One week since winning re-election to the White House, President-elect Trump is forming his government.
It has been just seven days since the 2024 presidential election was called for Donald Trump. The president-elect certainly has gotten to work, naming the individuals he would like to fill top positions in his administration.
President-elect Trump’s team also has made it clear they want Senate Republican leaders to make it easier to get these individuals, and the scores of additional folks the president will nominate to serve in his administration and in the judiciary, through the confirmation process. Specifically, the president-elect has called on Congress to allow him to utilize recess appointments to fill his administration.
Less discussed are the individuals who will be forced to leave federal agencies. This topic is an important one as well, particularly for the financial services and financial technology industries, since the government could see vacancies at the top of most regulatory agencies and commissions early next year.
That’s a lot to cover. Let’s start with the likely vacancies.
The Trump Administration: Who’s Out
The director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is supposed to serve a five-year term, but a 2020 Supreme Court decision allows a president to fire the director at will. President-elect Trump is likely to do just that, getting rid of current CFPB Director Rohit Chopra on day one. The incoming commander in chief also is likely to act quickly to fire U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler, Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu, and, potentially, Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Lina Khan.
As Banking Dive reported, Republicans also “no longer have an incentive to consider” Christy Goldsmith Romero, President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Most likely, President-elect Trump will name his preferred candidate for the job. As a reminder, current FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg agreed to resign in May, but said he would not leave until the Senate confirmed his successor. “Trump’s win means Gruenberg likely resigns or is fired on Day 1 of the president’s new term,” Banking Dive noted.
What about Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, whose term doesn’t end until 2026? Powell already has made the argument that the president-elect cannot fire any Federal Reserve political appointee, including Michael Barr, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision. According to The Wall Street Journal, Powell is prepared for this battle. “When a frustrated Donald Trump flirted with removing” Powell “in a dispute over interest rates back in 2018, Fed leaders privately readied a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency response: a legal challenge against the president to protect the integrity of America’s central bank,” The Journal reported. “Powell told then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that he would fight his removal if sought by the president … For Powell, the unsavory prospect of a legal showdown — one he might have to pay for out of his own pocket — was imperative to preserve the ability of future Fed chairs to serve without the threat of being removed over a policy dispute.”
If Powell tries to execute that strategy, it’s very possible the Trump White House would be willing to test it in court. Powell also has very little Republican support on Capitol Hill. Senate Banking Committee member Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-S.D.) told reporters yesterday he would not stand in the way if President-elect Trump were to try to fire Powell. “I’ve defended Jay Powell enough times to be worn out. … He’s become indefensible, undefendable,” Sen. Cramer said.
President-elect Trump may not have to remove Vice Chair of Supervision Barr, meanwhile, even though his term does not end until July 2026. Officials who served in that position in previous transitions have simply resigned after a president from the opposing party won.
While personnel is policy, there are other ways President-elect Trump can immediately influence the agenda at these agencies. As experts at the law firm Brownstein Hyatt noted, as one of his first actions in office, the president-elect is likely to issue a freeze on new regulations. President-elect Trump also could block agencies from sending any proposed or final rules to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) for publication in the Federal Register, withdraw any proposed or final rules that have not yet been published in the Federal Register, and postpone rules that have been finalized. In short: an era of deregulation is shortly upon us.
The Trump Administration: Who’s In
Financial regulatory agencies are not the only places where we will see less agency activity, of course. President-elect Trump has made clear his intention to nominate Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) to be Environmental Protect Agency administrator. In a statement, the president-elect said Rep. Zeldin “will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions” will be enacted.
President-elect Trump also has made it clear his hawkish approach to border and immigration policy was not mere campaign fodder. Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan will act as “border czar” in a second Trump administration. Homan is expected to lead the president-elect’s effort to deport immigrants in the country illegally. The president-elect also intends to nominate Gov. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Additionally, Stephen Miller, who oversaw immigration policy in the first Trump administration and was responsible for programs that led to the separation of children from their parents, will serve as White House deputy chief of staff.
Gov. Noem will require Senate confirmation, but Homan and Miller will not. Another official who will not require confirmation is Susie Wiles. The president-elect has tapped her to be the White House chief of staff. Wiles was Trump’s 2024 campaign manager and previously worked for Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah) 2012 presidential bid and Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) 2010 gubernatorial campaign.
While President-elect Trump has promised to “dismantle” the U.S. Department of Education, he will create at least one brand new agency: the Department of Government Efficiency. He wants Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the agency, which will investigate ways to shrink the federal government. The department has an expiration date, however. Its work is to conclude by July 4, 2026 – the 250th birthday of the United States.
On the national security front, President-elect Trump announced yesterday his intention to nominate Fox News personality Pete Hegseth as secretary of the U.S. Department of Defense and former Congressman and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is the frontrunner for secretary of the U.S. Department of State and President-elect Trump wants former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) to serve as his ambassador to Israel. One of the president-elect’s first personnel announcements was his intention to nominate Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his ambassador to the United Nations.
One important post for which President-elect Trump has not named a nominee is secretary of the U.S. Treasury. According to Politico’s “Morning Money,” there are four individuals on the shortlist for this position: hedge fund founder and former George Soros protege Scott Bessent, former SEC Chair Jay Clayton, hedge fund billionaire John Paulson, and Makan Delrahim, a former assistant attorney general in charge of antitrust in the last Trump administration.
How Quickly Can President-Elect Trump Get His Team In Place?
Normally, it can take months before a new president’s full team is in place. Approximately 800 political appointees for roles throughout the federal government require confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Each nominee must meet with the senators who oversee their agency, testify before committees of jurisdiction, and then be voted on by both the committee and the full Senate.
That work takes time, of course, which is one reason President-elect Trump wants to speed up the process by using recess appointments to circumvent votes and even nominee hearings.
As Roll Call explained, the U.S. Constitution’s recess appointments power “allows a president to make a temporary appointment to a position that would normally require Senate confirmation while the Senate is in recess. Those recess appointments would last until the end of the upcoming session of Congress, in this case 2026.” Roll Call also noted that, even without the use of recess appointments in 2017, the Senate confirmed then-President Trump’s Homeland Security and Defense secretaries on Jan. 20, his attorney general on Feb. 8, and the rest of his cabinet by April. Filling second-in-command major agency roles and leadership slots at smaller or independent agencies can take a lot longer, however.
For President-elect Trump to make recess appointments, the Senate would have to formally recess, which would require a concurrent resolution to be approved by both chambers of Congress. (Currently, the Senate and House never really recess. Lawmakers go home, but during those periods each chamber technically is in a pro forma session.) According to Roll Call, under former Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) the Senate began limiting recess appointments late in the George W. Bush administration. That policy continued during the Obama administration when Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was majority leader. As a result, the number of recess appointments fell from 171 during President George W. Bush’s eight-year administration to just 32 during President Barack Obama’s eight-year tenure. Additionally, the Supreme Court restricted recess appointments in 2014, ruling unanimously that Obama administration recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional.
Josh Huder from Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute told Roll Call allowing recess appointments would be a sea change for the Senate. “It is a big deal, in terms of the separation of powers, allowing the president to go around the Senate,” Huder said.
Senate Democrats have pledged to oppose recess appointments. According to AXIOS, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who will serve as minority leader in the next session of Congress, “is plotting extraordinary measures to stop” recess appointments from happening.
Donald Trump floated a recess appointment strategy in 2020 as well, but back then Senate Majority Leader McConnell rejected it. Will the newly minted Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who was elected today to lead Senate Republicans, do the same?
Only time will tell.