Trump is expected to make Matt Gaetz his attorney general and Marco Rubio his secretary of state, and place Tulsi Gabbard, Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller in key posts.
Topline
President-elect Donald Trump selected Brendan Carr to chair the Federal Communications Commission on Sunday, and Apollo Global Management CEO Mark Rowan and former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh have reportedly joined a contentious race for treasury secretary.Key Facts
Trump has chosen people for a handful of Senate-confirmed Cabinet-level jobs, and he’s picked a White House chief of staff, a communications director and a national security adviser, among the key roles that don’t require confirmation.
The president-elect still hasn’t chosen a treasury secretary.
Trump has announced a number of surprising and controversial picks, including former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., for attorney general, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth for Defense secretary, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, for director of national intelligence, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services secretary.
Treasury Secretary: Unclear
Trump hasn’t nominated anyone yet, but Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan and former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh have emerged in recent days as potential picks. Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and hedge fund executive Scott Bessent—who spoke recently with Forbes—have long been seen as the top choices, and are still in the mix, but Trump has reportedly grown frustrated with Lutnick’s lobbying for the job. Elon Musk appeared to support Lutnick over Bessent, saying Bessent would be a “business-as-usual choice” whereas Lutnick “will actually enact change.” Trump is leaning toward someone with Wall Street experience, Bloomberg reported Monday. Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., former ambassador to Japan under Trump, is also on the speculative short list, along with former Trump-era U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and hedge fund executive Scott Bessent.Fcc Chair: Brendan Carr
Trump named Brendan Carr to chair the Federal Communications Commission on Sunday. Carr has served as one of the FCC’s five commissioners since 2017, when Trump first appointed him to the agency. He’s known as a critic of big tech companies, writing a chapter of the controversial Project 2025 agenda—which Trump has broadly disavowed—that argued the FCC should narrow the immunity enjoyed by tech platforms and require companies to be transparent about their content moderation decisions. He’s also used his platform at the FCC to back billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk. He’ll take over the FCC as Trump pushes the agency to revoke the licenses of broadcast TV stations whose coverage he claims is unfair—though that could be very difficult in practice.Energy Secretary: Chris Wright
Chris Wright, chief executive of the oilfield services group Liberty Energy, was named Trump’s nominee for secretary of energy. Wright has argued against climate change’s role in causing extreme weather events, saying in a video posted to LinkedIn last year “there is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.” He later disputed he was “[fighting] climate science,” despite saying the claims he made were “correct.”White House Staff Secretary: William Scharf
Trump tapped William Scharf to be an assistant to the president and the White House Staff Secretary. Scharf, who ran in the Republican primary in the race for Missouri’s attorney general, was part of Trump’s legal team that successfully argued he has immunity from official acts he took during his first term. He is a former assistant U.S. attorney who worked under former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens’ administration between 2018 and Greitens’ resignation in early 2019.White House Press Secretary: Karoline Leavitt
Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, will serve as White House Press Secretary once the president-elect assumes his office. Leavitt, 27, was an assistant press secretary during Trump’s first presidency. She also won the Republican primary in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District in 2022, becoming the second Gen Z candidate to win a House primary.White House Communications Director: Steven Cheung
Trump picked his campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, to serve as his communications director at the White House. Cheung was the director of communications for the president-elect’s 2024 presidential campaign and served as director of strategic response during Trump’s last term, after working in communications for the Ultimate Fighting Championship previously.Health And Human Services Secretary: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department, making good on his promise to give Kennedy broad leeway over public health decisions. Kennedy, who ran for the Democratic nomination then as an independent candidate before dropping out and endorsing Trump, espouses debunked views on public health—including skepticism about the efficacy of childhood vaccines and the Covid-19 vaccine. He has also advocated for removing fluoride from public water, an idea Trump said he as open to. As HHS secretary, Kennedy would oversee 13 public health-related agencies, and has expressed plans to upend many of them, telling an audience at a conference in November he would halt infectious disease studies at the National Institutes of Health if given a role in the Trump administration. “I’m going to say to NIH scientists, God bless you all . . . thank you for your public service,” NBC reported. The appointment is another surprise pick by Trump, whose transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick told CNN late last month Kennedy wouldn’t be in charge of HHS. The selection of Kennedy drew criticism from many Democrats, and some Republicans expressed wariness about the pick. Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence spoke against Kennedy as the pick to lead HHS in a statement Friday and urged Senate Republicans to reject the nomination, citing Kennedy’s support of abortion rights and saying, “If confirmed, RFK, Jr. would be the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history.”Interior Secretary: Doug Burgum (and Head Of New National Energy Council)
Trump plans to nominate North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as secretary of the interior, he said at an event Thursday. If confirmed by the Senate, he’ll be responsible for managing vast swaths of federally owned land, administering national parks and handling oil and gas drilling on federal property—which Trump has vowed to ramp up. Trump also tapped Burgum as chairman of the new National Energy Council, which will cut down on regulations and “oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE,” according to Trump. The position will also provide Burgum a seat on the National Security Council. First elected North Dakota governor in 2016, Burgum briefly ran against Trump in the 2024 GOP primaries, but dropped out before the Iowa caucuses and endorsed Trump. A tech executive and investor by trade, Burgum previously ran Great Plains Software, remaining at the company after it was acquired by Microsoft.
