Donald Trump’s Cabinet-in-waiting: What we know so far
There are only a few key spots left as Washington watches to see who President-elect Donald Trump will select to fill the final spots in his Cabinet.
The people Trump picks will not only be tasked with running entire departments, they'll be the best indication of how Trump intends to govern and which of his many (and sometimes contradictory) policy positions he intends to pursue.
Here are the picks announced so far for Cabinet and Cabinet-level jobs:
Chief of staff
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus will be Trumps chief of staff.
Treasury secretary
Steven Mnuchin, a 17-year-veteran of Goldman Sachs, is Trumps pick for Treasury secretary.
Secretary of state
Trump tapped ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to lead the State Department.
Secretary of defense
Trump picked retired Marine General James Mattis as his defense secretary.
Attorney general
President-elect Trump has tapped Sen. Jeff Sessions as attorney general.
Commerce secretary
Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, a Trump economic adviser, is Trumps pick for commerce secretary.
Labor secretary
Trump has tapped Andy Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, which included the Carls Jr. fast food chain.
Health and Human Services secretary
Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the chairman of the House Budget Committee and an early Trump backer, was chosen to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Housing and Urban Development secretary
Trump tapped retired neurosurgeon and former GOP primary rival Ben Carson to serve as HUD secretary.
Transportation secretary
Trump picked former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to serve as secretary of transportation. Chao served as deputy secretary of transportation under President George H.W. Bush and is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Education secretary
Trump announced that he will nominate Betsy DeVos, a prominent advocate for school choice and charter schools, as education secretary.
Homeland Security secretary
Trump has decided to nominate Marine Gen. John Kelly, the former U.S. Southern Command chief, to run the Department of Homeland Security.
Interior Secretary
Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, a first-term congressman, was Trump's choice.
Energy secretary
Trump picked former Texas Gov. Rick Perry for energy secretary.
Environmental Protection Agency administrator
Trump picked Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to run the EPA.
Ambassador to the United Nations
Trump has tapped South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to be his ambassador to the United Nations.
Director of the Office of Management and Budget
Trump tapped Rep. Mick Mulvaney, a conservative South Carolina Republican, to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
Here are Trumps choices for other White House and administration jobs:
White House counselor
Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trumps campaign manager and a senior transition adviser, will serve in the White House as a counselor to Trump.
Chief strategist
Former Breitbart News executive Steve Bannon, who was Trumps campaign CEO, will be Trumps chief White House strategist.
White House national security adviser
Trump has picked Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn for national security adviser.
White House counsel
Trump tapped Donald McGahn, a partner at the firm Jones Day who served as the Trump campaigns general counsel, for the job. McGahn is a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
Trump has chosen Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo for the job.
White House communications team
Sean Spicer will serve as Trumps White House press secretary, Hope Hicks will be Trumps strategic communications director, and Dan Scavino will be social media director.
Small Business Administration administrator
Trump has picked Linda McMahon, a professional wrestling executive and former Republican contender for Connecticut's U.S. Senate seats, to lead the Small Business Administration.
Deputy commerce secretary
Trump tapped Todd Ricketts, the co-owner of the Chicago Cubs and a member of the powerful conservative Ricketts family, to be deputy secretary of commerce.
Deputy national security adviser
Trump has selected K.T. McFarland, a Fox News analyst who served as an official in the Reagan White House, to be his deputy national security adviser.
Senior policy adviser to the president for policy
Stephen Miller, a key campaign aide, will serve in this post.
Director, National Economic Council
Gary Cohn, the president and COO of Goldman Sachs, was the president-elect's pick to lead the NEC.
Republican National Committee
Michigan GOP Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel was picked by the president-elect to succeed Priebus as the national chair.
Regulatory reform adviser
Investor Carl Icahn will serve as Trumps special adviser for overhauling regulations.
Director of the White House National Trade Council
Peter Navarro, an economics and public policy professor who helped craft Trump's trade policies during the campaign, will lead a new trade council inside the White House.
The following is a list of likely contenders and will be frequently updated as new information becomes available.
Agriculture secretary
Trump is slated to meet with Elsa Murano, a former president at Texas A&M University and USDA food safety official, to discuss the agriculture secretary job.
Three-term Idaho Gov. Butch Otter added his name to the mix of candidates for agriculture secretary when one of his spokesman told an Idaho radio station he was being vetted.
Susan Combs, a former Texas agriculture commissioner, is another possible candidate for the job. Combs recently met with Vice President-elect Mike Pence.
Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) was previously seen as the leading candidate, but sources say both Democratic leadership, concerned about the loss of a Senate seat, and many of Trumps agriculture advisors are against the move. Heitkamp said recently shes likely to remain in the Senate.
Former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue visited Trump tower on Nov. 30 and was earlier considered to be in the mix.
Other names include: Charles Herbster, a Nebraska-based agribusinessman who helped to organize Trumps agriculture advisory council; one-time deputy agriculture secretary Chuck Conner; Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback; former Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman; and Sid Miller, the current secretary of agriculture in Texas.
Veterans Affairs secretary
Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove has emerged as the top contender to be Trumps secretary of Veterans Affairs.
Trump has also met twice to discuss the VA post with Pete Hegseth, the former head of Concerned Veterans for America, a conservative advocacy group established in 2012 and backed by the industrialist Koch brothers.
Hegseth, a 36-year-old Iraq War veteran, has butted heads with the more traditional veterans groups for some of his aggressive tactics and they have raised concerns that as secretary of Veterans Affairs he would make radical changes that could hurt veterans, like pushing for privatization of health care services.
Some of those groups have urged Trump to keep on Bob McDonald, the former CEO of Procter & Gamble who has been running the VA since 2014.
But others, including VA whistleblowers who have reported a series of dangerous failures at the agencies, recently wrote to Trump endorsing Hegseth.
These organizations each want to keep the status quo and to keep lining their pockets at the expense of our nations heroes, they wrote of the more established vets groups. That is exactly the reason Mr. Hegseth is the right choice to run the VA.
Trump has also met with former Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts to discuss the VA post. And House Veterans Affairs Chairman Jeff Miller, whos retiring from the House and was an early Trump backer, has also been seen as a potential candidate though has not met with the president-elect about it.
U.S. trade representative
Among the top contenders Trump is considering for U.S. trade representative are two men leading the transition at the agency: Dan DiMicco, a former steel company executive who advised Trump on trade throughout his campaign; and Robert Lighthizer, a longtime trade lawyer who has spent much of his legal career representing U.S. steel companies.
Both men align with Trumps defensive view of trade, and picking either would send a signal he is likely to follow through on promises to get tough on China and other nations that break the rules on trade.
Another name that has recently entered the mix is that of Wayne Berman, a senior executive at the Blackstone Group and a Republican mega-donor. Others said to be in the running but seen as less likely candidates include David McCormick, president of Bridgewater Associates, and former Rep. Charles Boustany, a Louisiana Republican and longtime advocate of free trade.
Kathryn A. Wolfe, Bryan Bender, Jeremy Herb, Connor O'Brien, Joanne Kenen, Helena Bottemiller Evich, Ian Kullgren, Ben White, Darius Dixon, Esther Whieldon, Marianne Levine, Caitlin Emma, Jennifer Scholtes, Lauren Gardner, Lorraine Woellert, Ellen Mitchell, Rachana Pradhan, Ben Weyl, Cory Bennett, and Megan Cassella and Nahal Toosi contributed to this story.
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Donald Trump's Cabinet-in-waiting: What we know so far
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