Who are Trump's Cabinet Nominees? Get to Know His Picks

Ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, a series of U.S. Senate hearings are scheduled for lawmakers to question some of his nominees to run the nation's top departments.

The hearings are part of a constitutionally mandated process for a new presidential Cabinet to take office.

The Cabinet consists of the vice president, the secretaries of 15 federal agencies — who must be confirmed by the Senate — and a collection of other officials that can change from president to president. It serves as the president's main advisory group.

Snopes has prepared short biographies for each member of Trump's proposed Cabinet and a few of the most notable non-Cabinet appointees. If there are any changes to Trump's Cabinet, this story will be updated to reflect those changes.

• JD Vance — Vice President
• Marco Rubio — Secretary of State
• Scott Bessent — Secretary of the Treasury
• Pete Hegseth — Secretary of Defense
• Pam Bondi — Attorney General
• Doug Burgum — Secretary of the Interior
• Brooke Rollins — Secretary of Agriculture
• Howard Lutnick — Secretary of Commerce
• Lori Chavez-DeRemer — Secretary of Labor
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — Secretary of Health and Human Services
• Scott Turner — Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
• Sean Duffy — Secretary of Transportation
• Chris Wright — Secretary of Energy
• Linda McMahon — Secretary of Education
• Doug Collins — Secretary of Veterans Affairs
• Kristi Noem — Secretary of Homeland Security
• Susie Wiles — Chief of Staff
• Lee Zeldin — Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency
• Tulsi Gabbard — Director of National Intelligence
• Jamieson Greer — U.S. Trade Representative
• Elise Stefanik — U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.
• Kelly Loeffler — Administrator of the Small Business Administration
• Russell Vought — Director of the Office of Management and Budget
• John Ratcliffe — Director of the CIA
• Stephen Miran — Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
• Michael Kratsios — Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy
• Kash Patel — Director of the FBI
• Mehmet Oz — Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
• Karoline Leavitt — Press Secretary
• Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — Department of Government Efficiency
• Matt Gaetz — Attorney General (withdrawn)

Cabinet

JD Vance — Vice President

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Vice President-elect JD Vance — who once said that Trump may be "America's Hitler" — took the political stage when he won a Senate seat in 2022, sweeping rural Ohio. Since his bestselling memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," hit the shelves at the dawn of the first Trump administration in 2016, Vance has become the flag-bearer of a socially conservative and economically populist "New Right" movement.

While Vance stands for longstanding pillars of the right such as opposition to abortion and gun control, his brand as a hero of the working class has set him at odds with big business, government intervention in private markets and Trump himself on certain economic issues.

Marco Rubio — Secretary of State

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Marco Rubio, U.S. senator from Florida and the son of Cuban immigrants, will succeed Antony Blinken as secretary of state if confirmed by the Senate. Regarded a staunch anti-communist and a hardliner on foreign policy with countries such as Iran, China and Venezuela, his selection may signal a tougher American presence abroad.

As a longtime member of the Foreign Relations Committee, he once supported bipartisan legislation for comprehensive immigration reform, and in recent years has taken a "pro-immigration, anti-mass migration" stance. "I'm not anti-rain. I'm anti-flood," he said in February 2024.

Rubio is a strong supporter of Israel, telling CNN's Jake Tapper on Oct. 9, 2023 — days after the Hamas attack — that he didn't think Israel can be "expected to coexist or find some diplomatic offramp with these savages … they have to be eradicated." 

Scott Bessent — Secretary of the Treasury

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Hedge fund manager Scott Bessent is an openly gay appointee in the cabinet of a Republican president-elect who made anti-LGBTQ+ talking points throughout the campaign. Furthermore, he rose to prominence managing the assets of the Democratic megadonor George Soros.

Bessent's presumptive role as Treasury secretary will place him in a critical position between Trump and the Federal Reserve, run by Jerome Powell since 2018. Trump is not a big fan of the political independence of the Federal Reserve, and previously discussed firing Powell despite his questionable authority to do so. Recently, Bessent and Trump have both said they will let Powell finish out his term, which ends in 2026. 

Pete Hegseth — Secretary of Defense

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Pete Hegseth, a former weekend co-host on "Fox & Friends" beginning in 2017, has a military history that will set the stage for his work as the secretary of defense should the U.S. Senate confirm him. As secretary of defense, Hegseth would be second in military authority only to Trump, the commander-in-chief.

His military career began in the Minnesota National Guard. After his unit was called to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, where he served as an infantry platoon leader, he later volunteered to go to Iraq and eventually deployed to Afghanistan.

His appointment may signal internal military policy shifts regarding DEI efforts and other inclusion initiatives. As a guest on "The Shawn Ryan Show" on Nov. 7, 2024, he said he didn't like women in combat, and that any "general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI, woke s*** has got to go."

Hegseth faced controversy in 2021 when he was barred from serving with the National Guard during the presidential inauguration due to his tattoos purportedly associated with white supremacy and extremist ideology. In his 2024 book, "The War on Warriors," he wrote that he separated from an Army that didn't want him anymore. "The feeling was mutual—I didn't want this Army anymore either," he wrote.

Pam Bondi — Attorney General

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Within hours of Matt Gaetz's withdrawal from consideration for U.S. attorney general, Trump announced that former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi would take his place as nominee. She was Florida's top law officer from 2011 to 2019 before joining Trump's legal team for his 2020 impeachment trial.

Bondi and Trump have history going back more than a decade, when he made a controversial donation to a political group backing her in 2013, while she was running for reelection. She endorsed Trump in 2016 and also served on his transition team.

Most recently, Bondi led the legal arm of a think tank called the America First Policy Institute — which The New York Times has said is "poised to be more influential than Project 2025."

Doug Burgum — Secretary of the Interior

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North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum made it big in business before going into politics. In 1983, he started Great Plains Software, which he sold to Microsoft in 2001 for $1.1 billion in stock. He later founded a real estate development company and a venture capital firm. In 2016, Burgum won the governorship in his first run for political office. He ran a brief campaign against Trump in the 2024 Republican primary, but dropped out in December 2023 and later endorsed the president-elect.

Burgum is set to be in charge of the nation's public land and some programs related to Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. Trump also announced Burgum would lead the newly created National Energy Council, in charge of all things to do with energy production.

When Burgum took office in 2016, North Dakota was still grappling with the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, which fractured the state's relationship with Indigenous tribes. As governor, Burgum attempted to strengthen ties with the state's tribes, adding all five tribal flags to the governor's office and advocating for tax-sharing agreements between state and tribal governments.

Trump reportedly gave Burgum a mandate to "drill baby, drill," doubling down on domestic oil production. North Dakota is one of the nation's largest oil producing states, and Burgum told the state's House of Representatives that he wants to speed up and loosen permitting restrictions.

Brooke Rollins — Secretary of Agriculture

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Brooke Rollins worked as the domestic policy adviser in the first Trump administration, and before that, she worked alongside Jared Kushner as assistant to the president in the Office of American Innovation.

After Trump's failed 2020 presidential campaign, Rollins founded the America First Policy Institute, a think tank that created a vision project some consider the primary rival to The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. Despite the rivalry, the two projects share largely the same mission in laying a policy foundation for the next Trump administration.

"It will be the honor of my life to fight for America's farmers and our Nation's agricultural communities," she wrote on X upon accepting Trump's nomination. "This is big stuff for a small-town ag girl from Glen Rose, TX — truly the American Dream at its greatest."

Howard Lutnick — Secretary of Commerce

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Howard Lutnick is a billionaire Wall Street executive who may face questions from the Senate during the confirmation process regarding his finances and possible conflicts of interest as CEO of financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald.

Lutnick was initially considered to serve as Treasury secretary, but the Trump team ultimately chose him to run the Commerce Department. The New York Times reported that the department is sometimes jokingly referred to as the "hall closet" of government, meaning that beyond safeguarding commercial interests of U.S. businesses globally, it has a wide assortment of responsibilities including counting the U.S. population during the census and overseeing America's fisheries.

In his speech at an October 2024 Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, Lutnick made clear his support for broad tariffs: "When was America great? At the turn of the century … 125 years ago we had no income tax, and all we had was tariffs … and we had so much money, that we had the greatest businessmen of America get together to try to figure out how to spend it."

Lori Chavez-DeRemer — Secretary of Labor

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Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a U.S. representative from Oregon, branded herself as a pro-worker moderate during her brief stint in Congress; she won the seat in 2023 but lost her reelection campaign in 2024. Prior to her work in Congress, she served as the mayor of Happy Valley, a suburb of Portland, from 2011 to 2019.

Sean O'Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (a group representing more than 1.3 million workers), wrote in a November 2024 op-ed that "while the Teamsters haven't agreed on everything with Chavez-DeRemer, she has shown herself to be a real fighter for working people." However, The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations — a federation of unions representing more than 12.5 million workers — rated her 2023 legislative record at 10%, indicating that she "voted against working people" nine out of 10 times.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — Secretary of Health and Human Services

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an environmental lawyer who ran for president as a Democrat and then an independent before dropping out and endorsing Trump in August 2024. Throughout his career, he fought numerous cases against companies responsible for pollution and other encroachment on wildlife and natural resources, often alongside Indigenous and local groups in the U.S. as well as Canada and Chile.

Aside from his long list of controversies — including sexual assault allegations from a former babysitter of his children, leaving a bear carcass in New York City's Central Park and cutting the head off a dead whale with a chainsaw — he is most widely known for pushing dangerous misinformation regarding vaccines.

Citing this and other false conspiracies Kennedy has endorsed in the past, more than 75 Nobel Prize winners signed a letter in December 2024 asking senators to not confirm him as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Scott Turner — Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

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Scott Turner began his career as a defensive back for the Washington Redskins (now known as the Commanders) in 1995. In the offseason, he interned for a Republican representative in California before eventually winning a state House seat in his native Texas in 2013. Between 2017 and 2023, he worked at a software company primarily as "chief inspiration officer" and, as of this writing, a Texas Baptist church lists him as an associate pastor.

Turner joined Trump's first administration in 2019 as head of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council. As head of Housing and Urban Development, Turner would be responsible for a broad agency that enforces housing laws and oversees national policy and programs that address housing needs through, among other avenues, mortgage insurance programs.

Sean Duffy — Secretary of Transportation

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Former Fox Business host and former Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy doesn't have much transportation experience, but would find himself in charge of the nation's transportation safety and infrastructure if confirmed. He'll inherit a department dealing with Boeing's quality control problems, and if the recent past is any indication, could face striking airline or railroad workers.

During his time in Congress from 2011 to 2019, Duffy did serve on the House Budget Committee, which could come into play when allocating funds for infrastructure projects. Elon Musk, CEO of electric vehicle maker Tesla and founder of the tunnel infrastructure firm The Boring Co., could stand to benefit from Duffy's decisions.

Chris Wright — Secretary of Energy

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Chris Wright is the founder and CEO of the fracking company Liberty Energy, and a board member at the nuclear energy startup Oklo and the mining royalties company EMX Royalty. If confirmed, he'll lead the Department of Energy, in charge of the nation's nuclear technology, energy infrastructure and national laboratories. He'll also serve on the newly created National Energy Council alongside Interior Secretary nominee Doug Burgum.

Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, Wright has claimed it will do just as much good as it does bad. That position is extreme, even among oil executives — ExxonMobil's CEO said the United States should stay in the Paris Climate Agreement, something Trump wants out of.

Linda McMahon — Secretary of Education

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Linda McMahon co-founded the WWE with her husband, Vince McMahon, and transformed the pro-wrestling outfit into a media empire before she ran for U.S. Senate in Connecticut, losing twice. During Trump's first term, she served as the head of the Small Business Administration but stepped down in 2019 to lead America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC, and the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank. McMahon also has served as co-chair of Trump's 2024 transition team and, according to Forbes, helped fund Trump's infamous Madison Square Garden rally. 

McMahon supports charter schools and federally subsidizing tuition vouchers for private schools, but her experience with education policy is limited to about a year serving on the Connecticut Board of Education. However, experience may not be required —Trump campaigned on abolishing the Education Department. That would likely require an act of Congress and a lot of political maneuvering, but it could leave McMahon the task of sorting out how to shut down the department she was tasked to run.

Doug Collins — Secretary of Veterans Affairs

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Former Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, an Air Force Reserve chaplain, is Trump's choice to lead the federal department in charge of veterans benefits, including the VA medical system. Collins served two years as a Navy chaplain in the 1980s before joining the Air Force Reserve after the 9/11 attacks. He was elected to the Georgia state House in 2007 before being elected to Congress in 2012. In 2020, he ran for Senate alongside Kelly Loeffler and Raphael Warnock but did not advance to the runoff.

In Congress, Collins served as one of Trump's staunchest defenders during his first impeachment trial, consistently voted to provide more benefits to veterans while in Congress and proved a staunch opponent of abortion, earning an A+ from the anti-abortion advocacy group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

Kristi Noem — Secretary of Homeland Security

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Since South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem first won a seat in the South Dakota House of Representatives in 2006, she's been on a steady political ascent. She was elected governor in 2018 after four terms in the U.S. House, and was considered a potential vice-presidential running mate for Trump in 2024.

The Department of Homeland Security oversees many areas of U.S. security, including counterterrorism and border security. Noem has a long history of hard-line immigration stances; in 2017 she supported Trump's "Muslim ban," saying she agreed with putting a temporary pause on accepting refugees from "terrorist-held areas." In 2021, she announced she would be sending South Dakota National Guard troops to Texas in response to "illegal aliens crossing the unsecured border." She has repeatedly referred to the U.S.-Mexico border as a "warzone."

The DHS also coordinates, in part, the relationship between the federal government and tribal governments. Noem has a tenuous relationship with South Dakota Indigenous tribes, all nine of whom eventually voted to bar her from tribal land after she claimed tribal leaders benefitted from drug cartel activity coming across the southern border, and supported legislation targeting demonstrations against the Keystone Pipeline.

Susie Wiles — Chief of Staff

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Susie Wiles will become the first woman to serve as chief of staff when Trump takes office in January 2025, but she has been the mastermind behind numerous campaigns since she first worked as a campaign scheduler for Ronald Reagan's successful 1980 bid for president. She does not require Senate confirmation.

She's a self-described moderate Republican, but her reach in Washington is extensive, often rising above partisan divides. 

"Susie Wiles just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history, and was an integral part of both my 2016 and 2020 successful campaigns," Trump said in a statement when he announced her as his pick to run day-to-day White House operations. After Trump lost the election in 2020, she stepped into the role as CEO of Trump's leadership PAC, Save America.

Lee Zeldin — Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

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After Trump announced Lee Zeldin as his pick for the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Zeldin said in an interview with Fox News that on "Day 1 and the first 100 days, we have the opportunity to roll back regulations that are forcing businesses to be able to struggle, they're forced to cut costs, internally, they are moving overseas all together."

The League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group, rated the former congressman's voting record on environmental issues at 14%, with 32 pro-environment votes and 203 anti-environment votes. While running for governor of New York in 2022, he campaigned for the "safe extraction of natural resources," new pipelines and suspending the gas tax in order to lower energy costs for New Yorkers.

"As EPA Administrator, we will restore American energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, make the United States the global leader of Artificial Intelligence advancement, and slash the red tape holding back American workers from upward economic mobility," Zeldin said in a statement to the New York Post. "We will accomplish all this while conserving our environment, protecting access to clean air and water, and keeping the American people healthy."

Tulsi Gabbard — Director of National Intelligence

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Trump chose Tulsi Gabbard — an elected Democrat who left the party in 2022 to become an independent before officially becoming a Republican in 2024 — to serve as director of national intelligence. The DNI heads the U.S. Intelligence Community, which includes both the CIA and the FBI.

While she does not have the typical intelligence experience of her predecessors, she does have an extensive military service history. While serving as a state representative for Hawaii (she was the youngest ever elected there, at age 21), she enlisted in the Hawaii National Guard in 2003 and deployed to Iraq in 2004, working in a medical unit, and Kuwait in 2008, training counterterrorism units. She currently serves as lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.

She was also the first Samoan-American member of Congress and the first Hindu elected to Congress, using her Bhagavad Gita to take her oath of office in 2013.

In the lead up to her Senate confirmation as DNI, she has faced strong backlash from Democrats who claim she is "compromised" and an asset of Russia.

Jamieson Greer — U.S. Trade Representative

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The U.S. trade representative is responsible for negotiating trade deals and disputes with foreign governments — an important middleman for a president-elect who has promised sweeping tariffs on international products.

If he's confirmed by the Senate, the job will fall to Jamieson Greer, an attorney specializing in international trade law who served as chief of staff to Trump's former trade representative Robert Lighthizer.

Elise Stefanik — U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.

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Elise Stefanik got her start on Capitol Hill as a staff assistant for the domestic policy council in the George W. Bush administration. By the time she turned 22, Bush's director of domestic policy, Karl Zinsmeister, had hired Stefanik as his special assistant.

As a U.S. representative from northern New York since 2015, Stefanik has evolved from a moderate Republican to a loyal Trump supporter known for her pro-Israel beliefs. After her questioning of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about antisemitism on college campuses in 2023, the Zionist Organization of America gave her a "Defender of Israel Award."

"The work ahead is immense as we see antisemitism skyrocketing coupled with four years of catastrophically weak U.S. leadership that significantly weakened our national security and diminished our standing in the eyes of both allies and adversaries," Stefanik said in a statement to the New York Post upon accepting Trump's nomination.

Kelly Loeffler — Administrator of the Small Business Administration

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Former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler had a background in business when she was appointed to the Senate in 2019. She was CEO of the cryptocurrency company Bakkt, a subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange, which is owned by her husband, Jeff Sprecher. Now, she's been tapped to be in charge of the Small Business Administration, which provides "counseling, capital, and contracting expertise" for small businesses across the country.

In the Senate, Loeffler came under fire for selling $20 million worth of stock immediately after attending a January 2020 closed-door briefing about the new coronavirus, and she was one of the key figures in Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. She ran for reelection in 2020, but lost to the Rev. Raphael Warnock. Since then, Loeffler and her husband have been prominent Trump donors and served as co-chair of his inaugural committee.

Russell Vought — Director of the Office of Management and Budget

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Russell Vought is best known as the head of the lobbying branch of The Heritage Foundation and a leading adviser for Project 2025, earning him the media moniker "Project 2025 architect." He previously led the Office of Management and Budget for two years during Trump's first term.

If his reappointment is approved by the Senate, Vought will oversee the implementation of Trump's vision across the executive branch.

A self-described Christian nationalist, he wrote in Newsweek in March 2021 that Christian nationalism "is a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society."

John Ratcliffe — Director of the CIA

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John Ratcliffe, Trump's pick for the director of national intelligence in both 2019 and 2020 (Trump withdrew the first nomination), has faced criticism primarily for exaggerating parts of his resume and for his outspoken support for Trump (skeptics feared he would politicize the position). He has previously worked as an attorney, a Texas congressman, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas under President George W. Bush and the mayor of a small town near Dallas. As Trump's pick for director of the CIA, he is set to manage the agency and liaison relationships with foreign services.

As DNI in 2020, Ratcliffe wrote in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, saying: "The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically." In 2020, he also declassified unverified Russian disinformation in what The New York Times called "a bid to help Mr. Trump politically."

Stephen Miran — Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers

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On Dec. 22, 2024, Trump announced Stephen Miran as his pick to serve as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. The Harvard grad previously served as a senior adviser for economic policy at the Department of the Treasury from 2020 to 2021. As of this writing, Miran is a senior strategist at a New York hedge fund and an economics fellow for the Manhattan Institute.

He is an outspoken critic of President Joe Biden's (and Democrats', in general) economic policy, particularly regarding inflation, writing in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal in 2022 that the Inflation Reduction Act would "hamstring business with more rules, taxes and red tape, making the supply-demand imbalance even worse." He has made the claim for more political oversight of the Federal Reserve, arguing that "the Fed has never been truly isolated from the rest of government."

Michael Kratsios — Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy

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Michael Kratsios will return to the White House if confirmed by the Senate after previously serving as the U.S. chief technology officer during Trump's first term. During his tenure, he focused heavily on artificial intelligence development and coordination — including the establishment of the National AI Initiative Office — and a $1 billion project that established a network of AI and quantum research institutes across the U.S.

Under his leadership, the U.S. developed a set of regulatory principles to govern AI development; Kratsios wrote in 2020 that AI innovation should reflect "American values" and that deciding between emerging technology and "following our moral compass" was a false choice.

Prior to his work as CTO, he worked in the Pentagon as the acting undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. 

Other Significant Roles — Not in Cabinet

Kash Patel — Director of the FBI

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The first step to putting Kash Patel in charge of the FBI was forcing out the current director, Christopher Wray, before his 10-year term ended in 2027. However, the Senate, which will need to confirm Patel, may take issue with previous statements from Patel promising to "come after the media" and his support of "deep state" conspiracy theories.

During the first Trump administration, Patel worked with Rep. Devin Nunes, at the time the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, to author the controversial Nunes memo accusing the FBI of inappropriately obtaining a secret warrant to surveil a Trump aide, Carter Page. From there, he climbed the ranks, sitting on Trump's National Security Council and serving as acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller's chief of staff.

Trump reportedly wanted to appoint Patel deputy head of the FBI in 2019, but then-Attorney General Bill Barr axed the plan. Advisers from the first Trump administration said Trump wanted Patel to root out employees who were not loyal enough.

Mehmet Oz — Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

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Dr. Mehmet Oz has been an icon of American TV since he got his start as a regular guest on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2004. His Republican leanings were put in the spotlight when he invited Trump onto his show ahead of the 2016 election; he's been a self-described "moderate Republican" since at least 2007.

Trump endorsed him when he ran for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022, but he ultimately lost to Democrat John Fetterman.

As the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — which includes the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as "Obamacare" — Oz would be responsible for an agency that provides health coverage to more than 160 million people.

Karoline Leavitt — Press Secretary

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When Trump assumes office in January 2025, Karoline Leavitt, 27, will become the youngest national press secretary ever. Her appointment does not require Senate confirmation. She began working in the White House the summer before her senior year in college as an intern in the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence. After she graduated in 2019, she worked as assistant press secretary to Kayleigh McEnany.

She ran her own congressional campaign in 2022, winning the Republican primary before losing to Democrat Chris Pappas in the general election. "My goal, as a Generation Z conservative, is to speak that truth and bring people to our side of the aisle," she said at a campaign event.

Leavitt joined the Trump presidential campaign as press secretary in January 2024. Four days after giving birth to her son in July 2024, she was back on TV, later saying she was inspired to return after seeing Trump's near-assassination. "The president literally put his life on the line to win this election. The least I could do is get back to work quickly," she said in a profile for The Conservateur. 

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — Department of Government Efficiency

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On Nov. 12, 2024, Trump announced the creation of the Department of Governmental Efficiency led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, ultra-wealthy businessmen with strong Trump connections. Musk, by far the richest man in the world, is the owner of Tesla, SpaceX and the social media site X. Despite claiming in March 2024 that he would not donate to either candidate in the presidential election, Musk appeared at Trump campaign events and spent more than $200 million to elect the former president, according to campaign finance data. 

Ramaswamy, who made his money by founding the pharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences in 2014, ran a primary challenge to Trump before endorsing him after the Iowa primary. 

Despite the official-sounding name, the project will operate outside of the federal government and only provide recommendations, meaning neither men require Senate confirmation. Musk and Ramaswamy announced a goal of cutting annual spending by $2 trillion — roughly 30% of the total yearly spending from 2024 — and eliminating 75% of all governmental jobs by July 4, 2026. The two have also announced a laundry list of federal programs they want to close, including the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and the Department of Education, and have said they want to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Withdrawn

Matt Gaetz — Attorney General

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When Trump announced Matt Gaetz as his pick for attorney general on Nov. 13, 2024, Gaetz resigned his position as a U.S. representative from Florida. However, on Nov. 21, 2024, Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration for attorney general, writing on X that his confirmation was becoming "a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition."

He graduated from William & Mary Law School in 2007 and briefly practiced private law before he won a seat in the Florida House of Representatives in 2010 at age 27. It's unclear whether he continued to practice law after he was elected, but as of this writing, he has kept his law license active in Florida.

Known as a Trump loyalist (GQ magazine called him the "Trumpiest congressman," which he considers a badge of honor) and a polarizing force on Capitol Hill (several Republican colleagues expressed concern over his nomination), his nomination brought to a close an investigation by the House Ethics Committee into sexual misconduct allegations. The committee later released a report on its findings, writing that Gaetz paid multiple women and a 17-year-old girl for sex and used drugs.