The White House News

President-elect Trump is assembling his Cabinet and senior staff for his second term in the White House before taking office in January.

Trump must nominate leaders for 15 government agencies and other top administration jobs that require Senate confirmation, along with appointing senior staff.

Here’s a look at who has been tapped to serve so far. 

Cabinet

Secretary of State pick: Marco Rubio

The Republican Florida senator is seen as a foreign policy hawk who is tough on China and Iran. His selection to serve as Trump’s top diplomat completes a drastic turnaround from 2016, when the two were fierce rivals in a GOP presidential primary. Rubio was also in consideration for Trump’s running mate, before he selected Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

Environmental Protection Agency director pick: Lee Zeldin

Trump’s selection to lead the EPA is Zeldin, a Republican former New York congressman and gubernatorial candidate who was an outspoken defender of the 45th president during his first impeachment trial in 2020. Trump mentioned Zeldin’s legal background, a sign he will likely lean on the EPA to roll back environmental regulations.

United Nations ambassador pick: Elise Stefanik

The House GOP conference chair who just won her fifth term representing an upstate New York district, Stefanik has limited diplomatic experience but has been an outspoken critic of the United Nations and a staunch ally of Israel.

Homeland Security secretary pick: Kristi Noem

Noem, a Republican who has served as South Dakota governor since 2019, is a loyal Trump ally and would help oversee his immigration crackdown in a second term. She was also in consideration for Trump’s running mate before early excerpts of her book revealed she killed her hunting dog 20 years ago.

White House

Chief of staff: Susie Wiles

Wiles spent the past two years co-running Trump’s campaign and is well-respected as a political operative. She will become the first woman to serve as a White House chief of staff. 

Wiles, among the people Trump thanked after his 2024 victory, was largely a behind-the-scenes figure during his run. She has also worked for Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and was a deputy director during former President Reagan’s 1980 campaign.

Deputy chief of staff for policy: Stephen Miller

Miller was one of Trump’s closest advisers during his first term and was an architect of policies like a ban on travel from several Muslim-majority countries and family separation. He is expected to lead efforts to enact Trump’s immigration crackdown in a second term.

Border czar: Tom Homan

A former Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, Homan was named Trump’s “border czar,” tasked with cracking down on immigration and overseeing the “the Southern Border, the Northern Border, all Maritime, and Aviation Security,” according to a statement from the president-elect.

Homan has said he will crank up workplace raids as a way to address labor and sex trafficking and will prioritize “public safety threats and national security threats” for deportation as border czar. He was an early proponent of the “zero tolerance” policy that separated more than 4,000 children from their parents in the first Trump administration, and recently said “families can be deported together” while discussing plans for the upcoming term.

National security adviser: Mike Waltz

Waltz, an Army veteran who was the first Green Beret elected to Congress, will serve as Trump’s top national security official, leaving the House after representing Florida since 2019.

The Republican congressman has called for Europe to do more to support Ukraine and for the U.S. to be more stringent with its support, aligning with a key foreign policy goal of the president-elect. He has also been a staunch critic of the Biden administration’s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.

President-elect Trump on Monday announced former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) as his nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Zeldin has a fairly thin track record on environmental policy, but was a vocal congressional ally of Trump’s in the president-elect’s first term. He left Congress for an unsuccessful run for New York governor in 2022.

The nomination was well-received by Zeldin’s former New York Republican colleagues, with Rep. Mike Lawler tweeting that Zeldin “will do a phenomenal job ahead a critical agency to ensure we protect our environment while increasing domestic production of energy.”

Environmental groups sounded alarm over former President Trump’s environmental agenda, such as rolling back regulation and protections, but largely avoided criticizing Zeldin, who had a 14 percent score from the League of Conservation Voters on his congressional voting record.

Here are five things to know about the likely next EPA chief.

Vocal Trump ally in Congress

As a House member between 2017 and 2021, Zeldin was a frequent critic of federal investigations into then-President Trump around his campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, and then a key defender during impeachment efforts.

In 2018, he called for a criminal investigation into former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for allegedly leaking to the press, and also cosponsored a resolution calling for a special counsel to investigate the FBI’s 2016 probe into the Trump campaign.

Zeldin was part of Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment trial in 2020, related to Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into opening an investigation into President Biden during the 2020 campaign.

During the initial House impeachment process, an NBC News analysis found that he spoke more than any other congressional Republican in Trump’s defense, with his name appearing in transcripts more than 500 times.

He was also one of 126 Republican House members to sign onto the Texas v. Pennsylvania lawsuit seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

But he voted against the Trump tax bill

Zeldin’s record in the House includes a surprising “no” vote, opposing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which the then-President Trump signed in December 2017.

He was one of 13 GOP members and five New York Republicans to oppose the bill, which passed the chamber 227-205, arguing it could lead to a tax increase for his constituents.

“You’re taking more money from a place like New York in order to pay for deeper tax cuts elsewhere,” he said.

Zeldin’s primary objection was the bill’s the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap, which Trump signaled he was open to adjusting or removing at a Long Island event in September of this year.

Gubernatorial run was relatively close

Republican gains were below expectations in the 2022 midterm elections, but New York was a bright spot for the GOP. Wins in the state helped the party secure control of the House.

And while Zeldin lost to incumbent New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) by six points, it was closer than many had expected in the blue state. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), Hochul’s predecessor, beat Republican challenger Marc Molinaro by 23 points in the previous election.

As votes were still being counted in 2022 and Hochul declared victory on election night, Zeldin still predicted he would ultimately win. “It’s going to be a little frustrating for members of the media who didn’t ever want us to be in contention here in New York,” he told supporters at the time.

He conceded and congratulated Hochul the next day.

Assaulted on the campaign trail in 2022

Zeldin made national headlines in July 2022, when a man climbed the stage at his campaign and tried to stab him. Zeldin, who was uninjured, pointed to the incident to highlight concerns about crime in the New York area, a central theme of the New York GOP’s midterms pitch.

“Unfortunately, Congressman Zeldin is just the latest New Yorker whose life has been affected by the out of control crime and violence in New York,” Zeldin campaign spokesperson Katie Vincentz said in a statement following the incident.

Zeldin would later speak out following the attempt on Trump’s life in July this year, blaming Democrats for their heated rhetoric toward the former president.

“Ultimately, we have to confront, head on, the fact that there is a very extensive effort basically throwing everything that they can against President Trump outside of the ballot box to try to prevent him from taking office,” he told Fox News at the Republican National Convention days later. “It’s gone too far. It’s sick and it needs to end.”

Environmental record is comparatively light

What exists of Zeldin’s record on the environment is largely in alignment with Trump’s.

He backed Trump’s 2017 exit from the Paris Climate Agreement, telling Bloomberg in 2018 that the U.S. should not reenter the agreement “as it currently stands,” arguing it did not impose enough responsibility on other countries relative to the U.S. “It’s not anywhere close to a level playing field,” he added.  

After the U.S. re-entered the agreement under the Biden administration, the second Trump administration is likely to again withdraw from the compact.

He also took aim at the Hochul administration’s climate targets in a July Fox News op-ed. In the article, he ridiculed the state goal of 70 percent renewables by the end of the decade, established under Hochul’s predecessor Andrew Cuomo, as “whimsical,” and noted that as of last summer, the state was on track to only hit 44 percent by 2030.

“Hochul’s administration now wants to push the renewables deadline to 2033. Three additional years won’t get them there either,” he wrote.

Environmental groups keeping their powder dry

Some environmentalist and conservation groups appeared tentative to criticize the selection Monday, despite Zeldin’s track record. But they were sharply critical of potential Trump administration policy changes.

Noting that Zeldin identified automotive standards as a priority, Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said repealing current standards “would devastate the industry in a moment of critical transition, threatening jobs, increasing tailpipe pollution that’s wrecking the climate and driving up consumer costs.”

Zeldin “should demonstrate during the confirmation process that he will work to reduce the pollution that’s harming our children’s health, fueling extreme weather and raising insurance costs,” Environmental Defense Fund Executive Director Amanda Leland said.

“He also should commit to ensuring America continues to be a leader in the clean energy transition and the good-paying jobs it creates – or risk the U.S. falling behind other nations, as it did during Donald Trump’s first term.”

Climate Power, meanwhile, blasted Zeldin for taking $410,000 from the oil and gas industry and for saying in 2014 that he was “not sold yet on the whole argument that we have as serious a problem as other people are” when it comes to climate change.

“Big Oil spent millions of dollars propping up Donald Trump’s campaign—and he’s not wasting any time giving them a good return on their investment,” executive director Lori Lodes said.

President-elect Trump has selected South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to a source familiar with the decision.

Noem was first floated as a possible running mate for Trump, but her consideration fizzled after the release of her biography, in which she described killing a dog that was “untrainable.”

Instead, the Republican governor will be tapped to lead the sprawling agency tasked with protecting the U.S from terror threats, securing the borders and enforcing U.S. immigration law. Trump has also tasked DHS with carrying out the “largest deportation operation in American history.”

The pick of Noem to lead DHS is the latest sign of Trump’s intention to take a hard line on immigration policy, with an agenda that he has said will represent the largest deportation in U.S. history.

If confirmed, Noem would work closely with Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to serve as his deputy chief of staff for policy. Miller was instrumental in shaping many of Trump’s toughest immigration policies in his first term.

Trump also selected Tom Homan as his border czar, an early proponent of child separation during his work under the first Trump administration who recently said that “families can be deported together.”

Noem has little national security experience, but she did send the South Dakota National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border and has been vocal on immigration issues.

“South Dakota won’t be taking any illegal immigrants that the Biden Administration wants to relocate. My message to illegal immigrants… call me when you’re an American,” Noem wrote on social platform X in 2021 shortly after President Biden took office.

She also supported Trump’s Muslim travel ban while serving as a member of Congress and also supported pausing some refugee screening.

“I share the President’s concerns about our ability to screen refugees—especially those from terrorist hotbed areas,” Noem said in 2017. “I support putting a temporary pause on accepting refugees from terrorist-held areas—at least until the administration can certify that asylum-seekers do not present a safety threat to the U.S.”

Noem was also previously floated as a possible Interior secretary.

“I love being Governor of South Dakota, and President Trump knows that I’ll help him however I can,” Noem said at the time.

Noem was a regular with Trump on the campaign trail, including at one event that turned into a music listening session after multiple medical emergencies.

DHS contains a number of key public safety agencies. Beyond its immigration duties, it also contains the Secret Service, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

It also contains the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) which is tasked with helping companies prevent cyber attacks as well as attacks on physical infrastructure.

The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

Brett Samuels contributed.

This story was first published at 10:05 a.m. and updated at 10:32 a.m.