Trump's Cabinet Picks

President-elect Donald Trump has started to assemble candidates for his second presidential administration. He has announced who he wants in most key roles This article will examine 7 of the many cabinet nominees.

Secretary of State:

Marco Rubio, a Republican Senator for the state of Florida, has been nominated for Secretary of State. Rubio is a graduate of the University of Florida and the University of Miami Law School. He was first elected as a Florida Senator in 2010 and campaigned saying that then-president Barack Obama and a Democratic-controlled Congress were a threat to the United States’s economy.

Marco Rubio started a 2016 presidential campaign but eventually dropped out. During that time, Rubio and Trump often verbally insulted each other with Trump calling Rubio “little Marco” and Rubio calling Trump a “con artist.” Despite that, their relationship improved after Rubio dropped out of the race. During the final days of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, Rubio delivered remarks during multiple Trump rallies.  

Rubio is a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations and has stated that the United States is entering “an era of pragmatic foreign policies.” In April, Marco Rubio voted against an aid package of 61 billion dollars for Ukraine. In reference to China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, he has said that “they all share one goal, and that is, they want to weaken America, weaken our alliances, weaken our standing and our capability and our will.” He has also stated in an interview with CNN that, “Adversaries are uniting — North Korea, Iran, China, Russia [are] increasingly coordinating — it's going to require us to be very pragmatic and wise and how we invest overseas and what we do.” 

Treasury Secretary: 

President-elect Donald Trump announced hedge fund owner Scott Bessent as his pick for Treasury Secretary. Scott Bessent is a 1984 Yale University graduate and the founder of Key Square Capital Management. Bessent's largest managerial responsibility was when he previously worked as the chief investment officer for the Soros Fund Management, overseeing 320 employees. If confirmed as Treasury Secretary he would be overseeing over 100,000 employees. If appointed, he would also be the first openly gay person to lead the Treasury and the first openly gay cabinet member in a Republican administration. 

Despite many economists warning tariffs will boost prices, Bessent has said that “tariffs can’t be inflationary because if the price of one thing goes up, unless you give people more money, then they have less money to spend on the other thing, so there is no inflation.” He has also pushed back on criticisms of tariffs, calling them a “negotiating tool with our trading partners.” Larry Summers, the Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration, argued that high prices would be the result of tariffs higher than the ones in Trump’s first term. Bessent has also advocated for Trump to work towards deregulation policies and called for the “overhaul of bank regulations to preserve the US dollar.” 

Health and Human Services Secretary:

Robert F. Kennedy Junior (RFK), the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, was nominated by Trump for the Health and Human Services Secretary position. Kennedy is the founder of the Children’s Health Defense, an organization that has questioned the value of vaccines. Kennedy ran in the 2024 presidential election but eventually dropped out and supported Donald Trump despite Kennedy’s previous descriptions of Trump as a “terrible human being” and “probably a sociopath.” Political scientist Michael Genovese described Kennedy’s and Trump’s relationship as a demonstration of “the power of mutual opportunism,” and continues to say that, “RFK gains some measure of respectability. Trump puts Kennedy in a Cabinet position he cares little about. RFK finds a way to stay in the glow of the spotlight. Trump gets an anti-science colleague to complement Trump’s anti-science sentiments.” 

Robert F. Kennedy’s health stances have long been in the spotlight for their controversial and inaccurate nature. Kennedy has often expressed views and ideas for the removal of fluoride from water and has said that “the faster it goes out, the better,” describing it as “industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.” In contrast, the CDC and other health organizations declared water fluoridation safe and even called it “one of the ten greatest public health achievements.” 

Kennedy has also spread false claims about vaccines and other topics including a theory that measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines cause autism, regardless of the claim being disapproved multiple times. He also referred to the COVID-19 vaccine as “the deadliest vaccine ever made,” despite it being proven safe by the CDC. Additionally, Kennedy promoted a false, racist, and antisemitic theory that claimed, “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” The founder of the Minority Health Institute, Dr. Richard Allen, said Kennedy is leading “a propaganda movement” and an “absolutely a racist operation” that is particularly dangerous to the Black community. 

The former commissioner of the FDA Dr. Scott Gottlieb says that “if RFK follows through on his intentions, and I believe he will, and I believe he can, it will cost lives in this country.” 

Labor Secretary: 

Lori Chavez-DeRemer is a Republican representative from Oregon who Trump nominated for the Labor Secretary. Chavez-DeRemer is a California State University, Fresno graduate, and she was elected for her first term in Congress in 2022.

Chavez-DeRemer supported President-elect Trump throughout his campaign and in a statement released by Trump’s campaign, he said that "Lori's strong support from both the Business and Labor communities will ensure that the Labor Department can unite Americans of all backgrounds."

Unlike many House Republicans, she supports major pro-union legislation such as the PRO Act. Chavez-DeRemer promoted legislation to protect workers with government pension benefits from losing their Social Security benefits and legislation to make unionizing easier on federal levels. National Education Association President Becky Pringle credited Chavez-DeRemer’s time in the House and said that she “hope[s] to hear a pledge from her to continue to stand up for workers and students” but also expressed caution.

Commerce Secretary:Howard Lutnick, the head of Cantor Fitzgerald, a prominent financial services firm, is Donald Trump’s nominee for Commerce Secretary. Lutnick holds a degree in economics from Haverford College and, until recently, was not widely known outside Wall Street. 

Lutnick is a major Republican donor. He has financially backed Trump’s political ambitions with millions donated to Trump and hosted a fundraiser for Trump in his home. In August, Lutnick was appointed as co-chair of Trump’s transition team, alongside Linda McMahon. He pledged to ensure that Trump’s administration would be made up of loyalists who share Trump’s vision for America. 

Lutnick has expressed large amounts of vocal support for Trump’s economic policies, especially the tariffs and tax cuts central to Trump’s campaign. In a CNBC interview, Lutnick described tariffs as “an amazing tool for the president to use” to strengthen the economy and protect American jobs.  This aligns with Trump’s approach to trade, which includes leveraging tariffs as a tool to negotiate better trade deals and trying to advance domestic manufacturing. Lutnick has also expressed that he believes that the United State’s economic prosperity was at one of its highest points during the early 1900s, saying that there was “no income tax and all we had was tariffs.” 

Homeland Security Secretary:

Kristi Noem is a South Dakota Governor and Trump’s nominee for the Secretary of Homeland Security. She was elected for a South Dakota House seat in 2010, and in 2018, she was elected as the state’s governor and was reelected in 2022. 

As a governor, Kristi Noem had tried to pass state laws where demonstrations were targeted, like ones in North Dakota that plagued the Dakota Access oil pipeline, in which, according to AP News, Native Americans played a large part. After that, the Oglala Sioux told her she was not welcome on the Pine Ridge reservations and if they are ignored they “will have no choice but to banish [Kristi Noem].”

After she became governor, Noem started working with Trump's 2016 campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. In 2020, the New York Times reported that Kristi Noem had given Trump a scaled-down replica of Mount Rushmore with Trump’s face added to it. Noem was also one of the first governors to endorse Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. President-elect Trump once considered Noem as a potential running mate. However, after she published her book “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” which revealed she killed her 14-month-old dog, she suffered from large amounts of backlash.

Kristi Noem has shown her aggressive stance on immigration before and is not expected to change. Earlier this year, Noem spent millions of dollars of the state's Emergency and Disaster Fund to deploy the National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. In 2017, she expressed that she shares Trump's "concerns about our ability to screen refugees -- especially those from terrorist hotbed areas," after Trump banned people from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Moreover, Noem has praised Trump's deportation and border plans in multiple interviews and said, “With Donald Trump, we will secure the Border, and restore safety to American communities so that families will again have the opportunity to pursue The American Dream.”

Education Secretary:

Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for Education Secretary, is the former CEO and executive of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). She holds a teaching certificate but has never worked in a classroom. She has very little experience in education but served one year on the Connecticut Board of Education in 2009 before quitting. McMahon also ran twice for a U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut but lost both times, spending nearly $100 million. 

In 2016, when Trump had secured the Republican presidential nomination, McMahon donated $6 million to Trump’s candidacy and after Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election win, he chose Linda McMahon to lead the Small Business Administration. She later chaired a super PAC named America First Action to support Trump’s 2020 campaign. After his 2020 loss, she helped create the America First Policy Institute to continue supporting Trump and his agenda. McMahon served as the co-chair of Trump’s transition team this year, alongside Howard Lutnick. 

If McMahon is confirmed and takes office, one of her efforts could involve destroying the Department of Education, the department she would be hired to oversee. Throughout his campaign, Trump has proposed to close or limit the U.S. Department of Education and has mentioned “sending all education and education work and needs back to the states." However, closing the Department of Education would require congressional approval and action, and likely a majority of 60 votes in the Senate, according to The Washington Post.

Linda McMahon has also expressed support for charter schools and school choice, specifically private school vouchers, which can drain resources from public schools. Linda McMahon has criticized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, policies, and programs and wrote that they were “irrelevant to training skilled workers” and “add costs and administrative burdens to all apprenticeship programs.” Additionally, Trump and McMahon have opposed transgender students in women's sports in both secondary and post-secondary education, which has been used as a campaign topic for Trump.

Sources:

1) “Who are the people Trump has picked for key positions in his second administration so far?” PBS News

2) “Who are Trump’s Cabinet picks? Here’s every name so far,” PBS News

3) “Trump chooses Bessent to be treasury secretary, Vought as budget chief, Chavez-DeRemer for Labor,” AP News

4) “Trump names billionaire Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary pick,” CNN

5) “'Huge relief.' CEOs exhale after Trump taps Scott Bessent to lead Treasury,” CNN

6) “What To Know About Scott Bessent: Trump’s Pro-Tariff Treasury Pick,” Forbes

7) “He Helped ‘Break’ the Bank of England. Now He May Run the U.S. Treasury,” The New York Times

8) “Things to know about Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of state,” AP News

9) “President-elect Trump nominates Marco Rubio for secretary of state,” NPR

10) “Marco Rubio nominated to head US State Department,” BBC

11) “R.F.K., Jr., Wants to Eliminate Fluoridated Water. He Used to Bottle and Sell It,” The New Yorker

12) “How Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went from outsider to Cabinet pick,” Los Angeles Times

13) “Trump's former FDA commissioner: ‘It will cost lives in this country’ if RFK Jr. follows through on intentions,” NBC News

14) “The conspiracy candidate: What RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine crusade could look like in the White House,” NBC News

15) “How a Kennedy built an anti-vaccine juggernaut amid COVID-19,” AP News

16) “RFK. Jr's controversial health stances, from vaccines to raw milk,” NBC News

17) @RobertKennedyJr, Twitter

18) “Covid vaccines not linked to fatal heart problems in young people, CDC finds,” NBC News

19) “Frequently Asked Questions about Autism Spectrum Disorder,” CDC

20) “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Airs Bigoted New Covid Conspiracy Theory About Jews and Chinese,” The New York Times

21) “What to know about Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Trump’s pick for labor secretary,” AP News

22) “Trump picks Wall Street investor Howard Lutnick as Commerce Secretary,” NPR

23) “What to know about Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick for commerce secretary,” AP News

24) “Trump picks Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick to be commerce secretary,” NBC News

25) “Trump picks Lutnick to be Commerce Secretary,” CNN

26) “First on CNN: Trump picks Kristi Noem to serve as his Homeland Security secretary,” CNN

27) “What to know about Kristi Noem, Trump’s pick for Homeland Security secretary,” AP News

28) “How Kristi Noem, Trump’s homeland security pick, became an immigration 'zealot,'” The Washington Post

29) “Trump picks Kristi Noem to be Homeland Security secretary,” ABC News

30) “Tribe says South Dakota governor not welcome on reservation,” AP News

31) “What to know about Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for Education secretary,” AP News

32) “Her Wrestling Empire Was Said to Harm Children. Trump Chose Her for Education.” The New York Times

33) “America First vs America Last: K-12 Education Reforms,” America First Policy Institute

34) “Trump names Linda McMahon as his pick for Education Secretary,” CNN

35) “Trump names former wrestling executive Linda McMahon as his pick for education secretary," NBC

36) “GOP candidates embrace Trump’s call to abolish Education Department,” The Washington Post

37) “Private School Vouchers,” North Carolina Association of Educators