Here’s who’s joining the Trump administration

Here are the people Trump says will join his administration

CABINET:

Scott Bessent

Scott Bessent is a former George Soros money manager and an advocate for deficit reduction.

He’s the founder of hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, after having worked on-and-off for Soros Fund Management since 1991. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the nation’s first openly gay treasury secretary.

He told Bloomberg in August that he decided to join Trump’s campaign in part to attack the mounting U.S. national debt. That would include slashing government programs and other spending.

“This election cycle is the last chance for the U.S. to grow our way out of this mountain of debt without becoming a sort of European-style socialist democracy,” he said then.

Pam Bondi

Pam Bondi has been tapped by Trump to be Attorney General after U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration.

She was Florida’s first female attorney general serving between 2011 and 2019. She was on Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment trial in 2020.

Considered a loyalist, she has served as part of a Trump-allied outside group that has helped lay the groundwork for his future administration called the America First Policy Institute.

Bondi was among a group of Republicans who showed up to support Trump at his hush money criminal trial in New York that ended in May with a conviction on 34 felony counts. A fierce defender of Trump, she also frequently appears on Fox News and has been a critic of the criminal cases against him.

Doug Burgum

Trump chose North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to head the Interior Department. He also picked him to serve as chair of a new National Energy Council.

Trump says the new energy council Burgum will lead will be “very important” and consist of all departments and agencies involved in energy permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation and transportation.

Burgum will also have a seat on the National Security Council, Trump said.

The governor, who ran for president from June to December 2023, was one of Trump’s finalists for running mate.

He has largely resisted wading into social issues, such as anti-LGBTQ measures pushed by members of his own party, vetoing a few such bills in 2021 and 2023. But also in 2023, as he was planning a run for president, he signed bills opponents said targeted transgender people.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer

Oregon Republican U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer narrowly lost her reelection bid earlier this month, but received strong backing from union members in her district.

As a potential labor secretary, Chavez-DeRemer would oversee the Labor Department’s workforce, its budget and put forth priorities that impact workers’ wages, health and safety, ability to unionize, and employer’s rights to fire employers, among other responsibilities.

Chavez-DeRemer is one of few House Republicans to endorse the “Protecting the Right to Organize” or PRO Act would allow more workers to conduct organizing campaigns and would add penalties for companies that violate workers’ rights.

The act would also weaken “right-to-work” laws that allow employees in more than half the states to avoid participating in or paying dues to unions that represent workers at their places of employment.

Doug Collins

Trump said that he would appoint Doug Collins to lead the Veterans Affairs Department.

Doug Collins is a former Republican congressman from Georgia who gained recognition for defending Trump during his first impeachment trial, which centered on U.S. assistance for Ukraine.

Trump was impeached for urging Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden in 2019 during the Democratic presidential nomination, but he was acquitted by the Senate.

Collins has also served in the armed forces himself and is currently a chaplain in the United States Air Force Reserve Command.

Sean Duffy

Trump named former U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy as his nominee to be transportation secretary.

Duffy is a former U.S. House member from Wisconsin who was one of Trump’s most visible defenders on cable news. Duffy served in the House for nearly nine years, sitting on the Financial Services Committee and chairing the subcommittee on insurance and housing. He left Congress in 2019 for a TV career and has been the host of “The Bottom Line” on Fox Business.

Before entering politics, Duffy was a reality TV star on MTV, where he met his wife, “Fox and Friends Weekend” co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy. They have nine children.

Tulsi Gabbard

Former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has been tapped by Trump to be director of national intelligence, another example of Trump prizing loyalty over experience.

Gabbard was a Democratic House member who unsuccessfully sought the party’s 2020 presidential nomination before leaving the party in 2022. She endorsed Trump in August and campaigned often with him this fall, and she’s been accused of echoing Russian propaganda.

Gabbard, who has served in the Army National Guard for more than two decades, deploying to Iraq and Kuwait, would come to the role as an outsider compared to her predecessor. The current director, Avril Haines, was confirmed by the Senate in 2021 following several years in a number of top national security and intelligence positions.

Jamieson Greer

Jamieson Greer is a partner at King & Spalding, a Washington law firm.

If confirmed by the Senate as U.S. Trade Representative, he would be responsible for negotiating directly with foreign governments on trade deals and disputes, as well as memberships in international trade bodies such as the World Trade Organization.

He previously was chief of staff to Robert Lighthizer, who was the trade representative in Trump’s first term.

Pete Hegseth

Pete Hegseth was a co-host of Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends Weekend” and has been a contributor with the network since 2014. He developed a friendship with Trump, who made regular appearances on the show.

Hegseth served in the Army National Guard from 2002 to 2021, deploying to Iraq in 2005 and Afghanistan in 2011. He has two Bronze Stars. However, Hegseth lacks senior military and national security experience. If confirmed by the Senate, he would inherit the top job during a series of global crises — ranging from Russia’s war in Ukraine and the ongoing attacks in the Middle East by Iranian proxies to the push for a cease-fire between Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah and escalating worries about the growing alliance between Russia and North Korea.

Hegseth is also the author of “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” published earlier this year.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

President-elect Trump says he will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Kennedy ran for president as a Democrat, then as an independent, and then endorsed Trump. He’s the son of Democratic icon Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated during his own presidential campaign.

The nomination alarmed people who are concerned about his record of spreading unfounded fears about vaccines. For example, he has long advanced the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism.

HHS is a massive Cabinet agency that oversees everything from drug, vaccine and food safety to medical research and the social safety net programs Medicare and Medicaid.

Kelly Loeffler

Trump said he will nominate former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler to head the Small Business Administration, a move that catapults one of his most loyal Georgia allies to a key position in his administration while jumbling the state’s political landscape.

The Small Business Administration was created in 1953 as an independent agency of the federal government to aid, counsel, assist and protect the interests of small business concerns and preserve free competitive enterprise.

Its duties include reviewing congressional legislation, and it assesses the impact of regulatory burden on small businesses.

The decision almost certainly means Loeffler, one of Trump’s top donors, won’t compete in 2026 for Georgia’s open governor’s race or challenge U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff when he stands for another term.

Howard Lutnick

Howard Lutnick heads up the brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald and is a cryptocurrency enthusiast. He is co-chair of Trump’s transition operation, charged along with Linda McMahon, a former wrestling executive who previously led Trump’s Small Business Administration, with helping the president-elect build a Cabinet for his second administration.

As commerce secretary, Lutnick would play a key role in carrying out Trump’s plans to raise and enforce tariffs. He would oversee a sprawling Cabinet department whose oversight ranges from funding new computer chip factories and imposing trade restrictions to releasing economic data and monitoring the weather.

Linda McMahon

President-elect Trump is nominating the billionaire professional wrestling mogul Linda McMahon to be secretary of the Education Department, tasked with overseeing an agency Trump has promised to dismantle.

McMahon led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s initial term from 2017 to 2019 and twice ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut.

McMahon served on the Connecticut Board of Education for a year starting in 2009 and has spent years on the board of trustees for Sacred Heart University in Connecticut.

She’s seen as a relative unknown in education circles, though she has expressed support for charter schools and school choice.

Kristi Noem

Kristi Noem is a well-known conservative who used her two terms as South Dakota’s governor to vault to a prominent position in Republican politics.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Noem did not order restrictions that other states had issued and instead declared her state “open for business.” Trump held a fireworks rally at Mount Rushmore in July 2020 in one of the first large gatherings of the pandemic.

More recently, Noem faced sharp criticism for telling a story in her memoir about shooting and killing her dog.

She is set to lead a department crucial to the president-elect’s hardline immigration agenda as well as other missions. Homeland Security oversees natural disaster response, the U.S. Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration agents who work at airports.

John Ratcliffe

The president-elect picked John Ratcliffe, a former Texas congressman who served as director of national intelligence during his first administration, to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency in his next.

Ratcliffe was director of national intelligence during the final year and a half of Trump’s first term, leading the U.S. government’s spy agencies during the coronavirus pandemic.

If confirmed, Ratcliffe will have held the highest intelligence positions in the U.S.

Brooke Rollins

Trump said he will nominate former White House aide Brooke Rollins to be agriculture secretary.

Rollins, who heads the Trump-allied America First Policy Institute, was the director of his office of American innovation in his first term.

She would succeed Tom Vilsack, President Joe Biden’s agriculture secretary who oversees the sprawling agency that controls policies, regulations and aid programs related to farming, forestry, ranching, food quality and nutrition.

Marco Rubio

Trump named Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to be secretary of state, making the critic-turned-ally his choice for top diplomat.

Rubio is a noted hawk on China, Cuba and Iran, and was a finalist to be Trump’s running mate on the Republican ticket last summer. Rubio is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The announcement punctuates the hard pivot Rubio has made with Trump, whom the senator once called a “con man” during his unsuccessful campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

Their relationship improved dramatically while Trump was in the White House. And as Trump campaigned for the presidency a third time, Rubio cheered his proposals. For instance, Rubio, who more than a decade ago helped craft immigration legislation that included a path to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally, now supports Trump’s plan to use the U.S. military for mass deportations.

Russel Vought

Trump said he would nominate Russel Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, a position he held during Trump’s first term. After Trump’s initial term ended, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a think tank that describes its mission as renewing “a consensus of America as a nation under God.”

Vought’s proposed budget plan would cut spending on food aid through the Agriculture Department. There would be $3.3 trillion in spending reductions in the Health and Human Services Department in large part through how Medicaid and Medicare funds are distributed. It also contains about $642 billion in cuts to Affordable Care Act. The budgets for the Housing and Urban Development and Education departments would also be cut.

Vought’s budget ideas were independent of Trump, who has not entirely spelled out the details of his economic plans, other than to campaign on income tax cuts and tariff hikes.

Chris Wright

Chris Wright, a campaign donor and fossil fuel executive, is the president-elect’s choice to serve as energy secretary.

Wright, CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, is a vocal advocate of oil and gas development, including fracking, a key pillar of Trump’s quest to achieve U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market.

He has been one of the industry’s loudest voices against efforts to fight climate change and could give fossil fuels a boost, including quick action to end a year-long pause on natural gas export approvals by the Biden administration.

Wright has criticized what he calls a “top-down” approach to climate by liberal and left-wing groups and said the climate movement around the world is “collapsing under its own weight.”

Lee Zeldin

Former U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin was chosen to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

Zeldin left Congress in 2023 and was among the Republicans in Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 election results. He did not serve on committees with oversight of environmental policy.

In 2016 he pushed to change the designation of about 150 square miles of federal waters in Long Island Sound to state jurisdiction for New York and Rhode Island.

He wanted to open the area to striped bass fishing, which is allowed in state waters but banned in the federal area.

WHITE HOUSE STAFF:

James Blair

James Blair was political director for Trump’s 2024 campaign and for the Republican National Committee.

He will be deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs and assistant to the president.

Blair was key to Trump’s economic messaging during his winning White House comeback campaign this year, a driving force behind the candidate’s “Trump can fix it” slogan and his query to audiences this fall if they were better off than four years ago.

Taylor Budowich

Taylor Budowich is a veteran Trump campaign aide who launched and directed Make America Great Again, Inc., a super PAC that supported Trump’s 2024 campaign.

He will be deputy chief of staff for communications and personnel and assistant to the president.

Budowich also had served as a spokesman for Trump after his presidency.

Steven Cheung

Trump announced that Steven Cheung will serve as his White House communications director.

Cheung led communications for Trump’s latest campaign, where he gained a reputation for combative and insulting attacks on the Republican’s opponents.

He is native of Sacramento, California, worked in Republican politics and, before joining Trump’s team in 2016, for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Sergio Gor

Sergio Gor will run the personnel office. He has an been adviser to the president-elect since his 2016 campaign.

Gor ran Winning Team Publishing, which he started with Donald Trump Jr. The company has published books by Trump and his allies. Gor also led the super PAC Right for America.

The Presidential Personnel Office will likely be a focal point of Trump’s efforts to shape his administration’s staff with loyalists.

Tom Homan

The former acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director will serve as “border czar” in Trump’s incoming administration. The position is likely to play a key role in Trump’s campaign pledges to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and mount a massive deportation operation.

In addition to overseeing the southern and northern borders and “maritime, and aviation security,” Trump said Tom Homan “will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” a central part of his agenda.

Homan is a tough-talking former Border Patrol agent who worked his way up to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2017 and 2018 as the acting director. He was never confirmed by the Senate, and his new role does not require it.

Karoline Leavitt

Karoline Leavitt will serve as White House press secretary, Trump said.

Leavitt was the Trump campaign’s national press secretary and previously served in the Trump White House as assistant press secretary.

William McGinley

Trump says William McGinley, a lawyer who has served in Trump’s White House and in a key political role this year, will be his White House counsel.

McGinley was White House Cabinet secretary during Trump’s first administration, and was outside legal counsel for the Republican National Committee’s election integrity effort during the 2024 campaign.

Stephen Miller

The president-elect named longtime adviser Stephen Miller, an immigration hard-liner, to be the deputy chief of policy in his new administration.

Miller was a senior adviser in Trump’s first term and has been a central figure in many of the former president’s policy decisions, notably his move to separate thousands of immigrant families as a deterrence program in 2018. Miller helped craft many of Trump’s hardline speeches and plans on immigration.

Since Trump left office, Miller has served as the president of America First Legal, an organization of former Trump advisers fashioned as a conservative version of the American Civil Liberties Union, and is expected to take a leading role in Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration and promised the largest deportation operation in U.S. history.

Dan Scavino

Dan Scavino, whom Trump’s transition referred to in a statement as one of “Trump’s longest serving and most trusted aides,” was a senior adviser to Trump’s 2024 campaign, as well as his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. He will be deputy chief of staff and assistant to the president.

Scavino had run Trump’s social media profile in the White House during his first administration. He was also held in contempt of Congress in 2022 after a month-long refusal to comply with a subpoena from the House committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Mike Waltz

Trump asked Mike Waltz, a retired U.S. Army National Guard officer and war veteran, to be his national security adviser.

Waltz is a three-term GOP congressman from east-central Florida. He served multiple tours in Afghanistan and also worked in the Pentagon as a policy adviser when Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates were defense chiefs.

He is considered hawkish on China, and called for a U.S. boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing due to its involvement in the origin of COVID-19 and its ongoing mistreatment of the minority Muslim Uighur population.

Susie Wiles

Susie Wiles, the veteran Florida political strategist, moves from a largely behind-the-scenes role of campaign co-chair to the high-profile position of the president’s closest adviser and counsel.

Wiles has been credited with being a steadfast and quiet power behind Trump’s third White House campaign, running a largely disciplined and ultimately winning operation. She was named his new chief of staff and is the first woman to hold the influential role.

The longtime Florida-based Republican strategist ran Trump’s campaign in the state in 2016 and 2020. Before that, she ran Rick Scott ‘s 2010 campaign for Florida governor and briefly served as the manager of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman ‘s 2012 presidential campaign.

Wiles is the daughter of the late NFL player-turned-broadcaster Pat Summerall.

AMBASSADORS, ENVOYS AND OTHER KEY ROLES:

Paul Atkins

Trump intends to nominate cryptocurrency advocate Paul Atkins to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Trump said Atkins, the CEO of Patomak Partners and a former SEC commissioner, was a “proven leader for common sense regulations.” In the years since leaving the SEC, Atkins has made the case against too much market regulation.

The commission oversees U.S. securities markets and investments and is currently led by Gary Gensler, who has been leading the U.S. government’s crackdown on the crypto industry.

Gensler, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, announced last month that he would be stepping down from his post on the day that Trump is inaugurated.

Jay Bhattacharya

Jay Bhattacharya is a critic of pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

As head of the National Institutes of Health, the leading medical research agency in the United States, Trump said Bhattacharya would work with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to direct U.S. medical research and make important discoveries that will improve health and save lives.

Bhattacharya is professor at Stanford University School of Medicine and was one of three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 open letter maintaining that lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic were causing irreparable harm.

Adam Boehler

Adam Boehler is the founder and CEO of Rubicon Founders, a healthcare investment firm. He also served as the first CEO of the International Development Finance Corp.

He would serve as Trump’s lead hostage negotiator at a time when the U.S. is trying to secure the release of prisoners in Gaza and other regions around the world.

The role has been held since 2020 by Roger Carstens, who was appointed by Trump and remained in the job throughout the Biden administration.

Chad Chronister

Sheriff Chad Chronister, the top law enforcement officer in Hillsborough County, Florida, said he’s withdrawing his name from consideration to run the Drug Enforcement Administration.

He called the nomination “the honor of a lifetime” but said he had concluded he must “back away from the opportunity.” He did not explain why.

Trump’s pick of Chronister for the job, which was subject to Senate confirmation, had drawn backlash from conservatives, including over immigration and law enforcement actions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Daniel P. Driscoll

Trump said that he has selected a former soldier and Iraq War veteran to serve as secretary of the Army.

He said Daniel P. Driscoll had completed Army Ranger school and deployed with the 10th Mountain Division to Iraq. Driscoll, who is from North Carolina, had been recently serving as a senior adviser to Vice President-elect JD Vance.

Driscoll graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Yale Law School.

Pete Hoekstra

A Republican congressman from Michigan who served from 1993 to 2011, Pete Hoekstra was ambassador to the Netherlands during Trump’s first term.

“In my Second Term, Pete will help me once again put AMERICA FIRST,” Trump said in a statement announcing his choice. “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.”

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee served as governor of Arkansas for more than a decade. Trump says he will nominate him as U.S. ambassador to Israel.

Huckabee is a staunch defender of Israel. His intended nomination comes as Trump has promised to align U.S. foreign policy more closely with Israel’s interests as it wages wars against the Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah.

He has led paid tour group visits to Israel for years, frequently advertising the trips on conservative-leaning news outlets.

Jared Isaacman

Trump nominated Jared Isaacman, a tech billionaire who bought a series of spaceflights from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and conducted the first private spacewalk, to lead NASA.

He is the founder and CEO of a card-processing company and has collaborated closely with Musk ever since buying his first chartered SpaceX flight. He took contest winners on that 2021 trip and followed it in September with a mission where he briefly popped out the hatch to test SpaceX’s new spacewalking suits.

If confirmed, Isaacman will replace Bill Nelson, a former Democratic senator from Florida who was nominated by President Joe Biden. Nelson flew aboard space shuttle Columbia in 1986 – on the flight right before the Challenger disaster – while a congressman.

Keith Kellogg

Keith Kellogg is Trump’s choice for special envoy for Ukraine and Russia.

He’s a highly decorated retired three-star general and one of the architects of a staunchly conservative policy book that lays out an “America First” national security agenda for Trump’s second term.

He has long been Trump’s top adviser on defense issues and served as national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence.

Kellogg also was chief of staff of the National Security Council under Trump and stepped in as an acting national security adviser for Trump after Michael Flynn resigned the post.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy

Trump said that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would lead the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a nongovernmental task force assigned to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programs and slash federal regulations.

In a statement, Trump said Musk and Ramaswamy would help his administration “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies.”

Musk is the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and the owner of the social media platform X. Ramaswamy is biotech entrepreneur and former GOP presidential candidate.

Trump said their work would conclude no later than July 4, 2026.

Peter Navarro

Trump is bringing Peter Navarro back to the White House for his second administration.

Trump announced that Navarro will serve as a senior counselor for trade and manufacturing. He was a trade adviser in Trump’s first term.

Navarro served four months in prison after being held in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Mehmet Oz

Trump tapped Dr. Mehmet Oz, a former television talk show host and heart surgeon, to head the agency that oversees health insurance programs for millions of older, poor and disabled Americans.

Oz, who ran a failed 2022 bid to represent Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate, has been an outspoken supporter of Trump and in recent days expressed support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for the nation’s top health agency, the Department of Health and Human Services.

As the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Oz would report to Kennedy.

If confirmed by the Senate, Oz would be responsible for the programs – Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act – that more than half the country relies on for health insurance.

Kash Patel

Trump nominated Kash Patel to serve as FBI director, turning to a fierce ally to upend America’s premier law enforcement agency and rid the government of perceived “conspirators.”

The selection is in keeping with Trump’s view that the government’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies require a radical transformation and his stated desire for retribution against supposed adversaries.

Patel has called for dramatically reducing the FBI’s footprint, a perspective that dramatically sets him apart from earlier directors who have sought additional resources for the bureau, and has suggested closing down the bureau’s headquarters in Washington and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state” — Trump’s pejorative catch-all for the federal bureaucracy.

It remains unclear whether Patel could be confirmed, even by a Republican-led Senate, though Trump has also raised the prospect of using recess appointments to push his selections through.

David Perdue

Trump is naming former U.S. Senator David Perdue of Georgia to be his ambassador to China.

Trump says that as a former CEO, Perdue will bring “valuable expertise” to the U.S. relationship with China. Perdue pushed Trump’s debunked lies about electoral fraud during his failed bid for Georgia governor.

Economic tensions are sure to be a big part of the U.S.-China picture for the new administration.

Trump has threatened to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China as soon as he takes office as part of his effort to crack down on illegal immigration and drugs.

Rodney Scott

Trump said he’s nominating former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott to head U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Scott, a career official, was appointed head of the border agency in January 2020 and enthusiastically embraced then-President Trump’s policies, particularly on building a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

He was forced out by the Biden administration.

Elise Stefanik

U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik was chosen to serve as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Stefanik has long been one of Trump’s most loyal allies in the U.S. House and was among those discussed as a potential vice presidential choice. She will be thrown into the world body’s deep divisions from the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine to reining in nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran.

She will also come face-to-face almost daily in the U.N. Security Council with the ambassadors of Russia and China whose countries are now strongly allied and looking warily at a second Trump presidency – and sometimes with their counterparts from North Korea and Iran.

Trump said that Stefanik also will be a member of his Cabinet.

Herschel Walker

Trump says he’ll nominate former Senate candidate Herschel Walker as the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas.

Walker lost his bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia two years ago against Democrat Raphael Warnock.

Walker benefited during the campaign from nearly unmatched name recognition from his football career at the University of Georgia and in the NFL.

But he fell short in his efforts, unable to overcome a bevy of damaging allegations, including claims that he paid for two former girlfriends’ abortions despite supporting a national ban on the procedure.

Matt Whitaker

Trump chose former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker to serve as U.S. ambassador to NATO, the bedrock Western alliance that the president-elect has expressed skepticism about for years.

The choice of Whitaker as the nation’s representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an unusual one, given his background is in law enforcement and not in foreign policy. Whitaker had been considered a potential pick for attorney general, a position Trump instead gave to Matt Gaetz.

Whitaker is a former U.S. attorney in Iowa and served as acting attorney general between November 2018 and February 2019, as special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference was drawing to a close.

He has been a relentless critic of the federal criminal cases against Trump, which appear set to evaporate after Trump’s election win. Whitaker has used regular appearances on Fox News to join other Republicans in decrying what they contend is the politicization of the Justice Department over the past four years.

Bill White

Trump plans to nominate Bill White to serve as U.S. ambassador to Belgium.

White is a prodigious fundraiser who helped raise millions for his campaigns while ruffling feathers within the Georgia Republican establishment.

White quickly emerged as a political force after moving to Georgia from New York, stamping himself as an influential local MAGA booster and the leader of a yearslong effort to split Atlanta into two municipalities.

Steven Witkoff

Trump named real estate investor Steven Witkoff to be special envoy to the Middle East.

Witkoff is the president-elect’s golf partner and was golfing with him at Trump’s club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sept. 15, when the former president was the target of a second attempted assassination.

Trump also named Witkoff co-chair, with former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, of his inaugural committee.

What about Georgia?

Nick Ayers

A former political wunderkind who is now a middle-aged Republican mover-and-shaker, Nick Ayers could return to Trump’s inner sanctum as a White House adviser or another staff position.

As a college student in the early 2000s, Ayers got swept up into politics and became Republican Sonny Perdue’s right-hand man during his run for governor. He served as Perdue’s 2006 campaign manager, then the youngest-ever head of the Republican Governors Association and later as a top aide to Vice President Mike Pence.

After declining to take the job as Trump’s chief of staff in 2018, he returned to Atlanta and co-founded Everylife Diapers, a conservative alternative to name-brand diapers.

Brandon Beach

State Sen. Brandon Beach, an Alpharetta Republican, was a fixture at just about every major Trump rally in the closing weeks of the race. A longtime economic development official, Beach recently stepped back from the Develop Fulton booster group to focus full time on helping Trump’s presidential bid.

He’s not seen as a pick for the Cabinet or another high-level position, but he is talked about possibly filling a position in the Department of Transportation or another federal agency.

Marjorie Taylor Greene

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, first elected to Congress in 2020, is one of Trump’s most visible and loyal allies in the U.S. House. That may give the Rome Republican a leg up on an appointment to his Cabinet, although her controversial persona may make it difficult for her to get confirmed in the Senate.

Greene has said in the past that she would like to serve as Trump’s secretary of homeland security, which would give her oversight of immigration. However, now that Trump has announced that Homan will serve as his “border czar,” it remains to be seen whether Greene is still interested in the secretary role.

More recently, Greene has said only that she wants to help Trump move fast on implementing his agenda, which could mean she best serves the president by remaining in the House, where Republicans are expected to retain a thin majority.

Tyler Harper

Less than two years into his term as Georgia’s agriculture commissioner, Tyler Harper would be a darkhorse candidate for any federal post. Plus, the former state senator has a full plate fighting for disaster relief after Hurricane Helene.

But Trump allies say Harper has many fans in the president-elect’s inner circle and could be considered for a senior-level Agriculture Department job.

Bruce LeVell

Bruce LeVell, the former Gwinnett County GOP chair, was an early Trump enthusiast during the 2016 campaign who served as the head of the Republican’s diversity coalition. After a failed run for U.S. House in 2017, LeVell joined the Small Business Administration in 2018 in a regional role.

He said in an interview that he’s already in talks about joining the administration, but wouldn’t say what role.

“It’s going to be very significant. I can’t really say right now, but it’s going to be, it’s going to be very significant.”

Josh McKoon

A former state senator from Columbus, Georgia Republican Party Chair Josh McKoon built a reputation at the state Capitol as a proponent of more stringent ethics rules and a champion of contentious “religious liberty” legislation. Unafraid to pick fights within his own party, he finished third in a bruising 2018 primary for secretary of state.

He won the Georgia GOP chairmanship in 2023 with a pledge to unite mainstream and hard-line conservatives. He’s credited with shifting Republican strategy toward an embrace of early voting and working to smooth over strained party ties with Gov. Brian Kemp.

With changes expected at the top tier of the Republican National Committee after Trump’s win, McKoon could be in line for a high-level position within the RNC.

Bill Pulte

The grandson of the founder of Atlanta-based homebuilder PulteGroup is rumored to be interested in serving as Housing and Urban Development secretary. Bill Pulte is a venture capitalist and philanthropist who has a huge following on the social media site X.

“We need to fix the housing crisis,” he wrote on the site. Many of his posts have focused on housing and related issues.

The New York Post reports that Pulte has been in contact with Trump’s transition team, where he enjoys a level of support for the job.

Kevin Tanner

Former state Rep. Kevin Tanner, a Republican from Dawsonville, is part of the discussion when it comes to who Trump will tap to lead the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which falls under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The head of this agency also holds the title assistant secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use.

Since late 2022, Tanner has led Georgia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, which serves people with disabilities and mental illness.

Tanner served four terms in the Georgia House and was previously the Dawson County manager.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.