Who Will Be TIME's 2019 Person of the Year? See the Top 5 Shortlist

The magazine's editors have narrowed down its 10-person shortlist to five candidates

Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for TIME Inc., File

The day is here for TIME to reveal its 2019 Person of the Year.

The magazine narrowed down its 10-person shortlist on Tuesday to the five candidates that TIME editors will consider for the person who has most influenced the world in the past year.

TIME has made the designation every year since 1927. Last year, TIME editors selected "The Guardians and the War on Truth," a group of four journalists and one news organization whose work landed them in jail or cost them their lives.

The group included Jamal Khashoggi, Maria Ressa, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo and the Capital Gazette of Annapolis, Maryland.

Khashoggi is the Washington Post columnist murdered for his criticism of the Saudi crown prince; Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are two Reuters journalists who were arrested in Myanmar while investigating a massacre of Rohingya Muslims; and Ressa is the editor of a Philippine news website known for its critical coverage of controversial president Rodrigo Duterte.

The Capital Gazette is the paper that had four journalists and a sales assistant killed by a gunman who opened fire in the newsroom.

The 2017 selection was "The Silence Breakers," the individuals who spoke up and brought national attention to sexual harassment and assault and the symbols of the #MeToo movement.

The magazine will reveal its Person of the Year live Wednesday on TODAY. Here are the candidates in no particular order.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
In her second stint as Speaker of the House, Pelosi has been a central figure in the impeachment proceedings involving the question of whether President Donald Trump and his administration withheld military aid to Ukraine in exchange for Ukrainian officials investigating the son of political rival Joe Biden.

Pelosi announced in September that the House of Representatives was launching an impeachment inquiry. Last week, she asked the House Judiciary Committee and chairmen of other committees to proceed with drafting articles of impeachment against Trump, saying "the president leaves us no choice but to act."

President Donald Trump
This is the fourth straight year that Trump has been on the list, which includes being named TIME Person of the Year in 2016 when he became the 45th president of the United States. He may become the third president ever to be impeached if the House of Representatives moves forward with the articles of impeachment this week. No president has ever been removed from office via impeachment. Trump has announced he will not participate in impeachment proceedings, according to a White House statement that calls the inquiry "completely baseless." 

The Whistleblower
The anonymous CIA officer shook up the U.S. government by triggering the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump by reporting the contents of a phone call Trump shared with the president of Ukraine. He submitted a nine-page memo, outlining evidence that he believed showed Trump had used the power of his office to force Ukraine into investigating political rival Joe Biden to help with Trump's reelection campaign.

The whistleblower's account may ultimately lead to the House of Representatives filing articles of impeachment against Trump, who has regularly attacked the anonymous person. Congressional Republicans have also called for the whistleblower to be publicly identified.

A group of whistleblowers was previously selected for the honor by TIME in 2002 for bringing to light the massive accounting scandals at Enron and Worldcom as well as the FBI's mishandling of information from the 9/11 attacks.

Greta Thunberg
The teen activist has become a prominent face in the fight to save the environment in the face of climate change. The 16-year-old from Sweden was the catalyst in a host of student-led strikes involving more than a million students across the world in the last two years when she began spending her school days protesting outside the Swedish parliament.

Thunberg sailed from England to New York for a United Nations climate change conference in August instead of flying because it's harmful to the environment. She drew worldwide notice for her fiery speech at the United Nations in September, where she accused world leaders of stealing her dreams and her childhood with their inaction on climate change.

The Hong Kong Protesters
Waves of demonstrations have swept across the special administrative region of China in response to proposed amendments to Hong Kong's extradition law. The change would allow the Hong Kong government to extradite people to mainland China, where human rights groups have said citizens are often arbitrarily imprisoned for speaking out against the government. Critics of the bill have viewed it as the Chinese government in Beijing trying to exert more control over Hong Kong.

The protests began in earnest in June, when more than a million people protested against the bill in front of Hong Kong's legislature, with police firing rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowd. The bill has been indefinitely suspended, but pro-democracy protests have continued for months, including a transportation strike and demonstrators taking over the Hong Kong airport. They also have demanded that the nearly 5,000 protesters who have been arrested be released as well as universal suffrage for Hong Kong citizens.

In 2011, "The Protester" was named the TIME Person of the Year to represent global protest movements like the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement, in addition to protests in Greece, Russia and elsewhere. 

Tune in to TODAY on Wednesday to find out whose face will grace the iconic TIME cover this year.

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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