Do We Even Need ‘Acting’ Cabinet Members?

by National Review | 11.20.18

Quick political quiz: Who are Tom Shannon, Adam Szubin, and Kenneth Hyatt?

Answer: Donald Trump’s first secretaries of state, the Treasury, and commerce.

Among many others, these three men served as “acting” members of Trump’s cabinet during the first weeks of his administration, as the president pondered permanent replacements. For reasons of partisan politeness, it is standard practice for the cabinet of the prior administration to resign en masse upon the inauguration of a new president, yet for some reason it’s considered no big deal for their deputies to hang around in their place for a while. This is how President Trump briefly got Obama appointee Sally Yates as his attorney general — and the ensuing consternation.

Once a president is more firmly ensconced, his secretaries may be fired or quit and be succeeded by a deputy chosen by the same president who appointed them. This is how we got our current acting secretary of the interior, Andrew Wheeler, the department’s Trump-appointed deputy secretary, who’s been serving since Scott Pruitt’s July 7 resignation.

For other offices, it’s apparently standard practice for presidents to unilaterally fill an empty cabinet seat with an acting secretary of their choosing, subject to certain restraints. Hence, Trump’s appointment last week of Matthew Whitaker to directly succeed departed attorney general Jeff Sessions.

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