. Beyond the 15 department heads, the president may also give cabinet-level rank to other senior officials — the CIA director, the ambassador to the United Nations, the White House chief of staff, and others.
What Cabinet Secretaries Do
Each cabinet secretary runs a department that can employ tens of thousands of people and manage budgets in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The Secretary of Health and Human Services oversees the FDA, the CDC, the NIH, Medicare, and Medicaid. The Secretary of Defense oversees the entire U.S. military. The Attorney General runs the Department of Justice including the FBI. The Secretary of Education manages federal education funding and student loan programs.
Cabinet secretaries set policy direction for their departments, represent the department before Congress, implement the president's agenda within their area, and manage the enormous bureaucracies under their supervision. They appear before congressional committees to explain their budgets and defend their decisions. They issue regulations — rules that have the force of law — within their areas of authority.
How They Get There
Cabinet secretaries are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate. The confirmation process involves a hearing before the relevant Senate committee — a nominee for secretary of defense appears before the Armed Services Committee, a nominee for attorney general appears before the Judiciary Committee — followed by a committee vote and a full Senate vote.
Senate confirmation hearings can be extensive. Nominees are questioned about their qualifications, their policy views, their past business dealings, and their approach to the laws they would enforce. The Senate can and does reject nominees — though most are confirmed, sometimes after significant political battles. In Trump's second term several cabinet nominations generated significant Senate debate before confirmation.
Cabinet Meetings and Succession
The full cabinet meets at the president's discretion — there is no requirement for regular meetings. In practice modern presidents convene the full cabinet relatively rarely, relying instead on smaller groups and individual meetings with relevant secretaries.
The cabinet also plays a role in presidential succession. If the president and vice president are both unable to serve, the Speaker of the House is next in line, followed by the President pro tempore of the Senate, then the Secretary of State, then the other cabinet secretaries in the order their departments were created. The Presidential Succession Act establishes the full line.
The current cabinet members and their departments are listed at whitehouse.gov. Each department maintains its own website with information about its programs, regulations, and budget.