ELECTION
This is who’s on the Trump transition team (so far)
Official and semi-official list of members of the team preparing to take office on January 20, 2025
Updated 1/23/2025
Every time a new president is elected, there’s a jockeying across Washington to get a spot on the transition team. The chance to gain access to the president-elect or a job in the new administration brings out experts and insiders who’ve been hiding away at think tanks and law firms.
Though there’s typically no official list of everyone on the team, here’s some confirmed and speculated members of the Trump-Vance team.
Early this fall, the Trump campaign made a big announcement on the co-chairs of the pre-election transition team. Linda McMahon, former Small Business Administration administrator, and Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, got those two big jobs. McMahon’s been in charge of policy planning and Lutnick personnel.
The other big summer announcement was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and former member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard, who were each named honorary co-chairs. At that time, President-elect Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., also was named to the team in an honorary role.
Another name that has been confirmed in the press is the spokesperson for the transition, Karoline Leavitt. This was a role played by Jen Psaki during the 2020 transition, before Psaki became the White House press secretary. Another member of the communications team is Brian Vance. Another Brian, Brian Hughes, also is serving as a spokesperson for the Trump transition along with Alex Pfeiffer.
One of the most important transitions is in the Justice Department. Reporting suggests that Mark Paoletta is the one overseeing that transition.
Politico reported that Skip Elliot is at least one of those working on the Transportation Department transition. The other, Politico, reported, was Brigham McCown, who had assisted in a similar capacity during the 2016 transition. The Transportation Landing Team includes Barry Plans, Lori Urban, Jim Ray, and Ben Kochman.
The transition at the Environmental Protection Agency (that now has former Congressman Lee Zeldin has its director-nominee) includes Andrew Wheeler, Anne Austin and Carla Sands. While, for Interior, it looks like David Bernhardt is in charge.
Over on the Interior Landing Team, Kate MacGregor is the one leading things. At Energy, Ted Garnish is running the Landing Team, and joined by Paul Dabbar and Wells Griffith.
Robbie Gramer at Politico is collecting names of those involved in the foreign policy transition. Included in that list is: Brian Hook for the State Department; Robert Wilkie at the Defense Department; Joel Rayburn for the White House National Security Council; John Ratcliffe for intelligence; Robert Lighthizer and Jamieson Greer for trade issues.
Also involved in the national security and intelligence transition appears to be Cliff Sims. We can add Kash Patel’s name to this intelligence work, too. Politico reported that Peter Marocco is also involved in transition work on national security, including interviewing potential appointees. Michael Ellis is on the CIA landing team.
Cartwright Weiland is running USAID Landing Team.
The Defense Department landing team will be run by Michael Duffey, a first-term Trump alum.
The transition for the first-lady-elect, Melania Trump, seems to be lead by Goldman Sachs executive, John F.W. Rogers.
Artificial intelligence developer and former White House staffer, Michael Krastios, is another name included on the transition team. He’s joined on technology policy for the transition team by Gail Slater, who’d been advising Vice President-elect Vance on economic issues.
The group working on the transition at Health and Human Services includes Kim Haine and Aaron Siri. Haine president of the Hawaii chapter of Children’s Health Defense according to Politico. Siri an attorney who has done work for the Informed Consent Action Network. The New York Times reports that Siri is especially invoked in interviewing job candidates for HHS. Another person involved in the Federal Drug Administration transition is Lowell Zeta.
The HHS landing team has John Brooks in charge.
At Labor, according to Politico the Landing Team includes Bryan Slater, Keith Sonderling and Thomas Beck.
The Homeland Security Landing Team is run by Robert Law, formerly of Citizenship and Immigration Services in Trump 1.0.. Law is joined by several other first term alums, including John Zadrozny, Joe Edlow, Karen Evans, Troup Hemenway, Robert Perez, Clark Barrow, Sohan Dasgupta, Joe Guy, and Scott Erickson.
The landing team for NASA includes Charles Miller as well as Greg Autry, Ryan Whitley, Lorna Finman, and Jim Morhard, according to Payload Space. At least one, Autry, also seems to be working with the DOGE team, as Tim Fernholz reports he signs his emails “DOGE/NASA Transition.”
The Department of Education transition team includes Steve Warzoha.
Speculation at this point:
- Former NC Congressman Mark Walker’s name has shown up in the press. Walker said: “We are meeting and talking with the transition team as far as what that might look like there in the White House…I know President Trump was gracious enough to extend such an offer, even back in the spring as we began to work with him. Talking about working in some high-capacity role. So, so, yeah, that’s all to be determined.”
- Reporting from NBC News suggests Matt Flynn has a major role on the team focused on a plan to court marshal senior military officials. He served in the first Trump White House.
- There seems to be a legal priorities working group attached to the transition made up of state attorneys general, including South Dakota attorney general, Marty Jackley.
- From Gibson Dunn, here are some additional names of those involved as “official members or unofficial advisors”: Vince Haley; Kevin Warsh on economic policy. Harold Hamm on energy policy.
