Subject to Change: The Trump Cabinet So Far
White House Butlers Ron Guy, left, and Von Everett, set the table in the Cabinet Room of the White House, prior to a working lunch with Spanish President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Oct. 13, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
As President-elect Donald Trump continues to fill out his administration, much attention is being paid to his cabinet level and senior staffing positions. Traditionally, the cabinet is the 15 heads of executive departments plus the vice president, chief of staff, and select others. The New York Times has a tracking list going of who has been named, also divided by which positions require a senate confirmation hearing to fill.
From the New York Times:
Senate confirmation required
8 of 24 announcedMarco Rubio
Secretary of state
announced
A Florida senator who was first elected in 2010 as part of a new generation of conservative Tea Party leaders, Mr. Rubio was ridiculed by Mr. Trump as “Little Marco” when they competed for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Read more ›Matt Gaetz
Attorney general
announced
Mr. Gaetz, a Florida Republican congressman who in 2023 successfully pushed to oust Kevin McCarthy from his post as speaker of the House, is a fierce ally of Mr. Trump. He was the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation that concluded in 2023 when the Biden Justice Department declined to bring charges, and he is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for sexual misconduct. Read more ›Pete Hegseth
Defense secretary
announced
Mr. Hegseth is a Fox News host and a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read more ›
Kristi Noem
Homeland security secretary
announced
Ms. Noem, the governor of South Dakota, is a Trump loyalist who was once seen as a potential candidate for vice president. Read more ›John Ratcliffe
C.I.A. director
announced
Mr. Ratcliffe is a former Texas congressman who served as director of national intelligence during Mr. Trump’s first term. Read more ›Tulsi Gabbard
Director of national intelligence
announced
A former Democratic House member who ran for president in 2020 and then left the party, Ms. Gabbard was briefly considered by Mr. Trump as a possible running mate. She is a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve and served in Iraq. Read more ›Lee Zeldin
E.P.A. administrator
announced
A former congressman from Long Island who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022, Mr. Zeldin is an avid supporter of Mr. Trump who voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election. During Mr. Zeldin’s tenure in the House of Representatives, he voted against clean water legislation at least a dozen times and clean air legislation at least half a dozen times, according to a scorecard from the League of Conservation Voters. Read more ›Elise Stefanik
U.N. ambassador
announced
Ms. Stefanik, who represents an upstate New York district in the House and is a member of the Republican leadership in the chamber, has been a vocal supporter of Mr. Trump. She emerged as a key ally during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment proceeding. She has minimal experience in foreign policy and national security. Read more ›No confirmation required
11 namedJD Vance
Vice president
named
Mr. Vance, a former venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, is a relative political newcomer. He rose to fame in 2016 after the publication of “Hillbilly Elegy,” his best-selling memoir about his experiences growing up in Appalachia. He previously criticized Mr. Trump as “reprehensible,” but won Mr. Trump’s backing when he ran successfully for Senate in 2022 by embracing Mr. Trump’s politics and his lies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Read more ›Susie Wiles
Chief of staff
named
Ms. Wiles, the political tactician who managed Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, has worked in Republican campaigns and administrations, at both the federal and state levels, since the Reagan era. She was the only campaign manager to survive an entire campaign working for Mr. Trump, and will be the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff. Read more ›James Blair
Deputy chief of staff
named
Mr. Blair will join the White House as deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs. He was the political director of the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee during the 2024 election cycle.Taylor Budowich
Deputy chief of staff
named
Mr. Budowich joined the Trump campaign after running a pro-Trump super PAC called MAGA Inc. He will be in charge of communications and personnel in the Trump White House.Stephen Miller
Deputy chief of staff
named
Mr. Miller is an immigration hard-liner who was an influential aide during Mr. Trump’s first term. He traveled with Mr. Trump during the campaign and encouraged him to elevate immigration as the top issue in the closing weeks of the race. He returns to the White House as homeland security adviser and deputy chief of staff for policy. Read more ›Dan Scavino
Deputy chief of staff
named
Mr. Scavino, one of the president-elect’s closest advisers, served as director of social media and deputy chief of staff for communications during the first Trump administration.Thomas Homan
Border czar
named
Mr. Homan, who served as a senior immigration official in Mr. Trump’s first administration, will manage Mr. Trump’s campaign promise of widespread deportations of undocumented immigrants and the tightening of measures that allow some of them to stay in the country legally. He has decades of experience in immigration enforcement. Read more ›Michael Waltz
National security adviser
named
A former Green Beret and current Florida congressman, Mr. Waltz is widely regarded on Capitol Hill as a hawk on China and Iran. He served multiple combat tours in Afghanistan and opposed President Biden’s withdrawal of troops from the country. Read more ›Bill McGinley
White House counsel
named
Mr. McGinley served as a cabinet secretary during Mr. Trump’s first term. A vocal supporter of Mr. Trump, he was favored by allies who supported more aggressive lawyers than some who had worked for Mr. Trump in the past. Read more ›Elon Musk
In charge of government efficiency effort
named
Mr. Musk — owner of SpaceX, Tesla and the social network X, among other companies — is the world’s richest person. Once a critic of Mr. Trump, he has risen to a position of extraordinary influence in the president-elect’s orbit. Read more ›Vivek Ramaswamy
In charge of government efficiency effort
named
An entrepreneur and political newcomer, Mr. Ramaswamy became a fervent Trump acolyte after challenging him for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Read more ›Transition officials
2 namedHoward Lutnick
Transition co-chair
namedMr. Lutnick is the chairman and chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services firm. A longtime registered Democrat, he has said that the party moved away from his interests and that he is now a Republican. He donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inauguration in 2017 and appeared on an episode of “The Apprentice” while Mr. Trump was the show’s host. He has no known experience in the federal government. Read more ›
Linda McMahon
Transition co-chair
named
Ms. McMahon is a major donor to Mr. Trump, a onetime Senate candidate from Connecticut and a former executive of a professional wrestling empire that she founded with her husband. She served in Mr. Trump’s first cabinet as the head of the Small Business Administration. Read more ›
Congratulations q-anon, you managed to get a person under investigating for trafficking a minor across state lines made attorney general. That was your goal, right?
Note the actual question under the law is whether or not he actually _paid_ for her to cross state lines, which would be the crime. It does not appear disputed that he was ‘dating’ a 17-year-old. In 2019. At the age of 37. While he was in Congress, and married. Nor does it seem under dispute the sheer amount of prostitutes he’s hired.
Maybe he’ll finally get that pardon he keeps asking for.
Incidentally, everyone keeps talking about how the House Committee lost jurisdiction. Yeah, well…everyone knows that report is going to leak, right?Report
Meanwhile, John Ratcliffe, who I assume is the Pocahontas villain until proven otherwise, not only seems to believe in q-anon, but is a very ardent ‘UFO-declassification’ guy, is being appointed CIA director.
It sure is weird how we keep getting these UFO guys in the government, but it turns out they never release anything. Seriously, all we keep learning is that ‘Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena’, as the military calls them, get observed all the fricking time, and that is, apparently, it. We literally had a hearing yesterday:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/amandakooser/2024/11/14/congressional-ufo-hearing-features-eye-opening-uap-claims/
The conclusion always seems to be ‘Yeah, we keep observing stuff flying in complete violation of know aircraft engineering or even the laws of physics, damned if we know, but we’re pretty sure people aren’t just hallucinating, and we’re also pretty sure it’s not aliens’. (If anyone wants my opinion, it’s going to turn out there is some natural phenomenon that we literally do not know exists. For the longest time, we disbelieved in ball lighting too, and we still have no good explanation of what it is. It’s going to be something like that.)
Anyway, John Ratcliffe, who in actual history was nowhere near as evil as Disney made him out to be in Pocahontas, was opposed by Democrats back in 2020 when he was nominated as Director of National Intelligence. Not cause of the UFO stuff, but because he had little experience in intelligence and was extremely partisan as a politician.Report
I think like anti-matter is the opposite of matter and when they meet, they have a very energetic reaction. This is going to be the anti-cabinet.
Let’s get people who do not like the department to run the department, then watch the “energetic reaction”.
Now Trump needs to add Linda McMahon as Commerce Secretary, so she can setup the square-circle in the Senate for those confirmation slugfests.Report
More on Pete Hegseth:
“Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault as part of a nondisclosure agreement, though he maintained that their encounter was consensual, according to a statement from his lawyer Saturday and other documents obtained by The Washington Post.
Hegseth’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, said that Hegseth was “visibly intoxicated” at the time of the incident, and maintained that police who were contacted a few days after the encounter by the woman concluded “the Complainant had been the aggressor in the encounter.” Police have not confirmed that assertion.
Hegseth agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to the woman because he feared that revelation of the matter “would result in his immediate termination from Fox,” where he works as a host, the statement said.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/16/pete-hegseth-sexual-assault-accuser-paid/Report