Trump Administration Appointee Tracker
Trump Administration Appointee Tracker
Stay up-to-date on the latest developments and gain valuable insights into the potential implications of President-elect Donald Trump’s appointees. This tracker offers a thorough overview of key appointments to prominent positions within the administration, detailing their current status and the roles to which they’ve been appointed. Each profile includes in-depth background information on the appointee and analysis of how their appointment could influence critical issues affecting CHROs and HR leaders.
| Position | Appointee | Background | Potential Impact | Appointment Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy & Homeland Security Advisor | Stephen Miller | Miller is a longtime Presidential advisor who currently runs America First Legal, which has filed lawsuits challenging corporate and higher education DEI-related policies. Credited as the architect of the President-elect's first administration immigration policies. He is known for his unabashedly hawkish stances on immigration and social issues. | Miller is expected to help craft immigration policies. He as essential in negotiating the first Trump administration’s “safe third country” agreements, and the “Remain in Mexico” policy. We can expect to see an elevated number of executive orders revoking Biden era policies and reinstituting his own in the first 100 days of Trump’s second administration, if not day 1 on January 20th, 2025. | Neither position requires Senate confirmation. |
| Border Czar | Tom Homan | Homan was the Acting Head of ICE during the first Trump administration. ICE has not had a Senate confirmed leader in decades. Is a vocal border hawk and has promised to ramp up deportations and made clear that he will use workplace raids to elevate the issue. | Homan will head up the administration’s push for border overhaul which includes workplace raids to identify people working illegally in the U.S. The current advice moving forward has been to get businesses’ I-9 houses in order. | Does not require Senate confirmation. |
| Department of Homeland Security Secretary | Gov. Kristi Noem, (R-SD) | Noem has been South Dakota Governor since 2019. Has been a vocal supporter of the first Trump administration's policies and can be an active departmental vessel for policy expansion. | The governor has referenced possible reinstitution of Title 42 expulsions. She may very well divvy up departmental border and immigration mandates with Stephen Miller & Tom Homan | Nominated |
| Labor Secretary | Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR-5) | In the House, Chavez-DeRemer served on the Education and the Workforce Committee. Serving one term she lost her reelection in the U.S. House of Representatives. In conflict with the first Trump administration’s efforts, she supports several union friendly pieces of legislation including the PRO Act. The business community is upset over the nomination, but are withholding comments. Unions are skeptical that any nominee will deviate from Trump’s prior tacking away from pro-union policies, but it was at union President Sean O’Brien’s urging that she was selected. | Issues key certifications for certain employment-based visa programs / Labor. Second-tier deputy and assistant secretary appointments in the department may stick to less populist, and historically more amenable polices for businesses and workers. It is unknown how willing she may be to abandon her incongruent stances. | Nominated |
| Secretary of State | Sen. Marco Rubio, R-FL | A Florida Senator that has historically been pro-immigration reform but has had prior reform efforts stifled in the senate and by the party more broadly. Has supported increasing aid and programs for Puerto Rico and lifting embargoes with Cuba due to his close ties with the massive Florida Hispanic community. | Rubio may have a more lenient application of policy surrounding Visas, Trade policies, creating opportunities for influencing the President’s intentions of across-the-board tariffs and abandonment of prior trade agreements. | Nominated |
| Health & Human Services Secretary | Former Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | Kennedy dropped his own independent bid for president in August and endorsed Trump, who said in his victory speech after winning reelection that Kennedy is “going to help make America healthy again.” Kennedy is active in the anti-vaccine movement but is also open to increasing health standards. | Refugee settlement, unaccompanied migrant children, and emergency operations. sub-agencies focused on everything from scientific research to food safety, drug price negotiations and Medicare. | Nominated |
| Secretary of Commerce | Howard Lutnick | Cantor Fitzgerald CEO, Ran Staffing for Trump Transition. Was a final candidate for Sectary of the Treasury but was ultimately not selected for that role but instead, Secretary of Commerce. | Commerce committee will increasingly have more mission creep, especially around AI as well as the energy, trade and research investment required to sustain it. | Nominated |
| Department of Justice Attorney General | Pam Bondi | Bondi is a partner at Ballard Partners, the lobbying firm that had been run by Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles and whose founder, Brian Ballard, is a top Trump fundraiser. She is co-chair of the law and justice division at the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute and is Florida’s Former Attorney General. | Has jurisdiction over immigration courts and is the enforcement and litigating arm of the independent regulating entities. Will be tasked with helping implement and then defending in court many of his policy agendas. | Nominated (Second Nominee) |
| NLRB General Counsel | Jennifer Abruzzo | Abruzzo has relocated her Deputy GC Peter Sung Ohr who now heads the division of enforcement litigation. Abruzzo elevated associate general counsel Jessica Rutter to serve as her new deputy. The Deputy will serve upon her ouster until a Trump appointee can take over if Trump fires the GC upon taking office as Biden did. | A new NLRB GC will likely rescind various memos issued by GC Abruzzo. Although we expect any newly-appointed GC to rescind scores of currently-active memorandums issued by GC Abruzzo. | Likely Replaced (Biden Admin) |
| NLRB Chair | Lauren McFerran | While the current Board has a 2-1 Democratic majority, Board Chair Lauren McFerran’s term expires on Dec. 16, 2024 and failed a vote 49-50 to be confirmed to a third term, Joseph L. Ditelberg’s vote was also pulled. The incoming Trump administration will need to nominate two spots for the Board. | These seats will now be filled by Trump appointees and the Board will return to a Republican majority, likely at some point in 2025, paving the way for more pro-employer decisions. | Nominated (Biden Admin) Vote Failed, Trump Admin – 2 Nominations |
| FTC Chair | Andrew Ferguson | Ferguson previously did stints as chief counsel for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). He was the former solicitor general for Virginia and was also a senior special counsel for incoming Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). | Independent Regulatory oversight If selected, Ferguson won’t need Senate confirmation since he is already on the commission. | Already serving, confirmation not required. |
| EEOC Chair | TBD, Andrea Lucas possible interim Chair | TBD | Independent Regulatory oversight | — |
| SEC Chair | Paul Atkins | CEO of Patomak Global Partners LLC, is a lawyer and former top SEC official, and will be an experienced Washington insider regulating Wall Street. Replaces SEC Chair Gary Gensler. Atkins has criticized socially conscious corporate shareholder activism - an issue the SEC has embraced in recent years with climate risk disclosures and other rules on environmental, social and governance investing. He has also criticized overzealous SEC corporate enforcement actions, arguing they only hurt shareholders twice over. | Independent Regulatory oversight - Atkins is expected to review many of Gensler's rules and enforcement actions pending in the courts. | Nominated |
| Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing | Peter Navarro | A Harvard-educated economist, came into Trump's orbit due to his various writings on China, in which he blasted Beijing for gaming the international trading system through currency manipulation, illegal export subsidies and several other policy tools. Navarro joined the 2016 Trump campaign and has remained a close ally ever since. One of the most influential voices of Trump’s tariff-heavy first term. He was released from prison following a contempt of Congress charge. | During the first Trump term, Navarro was picked to head the newly created Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, where he helped shape the White House's trade strategy, specifically its campaign to set waves of new tariffs on more than $300 billion worth of Chinese goods. Trump also alluded to the role Navarro played in revamping the North American Free Trade Agreement into the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and a retooling of the U.S. trade deal with South Korea. "During my First Term, few were more effective or tenacious than Peter in enforcing my two sacred rules, Buy American, Hire American," stated Trump. | Does not require Senate confirmation. |
| United States Trade Representative | Jamieson Greer | Former Air Force lawyer turned trade litigator, has a mentor in Robert Lighthizer, who was Trump’s trade representative in his first administration and is expected to influence trade policy in Trump’s second term. | Greer will be on the front line of Trump’s threat to impose a baseline tariff of up to 20 percent on all $3 trillion worth of U.S. exports and a separate 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods. | Nominated |
| Assistant Attorney General - DOJ Antitrust Division | Gail Slater | Oxford-educated economic policy adviser to Vice President-elect JD Vance. Slater was a tech policy adviser on the National Economic Council during Trump’s first term, and has been advising his transition team on antitrust and tech policy. Earlier she spent 10 years at the US Federal Trade Commission, including as an adviser to former Democratic FTC Commissioner Julie Brill in Barack Obama’s administration. Slater is seen as a pro-enforcement, populist Republican, particularly when it comes to the tech sector, and her nomination signals a new Trump administration is unlikely to fully back down from the aggressive stance of Joe Biden’s administration. Her boss, Vance, who has represented Ohio in the Senate since 2023, has expressed his support for much of the agenda of outgoing FTC Chair Lina Khan. | “Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!” Trump said. “I was proud to fight these abuses in my First Term, and our Department of Justice’s antitrust team will continue that work under Gail’s leadership.” | Nominated |
| CBP | Rodney S. Scott | A former career border official whom Mr. Trump installed as chief of the Border Patrol in 2020. Mr. Scott carried out many of Trump’s signature policies in his first term, and credited him with achieving drops in immigration. | Oversees the country’s borders, including the Border Patrol | Nominated |
| ICE | Caleb Vitello | A longtime Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, will be in a key position charged with overseeing Mr. Trump’s planned mass deportation efforts. | ICE arrests, detains and deports unauthorized immigrants | Acting (ICE has not had a Senate confirmed leader in years) |
| A.I. and Crypto Czar | David Sacks | Saks is a venture capitalist and an early executive at PayPal who launched a hit podcast. He is one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent conservative investors, donors and media personalities. | AI Regulation | Does not require Senate confirmation. |
| Medicare Medicaid Administrator | Dr. Mehmet Oz | Dr. Oz is a heart surgeon and the son of Turkish immigrants. Mr. Trump said Dr. Oz would “work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.” Mr. Trump noted that Dr. Oz had “won nine Daytime Emmy Awards hosting ‘The Dr. Oz Show,’ where he taught millions of Americans how to make healthier lifestyle choices. Dr. Oz has also frequently clashed with other medical experts. In the early days of the pandemic, he promoted the malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and in 2020 argued for a universal health coverage system, in which every American not covered by Medicaid would be enrolled in a private Medicare Advantage plan. The coverage expansion, the column said, would be financed by an “affordable 20 percent payroll tax,” and would eliminate employer health coverage and the government Medicare program. | Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services oversee several of the country’s largest government programs, providing health coverage to more than 150 million Americans. They regulate health insurance and set policy that guides the prices that doctors, hospitals and drug companies are paid for many medical services. About a quarter of all federal spending runs through the centers. The agency also oversees insurance marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act | Nominated |