After securing the White House on November 5th, Donald Trump has been picking out people to help him run the nation, that being his cabinet. If anything, as Trump usually does, it has caused controversy and questioning. At least according to NPR and Yahoo News on November 19th, 2024.
That being said, the first off the roster is the Chief and Deputy Chief of Staff, the former being Susie Wiles and the Latter being Stephen Miller. While both are long supporters of Trump, Wiles is seen as quiet and pretty good at carrying out her job, Miller is more heavy-handed. He seemingly orchestrated the policy of splitting migrant children in detention centers away from their parents/guardians.
If anything, running through the obvious choices in Trump’s Cabinet will be necessary as the people that have the public talking are a bit different. So in saying that, there’s the first picks of Bill McGinley who is the White House Counsel, and Matt Gaetz who is Attorney General. Both have been in Trump’s administration before, during his 2016-2020 Presidency, that is, both are regarded by Trump as loyal to a fault.
There’s Chris Wright for the Department of Energy and Doug Burgum of the Department of the Interior. Both Wright and Burgum are in favor of drilling for oil, gas, etc. Burgum’s just wanting to do it specifically on Federal land to make a profit.
There’s Kristi Noem of Homeland Security and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. Noem’s in favor of border security and Waltz is a notorious critic of China, that being the People’s Republic of China.
Brendan Carr is for the Federal Communications Commission and Sean Duffy is for the Department of Transportation. Carr is for the FCC to make sure that Media becomes more deregulated and not controlled by corporations, Duffy is considered to be a great negotiator for bipartisan ideas.
Elise Stefanik and Mike Huckabee are both ambassadors, Stefanik to the UN and Huckabee to Israel. Both are massive defenders of Trump and are pro-Israel as said by both them and Donald Trump.
Doug Collins and Lee Zeldin both do wildly different things. Collins is running the Department of Veterans Affairs due to his background as a Chaplain in the Air Force Reserve Command. Zeldin is pro-business and opposes climate legislation for things like renewables.
There’s John Ratcliffe as Central Intelligence Agency Director who worked with Trump before the election and has been known to question election interference like in 2016 and election results in 2020.
According to USA TODAY on November 21st, 2024 there is also Dr. Mehmet Oz and Howard Lutnick as the administrators of the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Commerce Secretary both respectively. Dr Oz is a famous TV show doctor that ran for a failed bid for Congress in 2022 and Lutnick is a Wall Street billionaire.
There’s Linda McMahon for education secretary and Matthew Whitaker for the US ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. McMahon is the WWE co-founder and Whitaker said that Hillary Clinton should have been indicted for her terrible handling of classified emails in 2016. So it’s a very wide variety of people.
There’s the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, and Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche. Both are apparently Trump loyalists as Clayton has served in Trump’s last administration and Blanche has been Trump’s lawyer in his highly public trials.
Steven Cheung and Karoline Leavitt are both the White House Communications Director for the former and White House Press Secretary for the latter. Cheung was in the last administration who said that opponents were “snowflakes” and “cucks” who had “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Leavitt is considered to be the youngest person to ever be Press Secretary.
Now moving onto the people that have caught national attention, there’s Pete Hegseth for the Department of Defence, this guy is a former National Guard Infantry Officer, he toured in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and Afghanistan. He was not expected to become the Secretary of Defence as he wasn’t even under consideration by Congress, either way, he has a Combat Infantryman Badge and 2 Bronze stars.
Robert F. Kennedy Junior is leading the Department of Health and Human Services, a man very famous for posing questions and denying vaccines. Tulsi Gabbard is the Director of National Intelligence, she was a former Democrat that ran against Trump in 2020, as of right now she is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Reserve.
There’s Marco Rubio as the Secretary for the State Department. He used to be a massive critic of Trump back in 2019, but they have since warmed up to each other. Rubio is a pro interventionist politician and criticized Trump for wanting to pull US troops out of Syria.
Tom Homan has the unofficial title of Border czar. As the former director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he’s spent 34 years in ICE and is considered a hardliner. In fact, he is very willing to not split up families during deportations, by deporting the entire family.
Finally, there’s Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy both co-leading a new Department that will be created by Trump, called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The main idea behind this is that these millionaires that crafted their fortunes can cut government inefficiency as they did in their companies.
But what do the people in the cabinet think? Faizaan Noor in the 11th grade said “Rubio’s fine, gates should not be confirmed. Today they decided to not release his investigation. The secretary of health is fine, Dr. Oz for Medicare and Medicaid. Linda McMahon, secretary of education, it’s a bad choice. Secretary of Defence, he’s a commentator, he’s ok. Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy new department of doge, they’re ok I guess.” and Bryan Huang in the 11th grade also said “The cyber truck is an ok vehicle.”
Now, what does this mean for the US? Well, it’s safe to say, the neo-liberal days are over, this administration is a very American First idea, or the economic ideas of that before the American civil war, essentially protectionism over the US economy. Overall, Trump’s A team must pull through with quick actions, otherwise they’ll doom Trump’s second term with a terrible legacy, which nobody wants.
