Donald Trump’s second administration has begun to take shape amid fears over extremist appointments and how far right the US will go while Republicans control the White House and probably both chambers of Congress.
The range of names being put forward varies from members of Trump’s inner circle to the world’s richest man, tech mogul Elon Musk. Alongside plutocrats and technocrats are hardline ideologues on immigration and foreign policy and the controversial figure of Robert F Kennedy Jr, a leading vaccine conspiracy theorist.
On Thursday, Trump made his first appointment, naming Susie Wiles, a co-campaign chair, White House chief of staff. Hailing Wiles, 67, as “tough, smart, innovative … universally admired and respected”, Trump reveled in naming “the first-ever female chief of staff in United States history”.
The daughter of an NFL legend, Pat Summerall, Wiles has worked on Republican campaigns since the days of Ronald Reagan. But she faces a thankless task. Chief of staff is a hugely demanding role, both gatekeeper and adviser. Trump’s first four-year term featured four: Reince Priebus, John Kelly, Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows. None flourished. Before this year’s election, Kelly went so far as to say on record that Trump praised Adolf Hitler and met “the general definition of a fascist”.
Publicly, Wiles is a woman of fewer words. On election night, in his victory speech, Trump called her “the ice baby”.
The Trump transition team is co-chaired by Howard Lutnick, chief executive of the finance giant Cantor Fitzgerald, and Linda McMahon, the World Wrestling Entertainment impresario who led the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first term. As ever, speculation is rife about top jobs. Given campaign promises including mass deportations of undocumented migrants and pardons for January 6 rioters, the role of attorney general is perhaps attracting most attention.
Mike Davis, a lawyer and former Senate aide, is constantly linked to the role. This week, Davis made headlines by threatening Letitia James, the attorney general of New York who brought successful civil cases against Trump and his company and who has said she will “fight back” as Trump returns to power.
“Let me just say this to Big Tish James,” Davis told the podcaster Benny Johnson. “I dare you to try to continue your lawfare against President Trump in his second term. Because listen here, sweetheart, we’re not messing around this time. And we will put your fat ass in prison for conspiracy against rights, I promise you that.”
Davis has also asked a January 6 conspiracy theorist for “pardon and commutation lists” and said of Trump’s opponents: “I want to drag their dead political bodies through the streets, burn them, and throw them off the wall. (Legally, politically, and financially, of course.)”
Praised by Donald Trump Jr as “the tip of the spear defending my father” and “exactly the type of fighter that I’d like to see involved in a second Trump administration”, Davis would seem guaranteed to quash both criminal charges hanging over Trump and sentencing for his 34 criminal convictions in his New York hush-money trial.
However, Davis himself has owned up to being deliberately outrageous – telling Politico: “It’s hilarious that it’s so easy to trigger [Trump’s opponents and the press]. I’m obviously trolling them.” The Guardian understands Davis has told allies privately and publicly he does not want to be attorney general, a sentiment relayed to Trump.
Many observers are looking to Mike Lee, the Utah senator who was eagerly involved in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, for attorney general. John Ratcliffe, Trump’s former director of national intelligence, and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton – like Trump a scandal-magnet, impeached and indicted – are also in the running.
Sources advised paying close attention to names discussed for deputy attorney general, given the DAG’s role in running the Department of Justice day to day. Mark Paoletta, a lawyer and Catholic hardliner close to the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, the rightwing activist Ginni Thomas, was said to be in the frame. Paoletta – who was general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget has in the first Trump administration – is also linked to the top job.
Other figures from the first administration are linked to roles in the second. Many have links to Project 2025, a policy planning effort co-ordinated by the hard-right Heritage Foundation that produced the Mandate for Leadership, a 900-page compendium of extreme proposals.
Chapter authors now contenders for Trump jobs include Christopher Miller, who was acting defense secretary during the Capitol attack; Russell Vought, Trump’s chair of the Office of Management and Budget; Peter Navarro, a trade adviser who went to prison for contempt of Congress; and Roger Severino, formerly a senior official at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Trump has said he will give Robert F Kennedy Jr a prominent role in health policy, as some sort of “czar” if not health secretary. Kennedy ran for president as an independent before backing Trump. He is also a vaccine conspiracy theorist and a supporter of removing fluoride from public drinking water, positions that prompt alarm among public health advocates.
After Trump indicated he was open to Kennedy’s wish to ban vaccines, Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and faculty member at the New England Complex Systems Instute, said simply: “I’m saddest of all for the kids who soon may not get vaccines to save their lives from preventable diseases.”
Musk, owner of X, Tesla and SpaceX, backed Trump’s campaign and has said he expects a role in slashing the federal budget. Rather less wealthy figures likely to hold influence as advisers if not cabinet appointees include Stephen Miller, the far-right immigration hawk; Kash Patel, who ended the first Trump term at the Pentagon; and Johnny McEntee, who went from “body man” to purge-planner in the first Trump White House.
For secretary of defense, Trump is believed to be considering Christopher Miller, the former special forces officer and Project 2025 author whose actions (or lack of them) on January 6 were scrutinized by the investigating House committee. Names in the Pentagon frame also include Mike Waltz, a Florida congressman and former Green Beret, and Mike Pompeo, a soldier and congressman who was CIA director then secretary of state last time.
Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who ran against Trump for the Republican nomination in 2016, is widely touted for secretary of state. This week, Rubio told CNN: “I always am interested in serving this country.”
Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee senator and former ambassador to Japan, is also reported to be under consideration to be Trump’s top diplomat. Richard Grenell, formerly ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence, is reported to covet the role too. Fox News reported that Grenell could become national security adviser. Robert O’Brien, the sixth and last man to fill the role in Trump’s first term, is also a possible pick to return. Elise Stefanik, the New Yorker in Republican House leadership, is reported to be a possible ambassador to the UN.
Numerous plutocrats, among them the hedge fund billionaire John Paulson, have been suggested for treasury secretary. Robert Lighthizer, a veteran whose last role was US trade representative, likely to be an important post given Trump’s obsessions with China and tariffs, is also in the picture. Doug Burgum, the North Dakota governor Trump considered for vice-president before picking the Ohio senator JD Vance, is reportedly well placed for interior secretary.
Amid ceaseless speculation about Trump’s plans, sources told the Guardian to keep in mind that Project 2025, though deeply alarming to progressives in calling for purges of federal workers and attacks on minority rights, is most likely something of a red herring – a new version of policy plans produced by the Heritage Foundation since the days of Reagan and never implemented fully.
The America First Policy Institute, set up by Stephen Miller and with McMahon chairing its board, is much more closely involved with transition plans. Also at AFPI is Chad Wolf, formerly acting homeland security secretary and a contender this time.
Mass deportations – and housing migrants in camps – were a key part of Trump’s pitch. On the campaign trail, Trump spoke favorably of Tom Homan, previously acting director of US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or Ice.
A Heritage fellow and Project 2025 author, Homan told this summer’s Republican national convention in Milwaukee he had “a message for the millions of illegal aliens who Joe Biden allowed to enter the country in violation of federal law – start packing, because you’re going home.”
Homan was also reported to have accepted an invitation to a white nationalist conference hosted by Nick Fuentes, the Holocaust denier and Hitler admirer who dined with Trump and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago in 2022.
On Thursday, Homan told Fox News he had “not politicked or asked … for a cabinet position”, and that no offer had been made. But he added: “President Trump knows if he needs help securing that border I’m standing by. If he needs help running a deportation operation, I am standing by.”
