Who has joined Trump’s team and cabinet so far?

Donald Trump has made the first hires of his incoming administration, naming a chief of staff, a border tsar, a national security advisor, a US ambassador to the United Nations and an environmental protection agency head.

The president-elect may also be on the verge of appointing his top diplomat, the secretary of state, ahead of his return to the White House on 20 January 2025.

Susie Wiles, who headed his campaign, becomes the first female chief of staff, while Tom Homan, who served in the first Trump term, will play a critical role on the border and immigration.

A president is responsible for about 4,000 political appointments – a process that can take months.

Here is a closer look at those posts already filled, and the names in the mix for the top jobs.

The US secretary of state is the president’s main adviser on foreign affairs, and acts as America’s top diplomat when representing the country overseas.

Media reports suggest that Florida Senator Marco Rubio – who was most recently under consideration to be Trump’s vice-president – is the frontrunner.

Rubio, 53, takes a hawkish view of China. He opposed Trump in the 2016 Republican primary but has since mended fences. He is a senior member of the Senate foreign relations committee and vice-chairman of the chamber’s select intelligence panel.

A dark horse for the nomination, however, is Richard Grenell, a loyalist who served as ambassador to Germany, special envoy to the Balkans and acting national intelligence chief. Grenell, 58, was heavily involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and even sat in on his private meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in September.

Florida congressman Michael Waltz has been selected by President-elect Donald Trump as the next national security adviser.

In a statement on Tuesday announcing Waltz’s appointment, Trump said the congressman is a “nationally recognized leader in national security,” noting that he is the first Green Beret – or member of the US Army Special Forces – to be elected to Congress and had previously served in the US Army for 27 years.

Trump hailed Waltz as “an expert on threats posed by China, Russia, Iran and global terrorism” and “a strong champion of my America First Foreign Policy agenda”.

The national security adviser counsels the president on various threats to the US and Waltz would likely have to help navigate the US position on the wars in Israel, and in Ukraine and Russia.

It is considered an influential role and does not require Senate confirmation.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is expected to get a key brief overseeing the security of the US, covering border, cyber threats, terrorism and emergency response.

The agency has a $62bn (£48bn) budget and employs thousands of people.

She will work closely with Tom Homan, named border tsar, and Stephen Miller, who is in charge of policy, to deliver Trump’s immigration pledges.

Noem was passed over to be Trump’s running mate in part over a bizarre admission that she killed her pet dog.

This is a critical job because it includes responsibility for Trump’s mass deportations of millions of undocumented migrants, which was a central campaign pledge.

Trump made the announcement on Truth Social, calling Homan a “stalwart” on border control.

The former police officer was acting director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Trump’s first term and he has advocated a zero-tolerance stance on the issue.

“Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels coming back,” he said in July. “And I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen.”

Media reports – confirmed by the BBC’s US partner CBS News – say the New York congresswoman has been offered the UN ambassador job.

Stefanik has made national headlines with her sharp questioning in congressional committees, first at Trump’s 2019 impeachment hearings and again this year quizzing college leaders about anti-semitism on campus.

“Elise is an incredibly strong, tough and smart America First fighter,” Trump said in a statement to the New York Post.

Certain political appointments in the US – including the UN ambassador job – require the approval of the US Senate. But Trump has demanded that the next Senate leader let him make appointments without traditional confirmation votes.

Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman, has agreed to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, both he and Trump said. The Senate will still need to confirm his appointment.

He will be in charge of tackling America’s climate policy in this role.

“We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI,” Zeldin said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter. “We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

Zeldin has long been a Trump ally – and is one of 126 Republican members of Congress who signed onto a brief to the Supreme Court that contested the 2020 election results.

While serving in congress from 2015 to 2023, Zeldin voted against expanding a number of environmental policies. He has already said he plans to “roll back regulations” from day one.

He has not earned high marks from environmental groups for his voting record on environmental issues.

Susie Wiles and campaign co-chair Chris LaCivita were the masterminds behind Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris.

In his victory speech, Trump called her “the ice maiden” – a reference to her composure – and said she liked to stay in the background. Wiles was the first appointment in Trump’s top team.

The chief of staff is often a president’s top aide, overseeing daily operations in the West Wing and managing the boss’s staff.

Wiles, 67, has worked in Republican politics for decades, from Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential campaign to electing Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis as governors of Florida.

Republicans have said she commands respect and has an ability to corral the big egos of those in Trump’s orbit, which could enable her to impose a sense of order that none of his four previous chiefs of staff could.

No personnel decision may be more critical to the trajectory of Trump’s second term than his appointee to lead the Department of Justice.

After uneven relationships with both Jeff Sessions and William Barr, the attorneys general during his first term, Trump is widely expected to pick a loyalist who will wield its prosecutorial power in the manner of an “attack dog”.

Among the names being floated for the cabinet post are:

• Aileen Cannon, the Trump-nominated federal judge who threw out his classified documents case
• ex- justice department lawyer Jeffrey Clark, who is alleged to have aided Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results
• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has been both indicted and impeached like Trump
• Matthew Whitaker, the man who took over for three months as acting attorney general after Sessions stepped down at Trump’s request
• Mike Davis, a right-wing activist who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and has issued bombastic threats against Trump critics and journalists
• Mark Paoletta, who served in Trump’s budget office and argues there is no legal requirement for a president to stay out of justice department decisions

There are various key positions running intelligence agencies – the CIA chief, the FBI director and the director of national intelligence (DNI).

Kash Patel, is tipped to head the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a loyalist who staffed the national security council and became chief of staff to the acting secretary of defence in Trump’s final months in office.

Trump has also said he would fire Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Wray, whom he nominated in 2017 but has since fallen out with. Jeffrey Jensen, a former Trump-appointed US attorney, is under consideration to replace Wray.

Trump has previously singled out Christopher Miller, his final acting defence secretary, as a candidate who could be nominated to lead the military.

Miller, a retired Army Special Forces colonel, ran the National Counterterrorism Center and – more recently – authored the defence chapter of the controversial Project 2025 wish list for a second Trump term, though Trump has distanced himself from the document.

Robert O’Brien is also being discussed for the post.

Trump is reportedly considering Robert Lighthizer, a free trade sceptic who led the tariff war with China as the US trade representative, as his chief financial officer.

But at least four others may be under consideration for the role, including Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager who has become a major fundraiser and economic adviser to the president-elect; John Paulson, another megadonor from the hedge fund world; former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Jay Clayton; and Fox Business Network financial commentator Larry Kudlow, who ran Trump’s national economic council during his first term.

The woman co-chairing Trump’s transition team, Linda McMahon, is tipped as a key contender to represent US businesses and job creation in his cabinet – after previously serving as small business administrator during his first term.

Others who could fill this vacancy include Brooke Rollins; Robert Lighthizer; and Kelly Loeffler, a wealthy businesswoman who briefly served in the US Senate.

Doug Burgum is also a contender to lead the energy department, where he would implement Trump’s pledges to “drill, baby, drill” and overhaul US energy policy.

A software entrepreneur who sold his small company to Microsoft in 2001, Burgum briefly ran in the 2024 Republican primary before dropping out, endorsing Trump and quickly impressing him with his low-drama persona and sizeable wealth.

Former energy secretary Dan Brouillette is also reportedly in the running.

Karoline Leavitt, 27, who impressed Trump as his campaign’s national press secretary, has already served as an assistant White House press secretary and may be a shoo-in to be the administration’s spokesperson.

RFK Jr, as he is known, is an environmental lawyer by trade, a vaccine sceptic by fame and the nephew of former President John F Kennedy.

He is on a shortlist to run the health and human services department, multiple people close to the president-elect’s campaign told CBS.

Despite having no medical qualifications to his name, Kennedy, 70, is expected to become a kind of “public health tsar” in the Trump administration.

There has been speculation about his inability to pass a background check for security clearance due to past controversies, including dumping a bear carcass in New York’s Central Park.

The world’s richest man poured millions of dollars into re-electing Trump and critics say he will now have the power to shape the regulations that affect his companies Tesla, SpaceX and X.

Both he and Trump have focused on the idea of him leading a new “Department of Government Efficiency”, where he would cut costs 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.

But Musk, 53, could also play a role in global diplomacy. He participated in Trump’s first call with Ukraine’s Zelensky on Wednesday.