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The president-elect’s carefully chosen appointments represent his vision and priorities for his return to the White House
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Donald Trump is racing through his appointments to staff up the team who will help him lead the country during his second administration.
While some of the president-elect’s selections have raised eyebrows, they are expected to have a largely uncontested path to confirmation as the Republicans won control of the Senate earlier this month.
The appointment of Matt Gaetz to attorney general has drawn particular criticism. The congressman had been the subject of a House ethics investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use.
Mr Trump’s selection of Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic and opponent of processed foods, as his health secretary also ruffled feathers.
Meanwhile, some of his selections have been praised by moderate Democrats, with several senators voicing their approval of Marco Rubio’s appointment as secretary of state.
Mr Trump has selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic and opponent of processed foods, as his health secretary.
The president-elect posted on Truth Social to confirm the nomination of Mr Kennedy as secretary of health and human services.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to public health,” the president-elect said.
“Mr Kennedy will restore these agencies to the traditions of gold standard scientific research, and beacons of transparency, to end the chronic disease epidemic, and to make America great and healthy again”
The appointment will rankle with many health experts as Mr Kennedy has previously voiced anti-vax opinions and suggested fluoride is lowering children’s IQ.
Matt Gaetz, 42, has been appointed to the role of Attorney General in a surprise selection.
A staunch Trump loyalist, Mr Gaetz has been a vocal critic of the department’s investigation into the president-elect, accusing those responsible of weaponising the justice system.
He has also called for the department to be abolished if it does not “come to heel”.
His appointment comes after Mr Trump has repeatedly said he may use the department to pursue his political enemies, and Mr Gaetz will now play an influential role in deciding what happens to the outstanding legal cases against the president-elect.
Mr Gaetz himself was investigated for years by the DoJ over allegations of sex trafficking. The charges were dropped last year, but Mr Gaetz remains the subject of a House ethics investigation for claims he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
The congressman has a history of causing friction within the House GOP and played a crucial role in ousting former House speaker Kevin McCarthy.
“Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan weaponisation of our Justice System,” Mr Trump said following the Florida congressman’s appointment, in a clear indication of his expectations.
Mr Trump looks set to pick Marco Rubio to the role of America’s top diplomat, despite nicknaming him “little Marco” as they clashed while competing for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
In the time since, however, the Florida senator has managed to ingratiate himself in the president-elect’s orbit, and earlier this year was seriously considered as a running mate before losing out to JD Vance.
Mr Rubio would mark a more conventional pick as secretary of state, and his position in the Senate could smooth his confirmation. He is a foreign policy hawk, and particularly tough on Russia and China, as well as Venezuela.
In 2023, he authored legislation requiring a presidential exit from Nato to be supported by Congress – something that could potentially constrain the incoming president, who is sceptical of the military alliance.
The Florida senator has earned a reputation as one of the Senate’s Iran hawks, and his appointment would signal the administration intends to take a tough stance on the regime.
In April, he opposed billions of dollars in military aid in Ukraine, and said that the war has reached a “stalemate” and needed to be “brought to a conclusion”.
In something of a showbiz Cabinet, Mr Trump has picked a Fox News host to be his defence secretary.
Pete Hegseth, a former Army National Guard officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, currently hosts the weekend episodes of Fox & Friends, one of Mr Trump’s favourite TV shows.
He is reportedly a friend of the president-elect, who has often appeared on the programme.
Mr Hegseth, 44, lacks senior military or national security experience and takes on the role at a time of acute global divisions.
Billionaire Elon Musk will co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, Mr Trump confirmed on Tuesday night.
The Tesla boss will run it alongside Vivek Ramaswamy, a Trump ally who ran against the president-elect for the Republican nomination.
Mr Musk had been widely tipped to play a key role in the new administration, having been one of the highes-profile figures on the campaign trail.
The acronym of the new department, DOGE, coincides with the name of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin that Mr Musk promotes.
Susie Wiles was Donald Trump’s first appointment, a reward for managing his election campaign and return to the White House
It marks a rare moment in the spotlight for Ms Wiles, a veteran political operator who will now go down as the first woman in history to be appointed to the top Washington job.
Inside the freewheeling Trump campaign, she was seen as a steady hand who was able to impose some amount of order and discipline. Mr Trump, when he paid credit to her on election night, called her the “ice maiden”.
She is known to have good relations with Democrats, understands the workings of DC as a former lobbyist, and is a strategic thinker rather than a political hatchet-man.
Mr Trump had a famously fractious relationship with his chiefs in his first term, going through four in as many years. If Ms Wiles can be as effective inside the White House as she was outside it, then she will prove a savvy pick.
Stephen Miller is set to be Ms Wiles’s deputy. He is her opposite: a loud and polarising figure who enjoys the limelight and creates headlines with his rhetoric on immigration.
Whereas Ms Wiles is the effective backroom operator, Mr Miller brings a streak of ideological purity, having joined the Trump campaign as a senior policy adviser back in January 2016. He is now widely expected to be appointed deputy chief of staff.
As the first Trump administration cycled between various “acting” homeland security secretaries, Mr Miller was seen as the real power in the department.
He was the architect of the controversial “Muslim ban”, and has been in charge of drawing up plans for the largest mass deportation in US history when Mr Trump returns to office.
The 39-year-old took to the stage at Mr Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in October, where he declared: “America is for Americans and Americans only.”
His prominent role in the administration signals that immigration is at the heart of the incoming president’s policy priorities.
Tom Homan is another immigration hawk who was quickly appointed to the new Trump administration, being named as the president’s “border tsar”.
A former border agent who became head of immigration enforcement in Mr Trump’s first term, he was the man behind the controversial policy that saw children separated from their parents when they crossed the border illegally.
Mr Trump later reversed the programme amid a backlash but the return of Mr Homan may signal that it is being considered as part of an immigration clampdown.
A bruiser who has drawn plaudits for Right-wingers, he is likely to be charged with pushing through a hardline immigration agenda against the protests of Democrats.
If anything, he appears to be relishing the challenge – pledging to override Democratic governors and warning them to “get the hell out of the way” soon after his appointment.
Elise Stefanik will end up leaving Congress shortly after winning re-election after Mr Trump announced her as his UN ambassador.
Once considered a moderate Republican voice, the 40-year-old Harvard graduate is a symbol of the party Mr Trump has remade in his own image, becoming one of his most ardent defenders after criticising him in 2016.
She is a staunch supporter of Israel and will represent the US at a body she has criticised as being actively hostile to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
Ms Stefanik also claims to have backed “every single” measure to aid Israel during her time in Congress, and just hours before her appointment became public accused the Biden administration of letting down “our great ally”.
She made headlines this year for questioning several Ivy League heads about anti-Semitism on campus, several of whom later resigned.
Mike Waltz, a former Green Beret turned congressman, is tipped to become Mr Trump’s national security advisor when he returns to the White House in January.
Drawing on his special forces career, Mr Waltz has emerged as one of the key critics of the Biden administration, calling the withdrawal from Afghanistan a “horror movie” and complaining that it has gone far too soft on China.
Europe and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is taking up much-needed attention from the Pacific, where he believes China is a major threat.
“American munitions and defence production are aiding Ukraine instead of deterring Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific,” he wrote in The Economist this month.
As such, the US should “bring the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East to a swift conclusion, and finally focus strategic attention where it should be: countering the greater threat from the Chinese Communist Party”.
He may also resist the deal for Britain to hand over the Chagos islands, where the US has a key military base. He sees the deal as a major capitulation to growing Chinese influence in the region.
Kristi Noem, 52, has been announced as Mr Trump’s homeland security secretary.
The South Dakota governor would be in charge of a broad brief, covering the border, cyber threats, emergency response and terrorism.
In her role, she is expected to work closely with Tom Homan and Stephen Miller to deliver Mr Trump’s immigration agenda.
A Trump loyalist who rose to national attention during the pandemic for refusing to employ a statewide mask mandate, Ms Noem was once touted as a potential VP pick. However, the tide of GOP opinion turned against after she revealed, in a peculiar passage from her book, that she had once killed her pet dog because she didn’t think it was an effective hunter. The incident triggered widespread controversy and reportedly killed off her bid for vice-president.
Having dropped out of college aged 22 to run her family ranch, Ms Noem was elected as South Dakota’s first female governor in 2018.
During the presidential campaign, she danced alongside Mr Trump when his rally in Philadelphia descended into an impromptu disco. The footage went viral.
Tulsi Gabbard, 43, has been selected as director of National Intelligence.
The former Democratic presidential candidate served as a Hawaii Congresswoman from 2013 to 2021 before leaving the party to join the GOP.
Having endorsed Donald Trump for president earlier this year and co-chairing his transition team, she has now been awarded with a top job presiding over a department Mr Trump has pledged to “clean out” in his next term.
An Iraq war veteran and army reservist who is an outspoken non-interventionist, Ms Gabbard’s appointment signals a change in tack at the head of the country’s $70 billion spy network.
In 2020, she blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in part on Nato expansion.
She also opposed US intervention in the Syrian Civil war, taking a trip to visit Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whom she has described as “not the enemy” of the United States.
Announcing Ms Gabbard’s appointment, Mr Trump said: “As a former Candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, she has broad support in both Parties – she is now a proud Republican!”
“Big oil” ally Doug Burgum will be the new interior minister and is expected to unleash fossil fuel development.
Mr Burgum, the former North Dakota governor, is a major backer of the oil and gas industry whose name had previously been floated as a potential “energy tsar” in the new administration.
Leading a department that controls 500 million acres of public lands, Mr Burgum will be tasked with fulfilling Mr Trump’s promises to unlock oil and gas extraction after Joe Biden, the US president, repeatedly suspended drilling permits.
Mr Trump frequently promised to “drill, baby, drill” on the campaign trail, saying the policy would halve energy prices in his first 12 months in office.
He has also referred to the US’ crude oil as “liquid gold” and claimed that it could be used to pay off the national debt and cut energy prices to the lowest levels “on earth”.
Chris Wright called net zero a “sinister goal” and once drank bleach on camera.
Mr Wright, the founder and chief executive of Denver-based Liberty Energy, is expected to spearhead Mr Trump’s “drill baby drill” plans to increase oil and gas production and seek new ways to boost energy.
A climate sceptic who has filed lawsuits opposing climate disclosure rules, Mr Wright has called climate activists alarmist and has likened efforts by Democrats to combat global warming to Soviet-style communism.
In 2019, he made headlines when he drank a fracking fluid cocktail containing a collection of chemicals, which he knocked back with colleagues after toasting the “long lives and healthier lives of billions of people all around the world from oil and gas”.
Last year, he was briefly censored by LinkedIn for posting a video in which he said: “There is no climate crisis and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.”
Linda McMahon has been appointed as education secretary, putting the former pro-wrestling mogul at the helm of a department Mr Trump has proposed abolishing.
The president-elect said she will fight “tirelessly” to expand universal school choice across the US.
Ms McMahon, who had been in the running for commerce secretary, headed up the Small Business Administration in Mr Trump’s first administration and was a major donor and early supporter of the Republican president-elect when he first ran for the White House almost a decade ago.
The co-founder and former CEO of the WWE professional wrestling franchise, she resigned from the SBA in 2019 to lead the pro-Trump spending group America First Action. She also chairs the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-friendly think tank.
Mr Trump tapped her to co-lead a transition team formed to help vet personnel and draft policy ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
Dr Mehmet Oz, known as television’s “Dr Oz” will serve as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator.
The president-elect described him as an “eminent physician” who would “work closely with Robert F Kennedy Jr to take on the illness industrial complex”.
Dr Oz has previously courted controversy by recommending various alternative medicines for health conditions, including umckaloabo root extract for cold symptoms, green coffee extract as a “magic weight loss cure” and raspberry ketones as a “miracle in a bottle to burn your fat”.
In 2018, while serving as a White House health adviser in the first Trump administration, he tweeted that astrology “may reveal a great deal about our health”.
The post has since been deleted.
He was a regular guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and later launched his own health programme though Winfrey’s production company.
Steven Cheung, Mr Trump’s pugnacious campaign spokesman, will be appointed the White House’s communications director and assistant to the president.
Mr Cheung, a former spokesman for the UFC, is a favourite attack dog of the president-elect and known for his aggressive briefings.
One favourite target was Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, whom Mr Cheung labelled a “cuck” and compared to a “10-year-old girl who had just raided her mom’s closet” during the fight for the Republican nomination.
Nevertheless, the soft-spoken 41-year-old, who was born to Chinese immigrants in California, is a savvy operator who has cultivated close relationships with journalists.
A near-constant presence at Mr Trump’s side since the 2016 campaign, Mr Cheung will bring his distinctive gloves-off style to the White House.
Mr Trump has selected the former representative for Michigan’s 2nd congressional district Pete Hoekstra as his ambassador for Canada.
Mr Hoekstra, who was born in Groningen in the Netherlands but moved to America when he was a child, worked as ambassador to the Netherlands during Mr Trump’s first term.
In a statement posted to Truth Social, Mr Trump said: “In my second term Pete will help me once again put America First.
“He did an outstanding job as United States Ambassador to the Netherlands during our first four years, and I am confident that he will continue to represent our country well in this new role. Thank you, Pete!”
Mr Hoekstra previously went viral after denying that he had said the Netherlands had “no-go” areas for non-Muslims in 2015, decrying it as “fake news”.
The 71-year-old was criticised in the Dutch press over the comments. He also came under fire for suggesting extremists were burning politicians and cars.
After being shown a clip of himself making the remarks by a Dutch reporter for network NOS, Mr Hoekstra said: “I didn’t call that fake news, I didn’t use the words today…No. I don’t think I did.”
In a statement in 2017 he addressed the scandal, saying: “I made certain remarks in 2015 and regret the exchange during the Nieuwsuur interview. Please accept my apology.”
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