From Musk to RFK Jr: What a new Trump administration may look like

Donald Trump’s transition team is already vetting potential candidates who could serve in his administration when he returns to the White House in January.

On Thursday, he made the first announcement naming his campaign co-manager Susan Summerall Wiles as his White House chief of staff.

Many of the figures who served under Trump in his first term do not plan to return, though a handful of loyalists are rumoured to be making a comeback.

But the US president-elect is now surrounded by a new cast of characters who may fill his cabinet, staff his White House and serve in key roles across government.

Here is a look at the some of the names being floated for the top jobs.

The past two years have been quite a journey for the nephew of former President John F Kennedy.

An environmental lawyer by trade, he ran for president as a Democrat, with most of his family speaking out against his anti-vaccine views and conspiracy theories as they endorsed Joe Biden’s re-election.

He then switched to an independent candidacy but, failing to gain traction amid a series of controversies, dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump.

In the last two months of the 2024 election cycle, he spearheaded a Trump campaign initiative called “Make America Healthy Again”.

Trump recently promised he would play a major role related to public health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Safety Administration (FDA).

RFK Jr, as he is known, recently asserted he would push to remove fluoride from drinking water because “it’s a very bad way to deliver it into our systems” – though this has been challenged by some experts.

And in an interview with NBC News, Kennedy rejected the idea that he was “anti-vaccine”, saying he wouldn’t “take away anybody’s vaccines” but rather provide them with “the best information” to make their own choices.

Rather than a formal cabinet position, Kennedy used the interview to suggest he could take on a broader role within the White House.

Trump’s landslide victory over Kamala Harris was masterminded by campaign co-chairs Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, who he referred to in his victory speech on Wednesday as “the ice baby”.

She has since been confirmed to be the incoming chief of staff under the second Trump administration – Trump’s first confirmed appointment for his second term – making her the first woman to take on the role.

Wiles, who Trump claimed “likes to stay in the background”, is considered one of the most feared and respected political operatives in the country.

Less than a year after she started working in politics, she worked on Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential campaign and later became a scheduler in his White House.

In 2010, she turned Rick Scott, a then-businessman with little political experience, into Florida’s governor in just seven months. Scott is now a US senator.

Wiles met Trump during the 2015 Republican presidential primary and she became the co-chair of his Florida campaign, at the time considered a swing state. Trump went on to narrowly defeat Hillary Clinton there in 2016.

Wiles has been commended by Republicans for her ability to command respect and check the big egos of those in the president-elect’s orbit, which could enable her to impose a sense of order that none of his four previous chiefs of staff could.

The world’s richest man announced his support for the former president earlier this year, despite saying in 2022 that “it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat and sail into the sunset”.

The tech billionaire has since emerged as one of the most visible and well-known backers of Trump and donated more than $119m (£91.6m) this election cycle to America PAC – a political action committee he created to support the former president.

Musk, the head of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of the social media platform X, also launched a voter registration drive that included a $1m (£771,000) give-away to a random swing-state voter each day during the closing stretch of the campaign.

Since registering as a Republican ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Musk has been increasingly vocal on issues including illegal immigration and transgender rights.

Both Musk and Trump have concentrated on the idea of him leading a new “Department of Government Efficiency”, where he would cut costs, reform regulations and streamline what he calls a “massive, suffocating federal bureaucracy”.

The would-be agency’s acronym – DOGE – is a playful reference to a “meme-coin” cryptocurrency Musk has previously promoted.

The former Kansas congressman served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and then secretary of state during Trump’s first administration.

A foreign policy hawk and a fierce supporter of Israel, he played a highly visible role in moving the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He was among the key players in the implementation of the Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

He remained a loyal defender of his boss, joking that there would be “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration” amid Trump’s false claims of election fraud in late 2020.

He has been tipped as a top contender for the role of defence secretary, alongside Michael Waltz, a Florida lawmaker and military veteran who sits on the armed services committee in the US House of Representatives.

Richard Grenell served as Trump’s ambassador to Germany, special envoy to the Balkans and his acting director of national intelligence.

The Republican was also heavily involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, in the swing state of Nevada.

Trump prizes Grenell’s loyalty and has described him as “my envoy”.

In September, he sat in on Trump’s private meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The former president has often claimed he will end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” of taking office and Grenell has advocated for setting up an autonomous zone in eastern Ukraine as a means to that end – an idea seen as unacceptable by Kyiv.

He’s considered a contender for secretary of state or national security advisor, a position that does not require Senate confirmation.

The Trump 2024 campaign’s national press secretary previously served in his White House press office, as an assistant press secretary.

The 27-year-old Gen-Zer made a bid to become the youngest woman ever elected to the US Congress in 2022, to represent a seat in her home state of New Hampshire, but fell short.

She is tipped to become the White House press secretary – the most public-facing position in the cabinet.

Tom Homan served as the acting director of the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) during the first Trump administration, where he was a proponent of separating migrant children from their parents as a way to deter illegal crossings.

At the time, he made headlines for saying politicians who support sanctuary city policies should be charged with crimes. He later resigned from his Ice position in 2018, mid-way through the Trump presidency.

He has since emerged as a key figure in developing Trump’s mass migrant deportation plan, and has been floated as a potential pick to head the Department of Homeland Security.

Homan spoke on the deportation plan last month in an interview with BBC’s US partner CBS News, saying that “it’s not going to be – a mass sweep of neighbourhoods.”

“They’ll be targeted arrests. We’ll know who we’re going to arrest, where we’re most likely to find ‘em based on numerous, you know, investigative processes,” he said.