Cabinet Secretaries

Each of the fifteen executive departments is led by a secretary, except Justice, whose head is the Attorney General. All are principal officers under the Appointments Clause, which means the President nominates them and the Senate must confirm them by majority vote after hearings before the relevant committee. They serve at the President's pleasure and can be dismissed at any time without cause. By law they rank in the line of presidential succession in the order their departments were created, from the Secretary of State to the Secretary of Homeland Security.

Cabinet secretaries are paid at Level I of the Executive Schedule, the highest tier of the federal pay scale for appointed officials. Each department also has a deputy secretary, the chief operating officer and acting secretary in a vacancy, and a layer of under and assistant secretaries, most of them also Senate-confirmed. When a secretary resigns or is fired, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 determines who may serve as acting secretary and for how long, usually the deputy or another Senate-confirmed official.

Frances Perkins became the first woman in a cabinet in 1933, Robert Weaver the first Black cabinet member in 1966. The Senate has rejected only a handful of cabinet nominees outright, the last being John Tower for Defense in 1989, though many more have withdrawn when confirmation looked doubtful. Cabinet secretaries typically serve two to three years, and turnover is highest in the second year of an administration.