U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump has now selected 13 out of 15 Cabinet Department heads. Each of these individuals must be confirmed by the Senate. He must choose all his Cabinet members and appointments by his January 20 inauguration, and he will eventually need to fill approximately 4,000 positions in the government.
President-Elect Trump has not yet named the Secretaries of Agriculture or Veterans Affairs or who will head the Office of Management and Budget. The Senate confirmation process can begin when the newly elected 115th Congress convenes on January 2, 2017. The following picks were announced this week.
Energy Department Secretary: Rick Perry. Perry is the former governor of Texas and has run for president in the past two election cycles. Perry in a nationally televise Republican primary in 2011 said that he wanted to dismantle the Energy Department as well as the Commerce and Education Departments. The Energy department plays the leading role in designing nuclear weapons, thwarting their proliferation, and ensuring the safety and reliability of the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal. About 60 percent of the Energy Department is devoted to the National Nuclear Security Administration. The last two energy secretaries Ernest Moniz of M.I.T. and Steven Chu of Stanford, brought to the office their doctorates in physics, academic credentials and a Nobel Prize for Dr. Chu.
Interior Department Secretary: Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT). Zinke, who studied geology at the University of Oregon, served as a Navy Seal from 1986 to 2008 and was much decorated. He then entered politics and campaigned for his House seat on a platform of achieving North American energy independence. He was first elected to office in 2014. Zinke is on the House Natural Resources Committee as well as the Armed Services Committee. The 55-year-old Zinke is an avid hunter and fisherman and has defended public access to federal lands even though he frequently votes against environmentalists. Trump, and most of his party, are in full accord of opening up federal lands for greater fossil-fuel production as part of their energy and environmental policies as well as their economic strategy. One conservative study found that more aggressive drilling on federal lands could create 2.7 million new jobs and $3.9 trillion in new federal revenues over 30 years.
State Department Secretary: Rex W. Tillerson. Tillerson, chief executive of Exxon Mobil, has spent the last four decades at the company. President-Elect Trump is being criticized by some for naming Tillerson because the globe-trotting leader of Exxon Mobil has ties with Vladimir Putin. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have warned that Tillerson will face intense scrutiny over his two-decade relationship with Russia and Mr. Putin. In addition, Mobil has billions of dollars in oil contracts that can only go forward if the United States lifts sanctions against Russia. And, Tillerson’s stake in the Russian energy industry could create a blurry line between his interests as an individual and his role as the United State’s leading diplomat. The pick for Secretary of State has been going on for weeks with Giuliani, Romney, Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), David Patraeus, former Army general and CIA Director, and Jon Huntsman, former Utah governor and presidential candidate in 2012, all being considered at some point.
In addition, President-Elect Trump officially nominated this week Gary Cohn, the president of Goldman Sachs, as director of the National Economic Council. The selection of Cohn, 56, to manage the country’s economy comes despite Trump’s repeated campaign criticism of Goldman Sachs, which he said was part of a financial system that had hurt the working class.
