Who might make up Trump’s Cabinet

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Donald Trump didn’t engage in formal conversations about a potential Cabinet in the run-up to his election. But that didn’t stop him from spitballing potential contenders during his frequent plane rides to campaign events, or when he is impressed by one of his allies on television.

“He would be great at this,” or “She would be great at that,” Trump has said on recent occasions while watching surrogates on television, according to a person with knowledge of his comments who was granted anonymity to speak freely. And like with his monthslong search for a running mate, the TV circuit became an important venue for the aggressive jockeying underway by allies eager to secure a Cabinet job. Some candidates for the Cabinet have even hired their own public relations teams.

Trump’s first Cabinet was confirmed at a slow pace, due to Democrats slow-walking the process, only to see high turnover in those top jobs during his four years in office.

This is POLITICO’s latest snapshot of the leading contenders for Trump’s top jobs.

Secretary of State

Trump’s first term demonstrated how secretaries of State can crumble — or thrive — as the nation’s top foreign policy official.

Trump had a frosty relationship with his first secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, slowly shutting him out of U.S. policymaking before firing him in front of the world on social media. But Tillerson’s replacement, Mike Pompeo, became one of Trump’s most trusted advisers and one who could find another job in a second administration.

Trump’s pick for secretary of State will be closely watched across Europe after years of his taunts about distancing the U.S. from NATO and his eagerness to wind down military support for Ukraine. It will also serve as a measure of how much power the Russia hawks in the GOP still have.

Ric Grenell

Grenell, a blunt and outspoken MAGA advocate, emerged from the Trump administration as one of the former president’s top diplomatic prizefighters. He served as U.S. ambassador to Germany, where he roiled the German diplomatic establishment, and then served as acting director of national intelligence — becoming the first openly gay Cabinet secretary in U.S. history. He has cemented himself as one of the most influential advisers on foreign policy issues in Trump’s orbit — Trump refers to him as “my envoy” — and many GOP experts consider him to be a top contender for either secretary of State or national security adviser. Right now, he’s a senior adviser to the Protecting America Initiative, a nonprofit focused on combating the influence of the Chinese government.

Bill Hagerty

The Tennessee senator is one of the establishment Republicans who turned to the MAGA movement after Trump won in 2016. A George H.W. Bush administration veteran and early supporter of Jeb Bush, Hagerty went on to serve as Trump’s ambassador to Japan before running for Senate in 2020. Hagerty has used his position on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee to stake out a reputation as a staunch China hawk. He was also among a small number of senators who voted against the national security aid package passed earlier this year with increased funding for Ukraine. He said at the time it was because the package failed to address border security.

Robert O’Brien

O’Brien stands out as the only one of Trump’s four national security advisers who hasn’t had a high-profile falling out with the former president. O’Brien served as Trump’s special envoy for hostage affairs from 2018 to 2019, where he entered the MAGA spotlight in a bizarre chapter of Trump-era diplomacy: He helped free U.S. rapper A$AP Rocky from Swedish custody after an alleged brawl in Stockholm. (Trump intervened in the case, reportedly threatening a trade war with Sweden over the matter.) O’Brien would be welcomed in Brussels and Kyiv and is seen as a big supporter of NATO and Ukraine in the Republican Party.

Marco Rubio

Rubio is a former Trump opponent-turned-supporter with hardline views on many foreign policy issues, especially Cuba and Iran. Still, the Florida senator worked with Democrats on legislation that makes it harder for Trump to quit NATO. He has also tried to seem supportive of Ukraine without breaking entirely with Trump’s position that Kyiv must negotiate with Moscow to end the war. Rubio would sail through a GOP-controlled Senate and would likely pick up a few Democratic votes along the way. The big question is whether Trump would see him as too weak to be America’s chief diplomat.

Mike Waltz

Waltz, a U.S. Army veteran and former Green Beret, is one of the most strident China hawks in Congress and has supported U.S. aid to Ukraine while seeking to boost oversight of taxpayer funding for Kyiv’s war efforts. He was also at the vanguard of the Republican backlash over President Joe Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal. Waltz, a Florida representative, has emerged in GOP circles as a potential contender for a top national security post in a second Trump term, including secretary of State, secretary of Defense or a senior intelligence agency posting.

Treasury Secretary

Voters care about few things more than the economy, and Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary would be advancing an agenda that shapes an issue central to his legacy.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin proved to be among Trump’s most durable Cabinet secretaries in an administration marred by frequent turnover in the top jobs.

Now the next secretary will steer the White House through key fiscal battles set to dominate Washington in the coming year: a potentially bruising debt ceiling fight and negotiations over the expiring 2017 Republican tax law.

Trump’s next picks for Treasury secretary and other key economic posts will be closely watched for whether he might advance any of the populist ideas he espoused during the campaign — such as a new suite of tariffs of 20 percent on most imports — or govern as a more traditional, business-friendly Republican.

Business leaders, Wall Street executives and congressional Republicans have embraced Trump’s calls to slash regulations and taxes on companies, even as they disagree with his protectionist trade policies.

Howard Lutnick

Lutnick leads the investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald and was personally tapped by Trump to lead his transition alongside Linda McMahon. Trump is close with Lutnick, who once appeared on “The Apprentice,” has given more than $10 million to the former president’s campaign and has raised more than $75 million for the campaign overall. However, he’s also been criticized for mixing his business interests with his official work for Trump’s transition — something he has denied commingling.

Robert Lighthizer

As Trump’s top trade official during his first term, Lighthizer helped upend global trade and Republican orthodoxy on the issue. Lighthizer has remained close with Trump and is widely seen as a leading contender for a top economic post, especially as Trump vows to go even bigger on tariffs in a second term.

Jay Clayton

Clayton, a veteran Wall Street and corporate lawyer, was Trump’s chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission during his term. He was confirmed by the Senate on a 61-37 vote in 2017. His selection to lead Treasury could reassure businesses worried about the volatility of a second Trump administration or the populist ideas the former president floated on the campaign trail like massive new tariffs.

Larry Kudlow

The longtime TV financial analyst was director of Trump’s National Economic Council and a major face of the White House’s economic response to Covid. Kudlow has since served as vice chair of America First Policy Institute, an outside group set up to promote Trump’s policies and prepare for a second administration.

John Paulson

The prominent billionaire financier is a Trump ally and has backed him since 2016. Bloomberg reported earlier this year that Trump had floated Paulson in private conversations as a potential Treasury secretary in a second term.

Scott Bessent

The hedge fund manager and Trump fundraiser who has been an unofficial adviser to the campaign is widely seen as in the mix for a Cabinet position. Trump has publicly praised Bessent’s Wall Street prognostications, and he’s also an ally of GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance.

Bill Hagerty

Like Lighthizer, the Tennessee senator is one of the rare Trump administration figures to still be close to his old boss and enjoys respect from both parties on Capitol Hill. The Tennessean was held in high regard for his work as ambassador to Japan under Trump, where he helped negotiate an updated trade deal with Tokyo and smoothed over Trump’s foreign policy declarations for one of the U.S.’s closest allies. He is a frontrunner for a number of Cabinet posts, from USTR to Commerce, State or even Treasury, and would be likely to win confirmation to any of them.

Defense Secretary

The secretary of Defense under Trump will need to spend time defending his mostly isolationist worldview against the national security establishment and the department’s 2 million-plus employees.

It’s also a role where loyalty will be important since the person in the job is often persuasive with the public and members of both parties.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, once a darling within Trump’s Cabinet, quietly broke with the president on a range of strategic decisions, ranging from Trump’s desire for a Space Force, a ban on transgender servicemembers and deploying thousands of troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. When he ultimately announced his resignation in 2018, he did so by publicly disagreeing with Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria.

Mattis later criticized Trump’s decision to deploy the U.S. military to police American streets after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, saying the administration was making a “mockery of the Constitution.”

Trump has subsequently expressed anger at Mattis and his replacement, Mark Esper, who he says didn’t follow his policy directives. As a result, he’ll likely look for someone who he knows beforehand will be committed to rolling back things like Biden-era personnel policies centered on promoting racial and gender diversity in the armed forces.

Mike Waltz

The retired National Guard Special Forces colonel, with experience in the Pentagon and the White House, has been a Trump adviser on national security issues and said he is open to becoming Defense secretary. Elected to the House representing Florida in 2018, Waltz is the first Green Beret to serve in Congress. He embodies two qualities Trump values: media presence and loyalty. The frequent Fox News guest has defended Trump on key issues, including his stance on Ukraine, allegations of political activities at Arlington National Cemetery and charges related to hush money paid to a porn star.

Tom Cotton

The Arkansas senator was under consideration to be Trump’s first Defense secretary before Mattis was ultimately picked. A former Army infantry officer and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, Cotton was an early Trump supporter and advised him during his first presidency. As a sharp-tongued member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Cotton recently hinted how he’d lead when he called for a more robust and innovative Pentagon.

Mike Pompeo

Pompeo, a former House member and West Point graduate, was a fixture in national security policy during Trump’s presidency as head of the CIA and later as secretary of State. Though he weighed a presidential bid of his own in 2024, Pompeo has been a reliable defender of Trump and advocate of his foreign policy.

Strong support for Israel and a harder line on Iran were hallmarks of Pompeo’s tenure at the State Department and would likely be key to a Pompeo-led Pentagon. Although they couldn’t stop his confirmation, Senate Democrats are likely to loudly oppose his nomination.

Attorney General

Picking the nation’s next attorney general is one of Trump’s biggest prizes in winning back the White House. The attorney general will have the power to help Trump accomplish two of his top legal objectives: getting rid of the federal criminal cases against him and prosecuting his enemies.

The president-elect is facing an active federal criminal prosecution and a separate dismissed federal criminal case that special counsel Jack Smith is seeking to reinstate. One of Trump’s first acts of business is sure to be ordering his Justice Department to make sure both of these cases come to an end.

Trump is also charged in a state-level criminal case in Georgia and is due to be sentenced for his hush-money conviction in Manhattan. While the attorney general won’t oversee those matters, it’s almost certain the cases would be put on hold until after Trump leaves office.

Trump has spoken frequently about his other objective: using the Justice Department to exact revenge on his perceived enemies.

Jeff Clark

Clark is perhaps best known for carrying out a pressure campaign to try to prompt Justice Department officials to prevent the transfer of power after Trump lost the 2020 election. For that, a disciplinary panel has recommended Clark’s law license be suspended for two years, and he has been indicted alongside Trump in Georgia for trying to overturn the election results. Nevertheless, Clark’s loyalty and deference make him widely considered to be a candidate for a top Justice Department job in a second Trump administration. He briefly served as acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division. He’s now a senior fellow and litigation director at the Center for Renewing America, a conservative Washington-based think tank.

Mike Lee

Initially a Trump skeptic, the Utah lawmaker has become one of Trump’s most prominent allies in the Senate. The former president has considered elevating Lee before. In 2018, Trump interviewed Lee about joining Samuel Alito, whom Lee once clerked for on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, on the Supreme Court. Lee also worked to advance schemes to help keep Trump in power following the 2020 election and has been a vocal critic of the criminal cases against Trump. Those close to Trump believe Lee would be a highly desirable choice for attorney general.

John Ratcliffe

One of Trump’s staunchest allies, Ratcliffe earned the former president’s admiration during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, when the then-Texas representative became one of the sharpest critics of Robert Mueller’s probe. Questions about whether he had embellished his resume scuttled his bid to become the country’s top intelligence official the first time Trump nominated him in 2019, but Ratcliffe ultimately won Senate confirmation for the job the following year. Ratcliffe was believed to have used the post to carry out Trump’s political agenda — precisely the type of performance that could help him win a Cabinet job during a second Trump administration. He is the co-chair of the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank.

Interior Secretary

The Interior Department manages nearly every acre of public land in the country — and when he was president the last time, Trump steered it toward fossil fuel production almost to the exclusion of everything else.

Two of the agency’s responsibilities fall in line with Trump’s promise to “drill, baby, drill”: It sets safety standards for offshore oil rigs and leases out land for oil, natural gas and coal development.

Under Trump, Interior sought to roll back rules on rig safety, climate change and Endangered Species Act protections in attempts to make things as easy as possible for oil companies to drill on public land. With Trump’s most recent talk of oil being “liquid gold” and that crude production would be four or five times higher under him than Biden, expect the former president to look for new ways to remove regulatory speedbumps the current administration has put in place.

Trump’s love of energy has not extended to renewables. Whoever he selects to run the agency is likely to scale back or end many of the Biden efforts to set up vast wind farms off the East Coast and other renewables on public lands.

Given how vast public land is in the West, one common thread through most Interior secretaries — including Trump’s — is that they hail from states that side of the Mississippi.

Doug Burgum

The North Dakota governor was floated as a potential Trump pick for vice president or Interior secretary earlier in the year, and his job as an energy-state governor puts him in a good position for the job. North Dakota is the third-largest oil-producing state in the country and also has more than 4 million acres under federal oversight. Burgum himself has heaped praise on Harold Hamm, the executive chair of oil company Continental Resources who has been an informal energy adviser to Trump. But Burgum seems to be hoping for a post with a bigger profile, such as secretary of State.

Katharine MacGregor

MacGregor, who once worked for then-Reps. Thelma Drake (R-Va.) and Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and as a staffer on the House Natural Resources Committee, served as the Interior Department’s No. 2 under Trump. She has also been praised as an “adult in the room” who could go back in for a second Trump administration. She is NextEra Energy’s vice president of environmental services.

Cynthia Lummis

Lummis interviewed — and was passed over — twice for the top Interior job during the Trump administration. The Wyoming senator told POLITICO’s E&E News in June that she is no longer eyeing the position, but her work on public lands might make her a good fit. She has moved from the House to the Senate since she last vied for the secretary job and currently sits on the Environment and Public Works Committee and chairs the Senate Western Caucus. Recently, though, she has drawn attention on the Hill for her leadership on cryptocurrency, potentially signaling a shift away from Interior-aligned ambitions.

David Bernhardt

Bernhardt, Trump’s second Interior secretary, has been said to be interested in joining a second Trump administration, but where he lands is unclear. While he could slot back into his old job as secretary, people familiar with his thinking say Bernhardt would prefer to run the Office of Management and Budget. He is the co-chair of the Center for American Freedom at the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank.

Agriculture Secretary

The Agriculture Department is the Cabinet agency with the strongest connection to Trump-dominated rural America and the farm communities that are often struggling to compete with global conglomerates.

This post shapes everything from farm subsidies at home and food deliveries abroad to school lunches and hunger programs for more than 50 million low-income Americans.

Candidates for the job tend to come from the Midwest (a box Indiana’s Kip Tom or Ted McKinney would check) or the South. The agency also directs millions of dollars every year into rural areas for economic development.

But in recent years, Republicans on Capitol Hill have grown more intent on trimming back food programs like SNAP that is a political lightning rod in particular for urban-centered Democrats.

Sid Miller

Trump has discussed Miller as someone he’s considering for USDA chief. The MAGA loyalist is a former rodeo cowboy turned bomb-throwing Texas agriculture commissioner (who notes he still does participate in rodeos at the age of 69). Miller has also battled with agriculture interests and threatened to “hunt” moderate “RINO” Republicans.

It’s unclear if Miller could gain Senate approval for such a role. He has also openly clashed with Republicans and his GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. When Miller tweeted and then quickly deleted an obscene post in 2016 about Hillary Clinton, Abbott condemned Miller, saying his language was “reprehensible” and “an embarrassment.”

Kip Tom

Tom is the current co-chair of the Farmers and Ranchers for Trump group and potentially in the mix as a possible USDA chief or senior official. In an interview with POLITICO earlier this year, he suggested Trump officials could seek to claw back some of the billions of dollars in funding congressional Democrats and Biden’s USDA have budgeted for “climate-smart” agriculture programs.

Ted McKinney

McKinney has privately made clear he wants the top USDA job, but he’s not actively campaigning for it like some other Republicans. He served as Trump’s Agriculture undersecretary for trade and foreign agricultural affairs and currently leads the nonpartisan group of all 50 state agriculture chiefs.

Some blue-state agriculture chiefs allege that McKinney is allowing politics to seep into NASDA’s work as he angles for a top spot in a Trump USDA. McKinney would be a more mainstream pick than Miller. He may seek to temper Trump’s push to slap new, broad tariffs on Beijing, given the backlash that would draw from U.S. farmers.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Trump promised to let Kennedy “go wild” with health and food policy in his administration after Kennedy dropped his own presidential bid to endorse the now-president-elect. Many conservatives doubt even a Republican-led Senate would confirm Kennedy to a Cabinet post, but the environmental lawyer and vaccine skeptic says Trump promised him “control” of HHS and the USDA.

The Trump campaign did not confirm that assertion. But regardless of whether Trump nominates Kennedy for a Senate-confirmed position or not, Kennedy could exert influence as a White House aide or transition adviser. That’s worrisome to public health advocates given Kennedy’s history of touting the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism, writing a book accusing former National Institutes of Health official Anthony Fauci of conspiring with tech mogul Bill Gates and drug makers to sell Covid vaccines and saying the regulatory officials are industry puppets who should be removed.

Commerce Secretary

The Commerce Department is the hodgepodge of agencies ranging from business development to economic sanctions, tariffs and the census. While typically a low-profile, workhorse agency, Trump elevated it to help implement his new-look trade policy.

Under its Bureau of Industry and Security, Commerce played a central role in setting economic sanctions and trade restrictions against foreign nations. The secretary of Commerce has been tasked with advancing U.S. trade interests abroad, a core part of Trump’s “America First” economic message. Under Trump, the agency was also key to enacting tariffs on steel and aluminum that hit allies and adversaries alike, and an ill-fated attempt to alter the U.S. Census.

Under the Biden administration, Secretary Gina Raimondo has pivoted the agency back toward allies, playing a key role in negotiating three of the four sections of its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, setting new investment networks and voluntary labor and environmental standards for U.S. trading partners in South Asia. But she has continued weaponizing the agency against China, Russia and other adversaries through sanctions and trade restrictions at BIS — efforts likely to escalate no matter who wins the White House.

Robert Lighthizer

Lighthizer is one of the few Cabinet officials from Trump’s first term who has managed to stay in the former president’s good graces while also enjoying a warm reception from both parties on Capitol Hill. The former trade chief led some of Trump’s most durable achievements, like tariffs on China and a renegotiated NAFTA deal who could win Senate confirmation without much drama. After serving as Trump’s top trade official, those close to him say Lightizer would prefer a higher profile role, preferably Treasury secretary.

Linda McMahon

McMahon served as Trump’s head of the Small Business Administration. When she stepped down in 2019, she moved to lead America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC. McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, were the forces behind transforming World Wrestling Entertainment from a small business into a multibillion-dollar enterprise. McMahon is a personal friend and donor to Trump and Republicans, who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in Connecticut more than a decade ago. After leaving the Trump administration, McMahon played a key role in creating the conservative America First Policy Institute, a think tank composed of top figures from the Trump administration, and is now co-chair of his transition.

Bill Hagerty

Like Lighthizer, Hagerty is one of the rare Trump administration figures to still be close to his old boss and enjoy respect from both parties on Capitol Hill. The Tennessean, known for his directness, was held in high regard for his work as ambassador to Japan under Trump, where he helped negotiate an updated trade deal with Tokyo and smoothed over Trump’s chaotic foreign policy declarations for one of the U.S.’s closest allies. He is a frontrunner for a number of Cabinet posts, from USTR to Commerce, State or even Treasury, and would be likely to win confirmation to any of them.

Labor Secretary

The Labor Department is rife with targets for a Republican administration, so the mission for any Trump pick is straightforward: undo Biden’s myriad new labor regulations — particularly those that shifted power to labor unions.

It’s an agenda that would undercut organized labor’s gains under Biden, but one that hasn’t deterred the Trump supporters among rank-and-file union members.

Yet, it was also a political minefield for Trump the first time around.

His first choice for the top job at the agency — fast food executive Andrew Puzder — withdrew from consideration less than a month into Trump’s term after POLITICO reported on past allegations of domestic abuse (which he denied).

Trump then turned to Alexander Acosta, who was ultimately forced out in 2019 after losing the president’s trust amid renewed scrutiny of how the former prosecutor handled well-connected sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s case during his time as a U.S. attorney in Florida. Trump’s third Labor secretary was Eugene Scalia, a management-side labor attorney and son of the late Supreme Court justice, who was comparatively drama-free and executed on the administration’s business-friendly regulatory agenda after Acosta’s resignation.

The role is not typically a coveted Cabinet spot in Republican administrations, though it could appeal to a business-minded candidate who misses out on agencies like Treasury or the Security and Exchange Commission.

Patrick Pizzella

An affable figure who is well-known to business groups and conservatives — and disliked by unions — Pizzella served as deputy Labor Secretary through the end of the Trump administration in January 2021 and led DOL in an acting capacity in between Acosta’s resignation and Scalia’s confirmation. Since then he was elected mayor of Pinehurst, North Carolina, a golf haven that could appeal to the famously links-loving Trump.

Bryan Slater

George “Bryan” Slater is a known quantity in Republican circles in both Washington and beyond. Prior to serving as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Labor secretary, he was a Trump hand at the Transportation Department before working as assistant secretary at the Labor Department later in the administration. He also served as a labor liaison in the George W. Bush White House.

However, picking an unflashy bureaucrat could be a tough sell to Trump, who may instead be drawn to a more TV-ready pick like Youngkin himself or another businessperson-turned-governor like North Dakota Gov. Doug Bergum.

Health and Human Services Secretary

What Trump seeks in an HHS secretary varies — and is at times contradictory — according to officials from his first administration.

Trump might want an HHS leader who has significant leadership experience, executive presence and a strong will to bring one of the largest federal agencies to heel. But he might also opt for a secretary with deep institutional knowledge of the agency itself and the ability to effectively move policy and fly under the radar for the Senate confirmation process.

Finding someone with a blend of those qualities — and who is both deeply loyal without being a pushover — could prove difficult. And a Trump-appointed HHS secretary could be key to using federal leverage to reduce abortion access or change how the Affordable Care Act is implemented.

Deciding how to balance those skills could depend on the kinds of policies Trump ultimately settles on, and which policy battles will consume most of a potential administration’s energy.

Bobby Jindal

Jindal, a former Louisiana governor and representative, is now chair of the Center for a Healthy America, a wing of the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, where he has argued for changes to the Affordable Care Act and new price transparency measures. Jindal’s new focus on health policy — as well as having held leadership roles — could boost a nomination to lead HHS. And his record running a state government could help him argue that he is equipped to lead one of the federal government’s largest agencies.

Jindal, who was previously considered a top contender to lead HHS, has health sector and regulatory experience as well. He was assistant secretary of HHS under former President George W. Bush and he was executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare.

Brian Blase

Blase was special assistant to Trump for economic policy and now leads the Paragon Health Institute, a Virginia-based think tank that has churned out research and policy recommendations and has become a leading voice in conservative health policy, especially emphasizing the need to reduce overpayments and stop what he sees as unnecessary government subsidies in the system.

Eric Hargan

Hargan served as deputy secretary of HHS for most of the Trump administration and acted in the same role under President George W. Bush. He’s a name often brought up among insiders in conversations about health care in a potential second Trump administration. He can point to successes in Operation Warp Speed — bringing Covid-19 vaccines to market in less than a year — and has launched a health care consulting group, the Hargan Group. He also has been a major proponent of telehealth and other health tech issues, including data sharing.

Paul Mango

Mango served as deputy chief of staff at HHS during the Trump administration and was key in leading Operation Warp Speed in the early days of the pandemic. He is a public adviser at the Paragon Health Institute, a conservative think tank.

Mango also worked in HHS on transparency and interoperability. Previously, he was chief principal deputy administrator and chief of staff at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Trump administration. Before that, he ran for governor in Pennsylvania. His deep understanding of the agency could bode well for his chances of nomination, particularly for a Trump administration looking to move more quickly on policy than it did in its first term.

Joe Grogan

Grogan served as assistant to the president and director of the Domestic Policy Council in the Trump administration. He also served on the White House Covid-19 task force in the early days of the pandemic. He was previously associate director for health policy at OMB and, before that, special assistant to the FDA commissioner in the George W. Bush administration.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Trump campaign did not confirm that assertion. But regardless of whether Trump nominates Kennedy for a Senate-confirmed position, he could exert influence as a White House aide or transition adviser. That’s worrisome to public health advocates given Kennedy’s history of touting the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism, writing a book accusing former National Institutes of Health official Anthony Fauci of conspiring with tech mogul Bill Gates and drug makers to sell Covid vaccines and saying the regulatory officials are industry puppets who should be removed.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary

Trump’s campaign-trail concern about rising housing costs isn’t likely to temper the kind of hostility the Department of Housing and Urban Development faced during his first administration.

The agency has a $70 billion budget and roughly 8,000 employees — two things Trump and Ben Carson, his HUD secretary, sought to wear down.

Carson faced criticism from Democrats about his family’s involvement in the agency’s operations, his relative lack of knowledge about its mission and his eagerness to cut its budget. But the biggest policy whiplash among Barack Obama, Trump and President Joe Biden has been over the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, the center of the agency’s most public fight.

The rule would require states and localities to track and address patterns of residential segregation to receive federal funding as part of a broader agenda to narrow the racial wealth gap and improve racial equity. It eventually became something Trump latched onto during the 2020 campaign as evidence that Democrats wanted to “abolish the suburbs,” before scrapping the rule entirely that year.

Biden officials proposed an updated version of the Obama-era regulation early last year, but it’s unlikely to be finalized unless Democratic nominee Kamala Harris wins in November.

Ben Carson

Believe it or not, the former neurosurgeon-turned-HUD-secretary could be back in the mix, according to housing lobbyists, who note that Carson has always spoken quite highly of Trump. Carson pursued an agenda to ease local barriers to housing before reversing his views in the summer of 2020, when Trump warned that Democrats were going to “war on the suburbs.” He now heads the American Cornerstone Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit he founded to promote conservative principles.

Tim Scott

The South Carolina senator, and top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, says he’s “probably better off” remaining in Congress than going to work on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Leaving Capitol Hill seems more unlikely after Republicans retook the Senate this week but never say never. Scott has been a reliable campaign surrogate for Trump this year, worked with the Trump administration to establish Opportunity Zones to encourage investment in distressed areas, and he recently released a sweeping housing plan.

Brian Montgomery

Montgomery served as the deputy secretary of HUD and as the Federal Housing Administration commissioner during the Trump administration.

Transportation Secretary

In many ways, the Transportation secretary is a great post for a politician: It’s filled with ribbon-cuttings and doling out millions of dollars for roads, bridges and transit.

Trump’s first DOT secretary, Elaine Chao, previously served as George W. Bush’s Labor secretary and brought gravitas and ties to Washington’s established political machine into the Cabinet when much about how Trump might govern was uncertain.

A Trump pick this time around is likely to have a mandate to cut spending and claw back some of the $1.2 trillion handed out by Biden under the 2021 infrastructure law — especially for climate-focused initiatives like EV charging and equity initiatives like tearing down highways that have divided poor, often minority, communities. Trump’s next Transportation chief will be expected to focus taxpayer money on “hard” infrastructure like roads and highways instead of equity programs or transit.

Garret Graves

Graves, a senior lawmaker on the House Transportation Committee, will end his tenure in Congress by year’s end after being edged out by an unfavorable redistricting draw. It may come just in time for a turn atop DOT, especially since Graves has already been having informal talks with Trump’s transition team about transportation issues. As chair of the subcommittee in charge of aviation, the Louisiana lawmaker is intimately familiar with air safety, one of the department’s most important mandates. And he’s also regularly taken aim at the big spending laws that form the backbone of Biden’s climate agenda.

Sam Graves

Graves, who has been the top Republican on the Transportation Committee for almost a decade, is steeped in transportation policy experience and even holds a special class of pilot’s license that would allow him to fly a commercial airplane. The Missouri lawmaker is respected on Capitol Hill and has worked across the aisle to push major bills through to enactment and would lend immediate credibility to any Trump initiative. Graves, who has spent much of his career in Congress deeply involved in transportation issues, will have to give up his gavel at the end of the year, though, unless his long-shot quest for a waiver of his party’s committee rules is successful.

Energy Secretary

The Energy secretary under Trump would serve as a measure of his commitment to the fossil fuel industry.

The agency’s core responsibilities include maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, regulating everyday appliances, managing the 17 national labs and cleaning up Cold War-era radioactive waste. Over the past 15 years, however, it’s also become a massive engine for doling out billions of dollars in grants and loans to quicken the transition to low-carbon power — making it a regular target for Republicans.

Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” is promising to claw back any unspent money Biden secured in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and could potentially slow down the pace of loans and grant-making.

If he really wants to pull a large amount of the money, Trump’s Energy secretary will need the political or technical savvy to navigate around members of his own party who are seeing the funds land in their districts.

Doug Burgum

The North Dakota governor’s name had already emerged for a role in a new Trump administration — even by the former president himself — since he ran an energy-focused presidential campaign in the GOP primary. Burgum “probably knows more about energy than anybody I know,” Trump said at a rally earlier this year.

As governor, Burgum embraced carbon capture technology without restricting oil and natural gas drilling, and as a Trump campaign surrogate, echoes criticism of Biden’s climate policies. Burgum, who is not seeking a third term, opened remarks at the RNC this year by focusing on American energy dominance. Allies have also floated him as “energy czar” within the Trump administration, but Burgum seems to be hoping for a post with a bigger profile, such as secretary of State.

Mark Menezes

Menezes served in DOE’s leadership during Trump’s first term, and his current job as president and CEO of the U.S. Energy Association has him representing companies across the sector. He is the founder of Global Sustainable Energy Advisors LLC, a strategic advisory firm to energy, technology and defense organizations, and teaches courses on energy law, policy and climate change at Georgetown Law School as an adjunct professor.

He held executive positions at Berkshire Hathaway Energy and American Electric Power, and he worked as chief counsel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He was also a partner at Hunton & Williams.

Paul Dabbar

After his role in the previous Trump administration, where he managed the majority of the national labs and the commercialization of technologies, Dabbar has taken his skills to the private sector.

His current company, Quantum Technologies, is focused on the emerging quantum internet, and he’s been outspoken about artificial intelligence’s role in the energy sector — an increasingly significant area of focus for the department. Dabbar is also a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

Dan Brouillette

Brouillette joined the Energy Department as Rick Perry’s No. 2 during the first Trump administration before he easily ascended to the agency’s top job in 2019, playing a role in stabilizing global oil markets during the pandemic. Prior to joining the Trump administration, he held positions at USAA, Ford Motor Company and on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. And since leaving the administration, he served as president of multinational firm Sempra Infrastructure before joining the powerful Edison Electric Institute, which represents U.S. investor-owned electric companies.

But Brouillette recently announced his abrupt departure from EEI, where he served as president and CEO, amid internal discord and acrimony at the utility group. While at EEI, the group sued the Biden Environmental Protection Agency over its rule to slash power plant greenhouse gas emissions, although Brouillette also defended portions of the Inflation Reduction Act as beneficial for the utility industry.

Education Secretary

Trump has pledged to disband the Education Department during his second term — no different than most Republicans since Ronald Reagan.

Despite how the GOP often treats the agency as a backwater, billionaire philanthropist Betsy DeVos made use of it as Trump’s Education secretary. She wielded it to relax rules that targeted for-profit colleges and to boost defenses for those accused of sexual misconduct on school grounds. But the position is likely far more appealing than it was at the outset of Trump’s first term now that conservatives — especially Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin — have seen political success in attacking diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

It’s a role Trump could use to agitate teachers unions, some of the nation’s largest labor organizations and among the most loyal to Democrats. A Trump-led Education Department is also certain to abandon Biden’s student debt relief agenda and reverse Democratic efforts to rewrite DeVos’ sexual misconduct and expand discrimination protections for transgender students.

Betsy DeVos

DeVos, who served in the role during Trump’s first term, drew attention for being a Cabinet member calling to abolish her own agency. She also codified new sexual misconduct guidelines under the federal Title IX law, rallied support for school choice and remains active on education policy.

Once a key surrogate for Trump, their relationship frayed when DeVos resigned from her post after the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol. But the billionaire philanthropist now has support from some GOP lawmakers who say they want Trump to pick her or someone like her, largely for her proposal on school choice tax credits. DeVos has said she isn’t expecting a call from Trump, but she’s open to returning.

Ryan Walters

Trump has said some encouraging words about Oklahoma’s state schools superintendent, a young elected official with a talent for self-promotion and an attraction to controversy. Walters has described teacher unions as Marxist terrorist organizations. He appointed a far-right social media star to a state library committee months after her criticism of a Tulsa school librarian’s video sparked bomb threats. Local superintendents are defying his demands to incorporate the Bible and Ten Commandments into school curriculum.

Glenn Youngkin

The Virginia governor built his campaign around education issues, tapping into a burgeoning parental rights movement led by suburban moms. He helped popularize calls by Republicans to end diversity, equity and inclusion topics in schools. As governor he signed executive orders to ban what he labeled “divisive concepts” in classrooms.

Youngkin will be out of a job in 2026 due to term limits. Some Trump allies suggest he may find his way into a second Trump administration. He appears to be leaning into the possibility as a Trump surrogate for Virginia’s suburban swing voters.

Tiffany Justice

Justice served on a Florida school board for four years before she co-founded Moms For Liberty, a fast-growing conservative education group. She helped start the organization in 2021 amid frustration about Covid-19 school closures and mask mandates. The group is known for its efforts to restrict certain books in schools, especially those with LGBTQ+ themes. It also has applauded Trump for expressing a desire to abolish the Education Department.

Justice told POLITICO in August that she would be interested in the post.

Elise Stefanik

New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, the House Republican Conference chair, cemented her reputation as a firebrand on the chamber’s education committee after criticizing three college presidents over their responses to campus unrest and antisemitism. She dominated the December 2023 hearing, which went viral and led to a Saturday Night Live spoof of the event. It also prompted public pressure campaigns that led to the resignations of presidents from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.

Veterans Affairs Secretary

Whoever gets tapped to run the VA — the country’s largest integrated health system — needs a strong sense of purpose and a thick political skin.

David Shulkin, Trump’s first VA secretary, was fired by tweet in 2018 after controversy over a taxpayer-funded trip to Europe uncovered by a watchdog report Shulkin called inaccurate.

Trump then nominated White House physician Ronny Jackson, who withdrew his nomination after allegations he created a toxic work environment and drunkenly wrecked a car while serving in the federal government. Jackson, now a Republican representative from Texas, denied the allegations. Robert Wilkie replaced him, got confirmed and served in the role for the rest of the administration, putting him in contention to take the job again.

It often doesn’t take long before addressing the health care needs of millions of military veterans puts a spotlight on many of the VA’s failings over the years, creating ready fodder for lawmakers in both parties.

The latest high-profile concern is the financial strain stemming from a bipartisan 2022 law expanding benefits for veterans exposed to Agent Orange and other toxins. That’s made the agency responsible for the care of more veterans than ever, and generated billions of dollars in shortfalls.

A new Trump VA would also be expected to reverse a Biden policy that allows the agency to provide abortion counseling and, in some cases, the procedure itself, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.

Robert Wilkie

Wilkie served in the U.S. Navy Reserve and began his career on Capitol Hill as an aide to then-Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Rep. David Funderburk (R-N.C.). He served in top national security roles in the George W. Bush administration and was a senior adviser to then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

As secretary, Wilkie helped implement legislation expanding access to care outside of the VA. He ultimately signed the deal with Cerner to lead the electronic health records project as acting VA secretary. He’s a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank.

Matt Rosendale

Rosendale, a staunch conservative representing Montana in the House since 2021, is not seeking reelection and has been floated as a potential pick to lead the VA in a second Trump administration. He briefly entered a Senate race, abandoned it and then withdrew from the House race amid allegations that he left the Senate race because he impregnated a staffer. His office strongly contested those claims and vowed legal action.

The Freedom Caucus member serves on the House Veterans Affairs Committee and chairs its subcommittee on technology modernization, where he’s been a critic of the Biden administration.

Homeland Security Secretary

Immigration has been a driving force of all three Trump campaigns for the White House, and no part of the government intersects with it more than the Department of Homeland Security.

As president, Trump regularly pressed his DHS officials for statistics on deportations and illegal border crossings. His emphasis on security at the southwest border sometimes irritated senior department officials, as their remit is much broader. But since Trump’s time in office, immigration has become a politically promising issue for him: A recent poll showed that swing-state voters, by 12 percentage points, believe he’s more likely to improve the immigration system.

That means Trump’s DHS head would have significant power and face-time with the president –– as well as his intense scrutiny. The former president has called for dramatically increasing deportations and immigrant detention, as well as a hiring spree for the border patrol.

Another challenge will be advancing Trump’s immigration agenda without losing sight of the rest of DHS’s sprawling mission, which includes cybersecurity, counterterrorism, domestic extremism and disaster response.

Mark Morgan

The acting head of Customs and Border Protection at the end of the Trump administration, Morgan won Trump’s trust for leaning hard into his focus on the southwest border. His experience handling immigration and law enforcement is extensive, including many years in the FBI. Obama appointed him as head of Border Patrol in 2016, and he was removed when Trump became president. But Trump later installed him at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and then Customs and Border Protection. Morgan won Trump’s favor in part for pugilistic media appearances. He’s a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Thomas Homan

Homan spent his career in immigration enforcement, holding senior positions in Immigration and Customs Enforcement during both the Obama and Trump administrations. Under Trump, he supported the family separation policy, arguing it would deter people from entering the United States illegally with children. Since Trump left office, he has been affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, maintaining a presence in national media. He and Morgan argued against the bipartisan immigration deal Trump opposed and that Vice President Kamala Harris has touted as evidence of her administration’s good-faith, bipartisan approach to border security.

Chad Wolf

Wolf helmed DHS as acting secretary at the end of Trump’s time in office. He has defended the former president since his departure and been a critic of Biden’s immigration policies. He is now at America First Policy Institute, where Trump’s outside allies are quietly preparing for a second term.

White House Chief of Staff

When the president wants to do the impossible, the chief of staff needs to make it happen.

Since leaving the White House, Trump has made surrounding himself with loyalists a top priority and will want to install someone in the top staff role who he trusts and will help him efficiently carry out his legislative and regulatory agenda.

During his four years in office, Trump cycled through four chiefs of staff: Reince Priebus, Gen. John Kelly (Ret.), Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows. Each man approached the role with their own leadership style before eventually being sidelined or pushed out by Trump.

But the responsibility of running the West Wing — directing policy, managing daily operations, hounding agency heads — imbues them with almost as much power and influence as it does strain and frustration.

Trump wants to avoid the kind of chaos that plagued his first White House and tapping a chief of staff who can help him hit the ground running on day one will be a top priority — even if Trump himself was the source of much of the mayhem.

Brooke Rollins

Rollins served as the head of the Office of American Innovation and later the acting director of the Domestic Policy Council in the Trump White House, where she played a key role in passing the First Step Act, Trump’s signature criminal justice bill. A Texas native whose family is based in the Fort Worth area, Rollins worked as a policy aide for Texas Gov. Rick Perry before running the Texas Public Policy Foundation and becoming one of the most powerful political figures in the state. Rollins helped start and now leads the conservative America First Policy Institute, which is widely regarded as Trump’s “White House in waiting.”

Kevin McCarthy

When Trump was president, he affectionately referred to McCarthy as “My Kevin.” The California representative deftly managed his relationship with Trump and as the No. 2 House Republican while Trump was in the White House, and served as a kind of intermediary between the executive and legislative branches. Even though McCarthy harshly criticized Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, his lunch with the former president at Mar-a-Lago in early 2021 played an important role in signaling Trump’s political staying power and influence. McCarthy was floated as a potential chief of staff during past episodes of turnover in the West Wing. A prolific fundraiser, he ascended to speaker of the House but was dramatically ousted in early 2023 and decided to retire from Congress.

Susie Wiles

Trump’s 2024 win will launch Wiles to a vaulted position in Washington. A skilled operator who got her start in Republican politics as a scheduler for the Reagan White House, Wiles ran Trump’s successful Florida operations in the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. In early 2021, Wiles signed on as the CEO of Trump’s Save America PAC, effectively running his operation at Mar-a-Lago after he lost the election. Wiles has earned the trust of Trump, who appreciates that she was willing to help him after he left the White House, and is widely respected by campaign staff and members of Congress. While Wiles has perhaps done the least to show interest in being chief of staff, she would be considered a top candidate for the job.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator

Over the past 15 years, the EPA has become the most important tool Democrats have had in addressing climate change domestically and in nudging other countries to follow suit.

A new Trump administrator would likely seek to undo regulations that constrain fossil fuel production and consumption. Some of the biggest targets include Biden-era air regulations as well as the funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, even though a significant chunk of that money will have been already obligated. His first administration was slow off the block on issuing replacement rules, partly a result of not hiring enough people with deep knowledge of the agency’s complex workings. But a more streamlined approach in a second term.

During his first stint in the White House, Trump appointed two men to lead the EPA who had radically different styles for delivering his deregulatory agenda. His first, Scott Pruitt, had repeatedly sued the agency as Oklahoma attorney general before drawing attention as administrator for unusual decisions like seeking a large security detail and installing a booth at EPA for classified conversations. But his second, Andrew Wheeler, a former staff director for the late Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a climate skeptic, pushed many of the same actions as Pruitt more efficiently and without the fanfare.

Andrew Wheeler

Trump’s second EPA administrator is interested in returning to the agency, he told POLITICO in May, and many in Trump’s orbit consider it Wheeler’s job to lose. He’d be a tempting pick for Trump — Wheeler is familiar, Senate Republicans would happily confirm him again and he knows how EPA operates. Perhaps most importantly, Wheeler proved himself to be an effective workhorse, eschewing the litany of (oftentimes silly) ethical quagmires that forced his predecessor Scott Pruitt out of the job. Wheeler spent much of the Biden administration advising Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

Aurelia Skipwith Giacometto

Giacometto’s current job as Louisiana’s secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality has connected her to the state’s pitched fights with the Biden EPA over issues like environmental civil rights enforcement, climate regulations and chemical manufacturing. Even if Wheeler gets the top job, Giacometto, who led the Fish and Wildlife Service under Trump, could be in line for another post at EPA or the Interior Department.

Mandy Gunasekara

Since her time at Trump’s EPA, Gunasekara has authored the EPA chapter of the Project 2025 plan, which calls for a dramatic overhaul of the agency’s structure and slashes work on clean air and fossil fuel regulation. A proponent of shuttering agencies and cutting the federal workforce, she also floated an EPA relocation to Texas or Florida in her book released in October. Trump allies have said that Gunasekara is eyeing the top EPA position in a second Trump administration. But she has been coy about her ambitions, telling POLITICO’s E&E News in August that she is not interested in the job and wants to stay in her home in Mississippi.

United States Trade Representative

It only took one term in the White House for Trump to turn the sleepy office of the U.S. Trade Representative into a key player in defining his America-first economic and diplomatic brand. Under a second, Trump is expected to be more aggressive.

The role, which was established more than 60 years ago and only has about 200 employees today, was central to market-opening deals such as NAFTA and founding the World Trade Organization. But the “Art of the Deal” co-author drastically elevated its profile, using Robert Lighthizer to translate campaign and television rhetoric into new trade agreements built around ribbing U.S. trading partners.

Trump has touted plans — with Lighthizer’s tutelage — for dramatically higher tariffs, floating rates as high as 20 percent for all imports, and much higher for China.

The former president has dismissed fears that his plans would stoke inflation and hit everyday consumers but much of it can be done without Congress.

Robert Lighthizer

Lighthizer is one of the few Cabinet officials from Trump’s first term who has managed to stay in the former president’s good graces while also enjoying a warm reception from both parties on Capitol Hill. He’s serving as trade chair at the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank. The former trade chief led some of Trump’s most durable achievements, like tariffs on China and a renegotiated NAFTA deal, and could be confirmed by the Senate without much drama. Whether he would want a second bite at the job, however, is less assured, as those close to him say that Lightizer would prefer a higher profile role, preferably Treasury secretary.

Bill Hagerty

Like Lighthizer, Hagerty is one of the rare Trump administration figures to still be close to his old boss and enjoy respect and admiration from both parties on Capitol Hill. The Tennessee senator was held in high regard for his work as ambassador to Japan under Trump, where he helped negotiate an updated trade deal with Tokyo and smoothed over Trump’s chaotic foreign policy declarations for one of the U.S.’s closest allies. He is a frontrunner for a number of Cabinet posts, from USTR to State or even Treasury, and would be likely to win confirmation to any of them.

Jamieson Greer

Lighthizer’s former right-hand man at USTR would be a safe pick to continue his legacy of tariffs and aggressive trade negotiations, should his former boss move on to another position. Despite helping to upend global trade paradigms, Greer is well respected by both parties in Washington, industry groups and foreign governments. Since leaving office, he has served as a point of contact in Washington for foreign dignitaries seeking insight about what a second Trump term would mean for trade. He is a partner for international trade at the King & Spalding law firm.

Jeffrey Gerrish

Gerrish was Lighthizer’s deputy USTR for Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Industrial Competitiveness from 2018 to 2020, leading negotiations on deals with China, Japan, and Japan, as well as implementing Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum. He’s seen as a Lighthizer loyalist and a competent policy wonk who could carry out a Trump 2.0 trade agenda effectively.