Fresh off his historic presidential win, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has wasted no time selecting key players for his administration. Of the several key positions up for grabs in his cabinet, Trump has so far filled a number of these roles.
Leading his team will be Susie Wiles, who will serve as the first female Chief of Staff for the White House.
Wiles, a fixture in Florida politics for decades, is credited with not only helping Donald Trump win his historic second bid for the White House, but is also noted for helping Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, win his elections. However, she was also seen as dismantling DeSantis’ presidential bid when he was running against Trump during the Republican primaries.
Her resume includes spending decades working for local and national campaigns, private-sector lobbying for Ballard Partners and Mercury and, in her early career, serving as chief of staff to the mayor of Jacksonville. She began her career in politics holding other low level roles including working for members of Congress and at the Department of Labor.
Trump has tapped longtime associate, Stephen Miller, as his deputy chief of staff for policy. Miller, 39, was a crucial member of Trump’s first term in the White House, where he was the director of speechwriting and helped shape Trump’s immigration policies.
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Miller has been the leading advocate for a more restrictive immigration policy and is expected to expand on this role during Trump’s second term. He made regular appearances at Trump’s rallies during his 2024 campaign and was often seen flying on Trump’s private plane.
Five-term New York Republican, Elise Stefanik, 40, has been selected as the second Trump administration’s ambassador to the United Nations. Stefanik is also the House Republican Conference Chair and once ran for office against Trump’s running mate, JD Vance.
Stefanik was once the youngest woman to ever be elected to Congress and is currently the most senior woman in House Republican leadership. A staunch supporter of Israel, she has in the past lambasted the UN as being plagued by “antisemitic rot.”
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Trump’s ‘Border Czar’
Tom Homan, whose comments about deporting families of illegal immigrants together recently went viral, has been appointed to oversee deportation policy and aviation security for the Trump administration.
A Border Patrol agent for 34 years, Homan is no stranger to managing illegal migration. There were 11.7 million people in the U.S. illegally as of July 2023, with millions of illegal border crossings in recent years.
He has said that while the second Trump administration will prioritize illegal immigrant criminals and gang members, anyone illegally present in the U.S. should “self-deport” before the government deports them.
“If you wanna self-deport, that’s fine,” Homan said in an interview with Fox News. “But criminals and gang members, they get no favors from this administration. You came to this country illegally, which is a crime. You committed crimes against United States citizens, some heinous crimes. You get no grace period. So we’re coming for you,” he continued.
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Trump’s Homeland Security secretary will be Kristi Noem. Elected governor of South Dakota in 2018, Noem is the state’s first female governor and was endorsed by President Trump.
Policy hawks
Florida Rep. Mike Waltz will be Trump’s National security advisor. Waltz is a Green Beret veteran who served in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa. Since 2019, he has served a congressional district in the House where he’s a member of the Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Armed Services committees.
Waltz has criticized the Biden administration’s approach to the war in Ukraine and demanded that European countries make greater contributions of military aid to the country. He has proposed removing restrictions on Ukrainian strikes inside Russian territory as a means of forcing Moscow to the negotiating table.
Soon after reports about Waltz’ coming position, various media reported that Trump intends to pick U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida to serve as Secretary of State.
Like Waltz, Rubio is a known policy hawk. In 2021, he commissioned a report investigating the possibility that the novel coronavirus pandemic was caused when the pathogen leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, and has delivered strong criticisms of the country’s communist regime.
Lee Zeldin, who served as Congressman for parts of Long Island, will be appointed Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Zeldin recently came close to ousting incumbent New York State Governor Kathy Hochul in the most recent election for governor.
Zeldin’s known stance on environmental matters largely aligns with Trump’s, with him having voiced opposition to Hochul’s climate targets as “whimsical.”
In 2017, he backed Trump’s decision to exit the Paris Climate Agreement, and told Bloomberg in 2018 that the U.S. should not enter the agreement “as it currently stands.”
He argued that the agreement favored other countries and that it created an unfair playing field.
