President-elect Donald Trump has continued to shower his campaign supporters with goodies in his latest choices for the new administration.
The president-elect revealed that Elon Musk will oversee a Department of Government Efficiency.
President-elect Donald Trump has revealed where tech-billionaire Elon Musk will sit in the new administration out of options announced on Tuesday.
Trump said that the head of South African Tesla and X and the CEO of the company will lead a so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
The announcement stated that the venture will “offer recommendations from outside the government.” To date, there is no such department, and establishing a new department is possible only through an act of Congress.
Trump also announced the selections of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to head the Department of Homeland Security, Fox News host Pete Hegseth as Defense secretary and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Trump’s late Tuesday picks are not in the mainstream Republican tradition of choice for the new administration but rather an appreciation of campaign workers. Here are the new picks for the Trump administration.
Musk And Ramaswamy To Lead Outside Venture To Slash Government
Musk mentioned the so-called “DOGE”-an acronym that matches the cryptocurrency the Tesla tycoon often touts-during the campaign, including in an interview on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast in the last days of the race.
Trump has made the proposal of a government efficiency commission during a speech on September 5 to the Economic Club of New York. “With the endorsement from Elon Musk who has suggested me and …
I will establish a government efficiency commission to do a top to bottom review of the entire federal government’s financial and performance and come up with sweeping reforms,” Trump said at the time.
It did not give details of the scale or cost of the operation beyond Musk and Ramaswamy’s leadership but said the work will be done by July 4, 2026.
Musk was one of Trump’s biggest supporters, donating over $100 million to the campaign, including $1 million a day to registered voters in seven swing states.
Musk also used the campaign, as well as accounts of the far right, in X, the social network he owns.
Trump’s Picks So Far: What We Know
- Chief of Staff: Trump appointed his senior campaign adviser Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff, making her the first woman to ever be appointed to this position. He is a political consultant from Florida who mostly avoids the public eye but has been attributed to Trump’s political resurrection.
- Deputy chief of staff for policy: A key Trump adviser since the campaign, Stephen Miller is expected to become the deputy chief of staff for policy in Trump’s next administration. The 39-year-old was Trump’s senior adviser and director of speechwriting during the Republican’s first term in the White House and was responsible for the president’s immigration policies.
- Ambassador to the UN: Trump tapped his former White House adviser Elise Stefanik, a five-term Republican congresswoman from northern New York, for the UN ambassador position. She is the House Republican Conference Chair and one of the women who once vied for Trump’s vice presidency.
- ‘Border czar’: Trump has appointed Tom Homan to head deportation policy, and aviation security. Homan was a Border Patrol agent for 34 years and was acting director of ICE in Trump’s first administration. He was criticized for his policies of immigration that involved deportations, and the “zero-tolerance” policy that led to the separation of families of immigrants in the US illegally.
- EPA head: President Trump has nominated Lee Zeldin as The Administrator of The United States Environmental Protective Agency. Zeldin was a Congressman for parts of Long Island New York and lost to Kathy Hochul in the 2022 Gubernatorial election.
- National security adviser: Trump has appointed Florida Representative Mike Waltz as his national security adviser. Waltz has worked as a civilian in the Pentagon, served on the House Armed Services Committee and shares Trump’s transactional view of international politics. U.S.
- ambassador to Israel: Trump said he is going to nominate Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, for the post of the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Huckabee is a Baptist minister and a former host of Fox News; he has sought the Republican party’s presidential nomination twice, unsuccessfully. His daughter is the current Governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was the White House press secretary during Trump’s first term.
- Director of the Central Intelligence Agency: Trump appointed his former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe as CIA director. Ratcliffe before that was a member of the House of Representatives from Texas and later the director of national intelligence at the end of Trump’s first term.
- Secretary of Defense: Trump nominated Fox News host, Pete Hegseth to secretary of defense. Hegseth had been a member of the U.S. Army National Guard and had been involved in the leadership of veteran’s organizations.
- Secretary of Homeland Security: President Trump said he had decided to nominate South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem for the position of the Secretary of Homeland Security. The pick places the strident conservative governor, who deployed the state’s National Guard to the southern border, in a significant position on immigration.
- White House Counsel: Trump tapped William McGinley to serve as his White House counsel. McGinley, a partner at the Washington-based law firm Holtzman Vogel, worked as White House cabinet secretary during Trump’s first presidency.
