President-elect Donald Trump is filling key posts in his second administration, rewarding longtime loyalists and aides and allies who were his strongest backers during the 2024 campaign and in his legal battles.
Here’s a look at who he’s selected so far.
Trump has nominated vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead America’s largest public health body, the Department of Health and Human Services.
The agency oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other health agencies. When he was running for president, Kennedy said he would immediately tell the National Institutes of Health to stop drug development and infectious disease research for eight years, and instead study chronic disease.
Kennedy — who does not possess any medical or public health degrees — is known for repeating widely debunked and often ludicrous conspiracy theories about health that have left doctors, public health experts and critics concerned for the future of America’s health and ability to combat disease under his watch.
Now-former congressman Matt Gaetz has been selected for attorney general, the nation’s top law enforcement official, and a role widely seen as Trump’s vehicle for his promised “retribution” and “vengeance” against his political enemies, testing the historic independent of the Department of Justice.
Gaetz resigned from the House of Representatives moments after his nomination.
In committee roles, Gaetz raged against special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into the former president’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election and his possession of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort. He also called for investigations into prosecutors who brought criminal charges against the former president in New York and Georgia.
The Trump loyalist remains that the center of a long-running House Ethics Committee investigation into sexual misconduct. He also was the subject of Justice Department probe but was ultimately never charged with a crime.
Gabbard, a veteran and former Democratic House member who promoted conspiracy theories about the U.S.’s involvement in Ukraine, has been selected to lead the nation’s intelligence community.
The former Hawaii congresswoman left Congress to embark on an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2020. She joined the Republican Party earlier this year, endorsed Trump and joined his presidential transition team.
Gabbard joined an Army reserve unit after serving 17 years in the Hawaii National Guard, and she points to her deployment experience to explain her skepticism towards US military interventions.
She secretly met with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad while she was a member of Congress and has blamed US and NATO for Russia’s assault in Ukraine.
If confirmed, the Florida senator will inherit a fractured geopolitical landscape with several allise at war, including Ukraine’s defense against Russia and Israel’s war in Gaza.
