(Bloomberg) — President-elect Donald Trump is stocking his cabinet with people he wants to carry out his “America First” policies on the economy, border, trade, national security and more.
Trump has put a premium on loyalty with his choices, selecting lawmakers and aides who defended him as he navigated the fallout from the Jan. 6, 2021, attempted insurrection and multiple criminal cases.
He’s giving priority to those who have expressed an eagerness to hit the ground running as he prepares an expected flurry of executive actions and legislative proposals to quickly implement his agenda and roll back President Joe Biden’s policies. The president-elect intends to get as many nominees that require Senate confirmation in place before his inauguration.
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One controversial pick has already withdrawn from consideration: Matt Gaetz, who had announced his intention to resign from Congress when Trump selected him as his attorney general earlier this month. He faced an uphill battle to be approved on Capitol Hill amid allegations of sexual misconduct. He has continued to deny any wrongdoing, while the president-elect applauded his decision to avoid being a lingering distraction to the incoming administration.
If confirmed, Bessent, a Yale graduate who runs the macro hedge fund Key Square Group, would become the nation’s highest ranking economic policymaker. In that role, he will be managing Trump’s sweeping economic agenda that he has vowed to enact in a second term. The job also involves navigating Washington political thickets, spearheading international economic diplomacy and providing a steady hand in crises. Bessent will be closely watched by investors and financial institutions, who are looking for predictability and stability. He has been a proponent of realigning US currency policy, but has stopped short of supporting an overt strategy of depreciating the dollar.
Trump’s new pick to lead the Department of Justice he’s vowed to overhaul is another longtime ally who publicly championed his baseless claims of voter fraud in 2020. In his first administration, Bondi worked out of the White House assisting in communications related to his first impeachment trial. She also worked on an opioid and drug abuse commission in Trump’s first term. As Florida’s attorney general, Bondi earned national attention for her efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act and provisions banning health insurance companies from charging more to customers with preexisting conditions.
Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Labor Secretary
If confirmed, Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican congresswoman from Oregon, will be charged with managing Trump’s relationship with labor after he made inroads with union voters in this month’s election. The Labor Department is primarily responsible for administering laws to guarantee workers’ rights, including receiving a minimum wage and unemployment insurance. It’s also the parent agency of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which publishes inflation and jobs data that are often the two biggest market-moving events of any given month. Chavez-DeRemer was the first Republican woman to represent her state in the US House but lost her bid for reelection earlier this month.
Scott Turner, Housing Secretary
Turner, a former NFL player, served as executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump’s first term. He is the first Black American picked for a cabinet post in the second Trump administration. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is responsible for coordinating national policy addressing the country’s housing needs, including programs to bolster affordable housing, provide assistance to low-income Americans, prevent discrimination in the market and spur urban development.
Dave Weldon, CDC Director
Weldon was a practicing physician before being elected to several congressional terms in Florida, starting in 1994. If confirmed, he would take the helm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, an organization that’s been trying to regain public trust and address shortcomings identified during the coronavirus pandemic. The agency is also bracing for major changes under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who has been selected to run the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC.
Marty Makary, FDA Commissioner
Makary, a pancreatic surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medicine, has had a long career as a health researcher, writing about hospital safety and quality and health-care prices. He gained prominence in recent years after questioning public health authorities and the medical establishment about Covid boosters and mask mandates. With a budget of about $7 billion, The Food and Drug Administration is considered the gold standard among the world’s top authorities for judging the safety and efficacy of medicines.
Janette Nesheiwat, US Surgeon General
Nesheiwat has been a Fox News contributor and says on her website that she’s a board-certified medical doctor and medical news correspondent. The Office of the Surgeon General is responsible for providing Americans with scientific information about healthcare options and how to reduce the risk of illness, and best known for issuing warnings on products like cigarettes. She’s expected to work in the new role alongside Kennedy.
Linda McMahon, Education Secretary
McMahon led the Small Business Administration from 2017-2019 during Trump’s first term, and stayed close to him afterwards, co-leading his transition team this year. She made her wealth as co-founder and chief executive officer of World Wrestling Entertainment. If confirmed for this latest post, McMahon will run a cabinet-level agency with a $114 billion budget that Trump and many of his allies say they’d like to see abolished, leaving its key responsibilities to the states. Such a move would require congressional approval.
Howard Lutnick, Commerce Secretary
Trump plans to install his transition co-chair Lutnick to the agency in charge of promoting US businesses and supporting economic growth. The chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald LP is a Wall Street pick who would be expected to carry out policy around Trump’s avowed favorite word — “tariffs” — and continue to tout a populist economic agenda. Among his comments berating the Biden administration on the campaign trail for Trump, Lutnick has said high inflation is “the meanest thing you can ever do to your people.”
Trump also signaled Lutnick could have outsize responsibility for the office of US Trade Representative — typically filled by a separate appointment.
Sean Duffy, Transportation Secretary
Ex-congressman and television personality Sean Duffy is set to be Trump’s point person when it comes to decisions about America’s transportation infrastructure, including the expansion and upgrading of highways, rail networks and airports. The former Wisconsin lawmaker is one of several Fox News contributors Trump has tapped for a cabinet post. He’ll have to navigate the tricky issue of the president-elect’s criticism of the electric vehicle industry, a focus of Biden’s administration, with the backing Trump has received from Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk.
Chris Wright, Energy Secretary
A Colorado-based oil and natural gas fracking services executive and Washington outsider, Chris Wright is Trump’s pick to lead the Energy Department. As CEO of Liberty Energy Inc., Wright has been a vocal proponent of fossil fuels and his company published a paper this year concluding there is “no climate crisis.” He is credited by Trump for being a “pioneer” of the “American Shale Revolution” and if confirmed, Wright would also sit on the newly formed National Energy Council. While the department’s mission includes helping to maintain the nation’s nuclear warheads, studying supercomputers and maintaining the US’s several hundred million-barrel stockpile of crude oil, Wright can be expected to push Trump’s over-arching mission to boost domestic energy production.
Doug Collins, Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Former Georgia Congressman Doug Collins got Trump’s nod to run Veterans Affairs, the second-largest federal government department with more than 400,000 employees tasked with providing health care and other assistance to military veterans and their families. Collins, who left Congress in 2021, would preside over sprawling operations — the department is one of the biggest consumers of medical equipment in the world. He’d also have to ensure the families get adequate support, especially in the wake of a 2014 scandal in which secret wait lists at VA hospitals shattered confidence in the system just as Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were needing fresh aid.
Doug Burgum, Secretary of Interior
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum is Trump’s pick to run the Interior Department, which oversees energy development, grazing and other activities on some 500 million acres of public land, as well as US federal waters. That includes national parks such as Yellowstone and the Everglades. The 68-year-old raised his profile by running for the Republican nomination, but dropped out early and backed Trump. If confirmed, Burgum would likely be responsible for ramping up the sale of oil and gas leases, including in the Gulf of Mexico, which had been constrained under the Biden administration.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Health & Human Services Secretary
The selection of Kennedy, a vocal vaccine skeptic, drew some worries for what it would mean for public health policy, and the news sent vaccine-makers’ stocks for a plunge. The Democrat-turned-independent — who suspended his presidential candidacy in favor of Trump — has long fielded criticism for his controversial comments on vaccines and the Covid-19 pandemic. The son of former Senator Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy became a public face in recent months for Trump’s call to “Make America Healthy Again.” In the final days of his campaign, Trump said he would let Kennedy “go wild” with health policy in his administration.
Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence
Former US Representative and one-time Democrat Gabbard got Trump’s nod to be his head of the office that overseas the country’s 17 intelligence agencies. In Gabbard, Trump is making another unorthodox pick, elevating a loyalist and skeptic of support for Ukraine. Gabbard is a veteran of the Iraq War and continues to serve as an officer in the Army Reserve. She’s another voice backing Trump’s “peace through strength” strategy, having advocated for fewer deployments of US troops abroad.
Pete Hegseth, Defense Secretary
An Army veteran and Fox News personality, Hegseth would oversee the US military amid Russia’s continuing war in Ukraine, conflicts raging across the Middle East and heightened tensions with China around Taiwan and the South China Sea. While he’s a loyalist, the 44-year-old Hegseth has little experience managing a bureaucracy like the Defense Department, with its 770,000 employees and 2 million men and women in uniform. Its budget is more than $840 billion, and its finances are so complicated it’s never successfully completed an audit.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Government Efficiency
Trump turned to his richest supporter and a former primary opponent to oversee what he calls the “Department of Government Efficiency” whose acronym, DOGE, is the same as a popular meme coin that Musk has promoted online. While “department” suggests a government agency, it’s more likely to be a presidential commission that looks at ways to cut spending. Musk — whose companies receive billions in federal contracts — at one point in the campaign suggested that $2 trillion in government outlays could be slashed from the budget.
John Ratcliffe, Central Intelligence Agency
Trump is turning to his former director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, to lead the CIA. The 59-year-old ex-congressman was a fierce defender of Trump during his first impeachment before winning Senate confirmation to oversee the intelligence services in 2020. Assuming he wins confirmation this time around, Ratcliffe is expected to bring a sharp focus on countering national security threats and foreign adversaries such as China and Iran to the role.
Marco Rubio, Secretary of State
Rubio is a one-time rival of the president-elect who later became one of his biggest supporters in the Senate. He’s also a longtime critic of China, and technically barred from entering the country under retaliatory sanctions. Rubio has defended Trump’s position to bring a swift end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, calling for talks that could result in Kyiv giving up occupied territory.
Mike Waltz, National Security Advisor
Waltz is a former Army Green Beret and combat veteran of Afghanistan. As chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness panel, he criticized the Pentagon over teaching Critical Race Theory at military institutions and an overpriced bag of metal bushings for the Air Force, among other objections. Waltz has written that he views China as a “greater threat” to the US than any other nation.
Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, once a potential VP pick for Trump, is now his choice to lead the Homeland Security Department. Noem became the subject of intense criticism after she admitted in her book to shooting her own 14-month-old dog. Front and center for the 52-year-old in her expected new role will be implementing Trump’s policies on immigration, including his pledge to carry out mass deportations of undocumented migrants.
Elise Stefanik, UN Ambassador
Trump has described Stefanik as “an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter.” Stefanik was among the House Republicans who voted against certifying Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump and was the first House member to endorse him in this third White House bid.
Tom Homan, border czar
The man Trump has chosen to put “in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin” was the public face of the “zero tolerance” immigration policies during the Republican’s first term. That episode broke with the practice of keeping families together during detentions and deportations, resulting in thousands of undocumented migrant children getting separated from family members and drawing widespread backlash.
Lee Zeldin, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator
The former New York congressman was a member of Trump’s impeachment defense team and a vocal supporter in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riots. His environmental credentials are less robust, though he worked on Capitol Hill to protect the Long Island Sound from dredge dumping. Zeldin said he will seek to roll back regulations preventing energy development in the role, while also seeking to protect the air and water.
Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff
The Republican political operative brought stability, order and financial discipline to a campaign whose 2016 and 2020 iterations were far more volatile. She’s set to become the first woman tapped to become chief of staff and will likely help set strategy for Trump’s first 100 days in office.
–With assistance from Kevin Dharmawan, Justin Sink, Daniel Flatley, Ramsey Al-Rikabi, Meghashyam Mali, Skylar Woodhouse, John Harney and Romy Varghese.
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