Braxton Taylor
Trump cabinet staffs up on loyalists
President-elect Donald Trump has named nearly a half dozen insiders and officials to his White House staff and cabinet well ahead of Inauguration Day, though some will require Senate confirmation. Here’s a running list of those who have made the cut so far:
Tom Homan as top border-enforcement official. According to Trump, Homan will oversee the “Nation’s Borders,” which includes “the Southern Border, the Northern Border, all Maritime, and Aviation Security,” the president-elect announced Sunday on social media, referring to Homan as his “Border Czar.”
Worth noting: “Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” Trump said in his statement, and added, “I have no doubt he will do a fantastic, and long awaited for, job.” Trump said in the spring he expected between 15 to 20 million undocumented people to be deported, though more credible estimates (Pew in 2021, e.g.) put the number of undocumented migrants in the U.S. closer to 10 million. Relatedly, Trump’s famously nativist first-term aide Stephen Miller is set to serve as Homan’s deputy chief of staff.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for Homeland Security secretary, which CNN reports, “signal[s] Trump is serious about his promise to crack down on his immigration pledges” and “ensur[es] a loyalist will head an agency he prioritizes and that is key to his domestic agenda.”
Florida Rep. Mike Waltz as national security advisor, according to the Wall Street Journal, which calls him “among the most hawkish members of Congress on China.” Waltz is a former Army Green Beret who, like most Republicans, has lost patience with prolonged U.S. support for Ukraine. He has, however, threatened to “tak[e] the handcuffs off of the long-range weapons we provided Ukraine” should Russian leader Vladimir Putin not cooperate with Trump in potential future negotiations over the fate of the invaded country.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state, as the New York Times first reported. Like Waltz, Rubio is a Ukraine-aid skeptic; unlike Waltz, he used to call Trump a “con artist.” Rubio rose to prominence in the so-called Tea Party wave of conservative politics nearly 15 years ago. More recently, he’s fashioned himself as a China hawk and an advocate for more aggressive U.S. policy toward Venezuela, which the Trump administration reportedly tried but failed to overthrow in the months of his first term.
Also from Florida politics: Susie Wiles, who will serve as Trump’s chief of staff following a very successful stint as his 2024 co-campaign manager. “She’s credited with running a disciplined, professionalized campaign” and “has demonstrated an ability to help control Trump’s impulses — to the extent that’s possible — in a way few others have,” Politico reported last week.
New York Rep. Elise Stefanik as United Nations ambassador. Stefanik is a stalwart Trump loyalist, as the president-elect noted in his announcement Monday, and comes with experience in the House Intelligence and Armed Services Committees.
Others appointees include early Trump loyalist and former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protective Agency. With Zeldin at the helm, Trump predicted “fair and swift deregulatory decisions” that will “unleash the power of American businesses.” According to Zeldin, “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water,” he said Monday in a statement on social media. Critics say Zeldin’s nomination underscores Trump’s record of policies that deepen the climate crisis—and likely cedes a key global leadership role to China.
By the way: Trump’s Republicans have formally clinched control of all levers of U.S. power—including the White House, Senate, and most recently the House of Representatives, in addition to their 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. In this way, the autocrat-friendly Trump will have virtually no first-year obstacles to pursue an agenda decidedly different from the Biden administration in most every way, as Trump and JD Vance promised in their campaign.
Given the open admiration for Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orban among many in Trump’s orbit, one big question for the months to come is just how much the GOP levers of power permit Trump to copy Orban’s playbook of eroding checks on his power.
Why bring it up: As the New York Times explained late last week, after ascending to office in 2010, Orban “changed the electoral rules to better suit his party, throttled the free press and cracked down on nonprofit organizations.” In the years since, “With the state apparatus rebuilt in his favor, Mr. Orban has continued to win elections, lending an air of legitimacy to what he calls the ‘illiberal state,’ in which Mr. Orban rules like an elected autocrat.” And like Trump, Orban, too, is openly fond of Russian despot Putin.
On the other hand, former Air Force Lt. Col. and Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, wrote on social media Friday, “I have absolutely no fear of Trump. Honest to God…Trump himself is weak and scared. Don’t be intimidated, I’m absolutely not, and you shouldn’t be either.” Kinzinger, of course, announced his retirement from Congress in late 2021 after a redistricting effort—along with his public opposition to Trump—cost him too many constituents.
As for the Pentagon and U.S. military, the same rules as always are expected to apply in the months ahead. That is, “As it always has, the U.S. military will stand ready to carry out the policy choices of its next Commander in Chief, and to obey all lawful orders from its civilian chain of command,” outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement to all Defense Department personnel last week.
“The U.S. military will also continue to stand apart from the political arena; to stand guard over our republic with principle and professionalism; and to stand together with the valued allies and partners who deepen our security,” Austin wrote. “America’s Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Guardians swear an oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States’—-and that is precisely what you will continue to do,” he added.
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1942, the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal began in the Solomon Islands.
Around the services
Pacific partnerships are key to preventing war, Army leaders say. The personal relationships that U.S. soldiers are building in dozens of training exercises each year with foreign partners throughout the Indo-Pacific are the true strength of U.S. Army Pacific, the command’s new leader, Gen. Ronald Clark, said Friday. At a Fort Shafter, Hawaii, ceremony, Clark pledged to continue the initiatives championed by outgoing commander Gen. Charles Flynn. Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad reports.
Air Force waits for tankers in wake of Boeing strike. The service has received no new KC-46s since late September, when a strike by thousands of machinists at the aerospace company shut down production lines, and officials say they don’t know when deliveries will restart. But they say they aren’t worried: Boeing is on the hook for 15 tankers in the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, and even if they’re off the pace, they expect the company to hew to its contract. Defense One’s Audrey Decker reports.
Additional reading:
China pivot
China’s F-35 copy, the J-35A, headlined the country’s largest airshow, which just opened Tuesday in the southern city of Zhuhai. “Another key piece of hardware making its debut is the HQ-19 surface-to-air missile system, designed to intercept ballistic missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles,” Agence France-Presse reported Tuesday, citing Chinese state media.
Also notable: “The airshow features a dedicated drone zone for the first time,” including a display of China’s SS-UAV, “a massive mothership that can release swarms of smaller drones for intelligence gathering, as well as strikes,” AFP writes, citing the South China Morning Post.Related reading:
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Lastly today: Brig. Gen. Harriet Tubman. In a Veterans Day ceremony at Church Creek, Maryland, the legendary spy, Underground Railroad conductor, and field commander received a posthumous commission as a one-star general in Maryland’s National Guard. Tubman was “the first woman to oversee an American military action during a time of war,” notes the AP, whose report continues here.
And in reruns: Don’t miss our May 2021 podcast on the Army mission Tubman co-led, the 1863 Combahee River raid. Historian Edda Fields-Black joined us to tell the incredible story of that early-morning operation amid the heat of South Carolina’s rice fields and coastal plantations.
Also: Just this year, Fields-Black published an exhaustive history of the mission and contributing developments. That book, from Oxford University Press, is titled, COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War.
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