(Bloomberg) — Donald Trump’s slate of cabinet nominees, selected at a breakneck pace compared to other recent presidents, is packed with loyalists who are ready to carry out his “America First” agenda and dismantle what the president-elect has called “woke” policies. It’s also more diverse — at least along gender lines — than the last time he was in office.
After tapping Pam Bondi to replace scandal-tainted Matt Gaetz as his attorney general pick, Trump is on track to more than double the number of women in the main cabinet — the vice president and the heads of 15 executive departments — than he had at the start of his first administration. Trump has selected three people of color for posts in the main cabinet, a figure that is flat compared to eight years ago.(1)
His nominees include Brooke Rollins for secretary of agriculture and Linda McMahon for education secretary, each of whom served in his first administration. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, his pick to head the Department of Homeland Security, and Elise Stefanik, his choice for ambassador to the United Nations, are both longtime MAGA evangelists who were discussed as possible vice presidential candidates before Trump tapped JD Vance.
With only three picks who are from racial or ethnic minority groups, people of color will be underrepresented compared to their roughly 40% share of the broader US population.
Trump’s cabinet has fewer women or people of color than President Joe Biden’s. The Democrat selected the most diverse cabinet in history, following a pledge to have an administration that “looked like America.”
Still, the US has “yet to ever get to a truly representative cabinet,” said Mark Hanis, co-founder of Inclusive America, a nonprofit that analyzes diversity in the government. For example, parity with the US population would mean about half the selections of any president would be women — something that has never happened.
“The sad thing is the bar is really low,” Hanis said.
Trump critics like Al Sharpton have taken issue with the president-elect’s lack of prominent Black advisers, after he aggressively courted the votes of Black Americans. “It is the height of naivete or insensitivity, whichever you choose, to think that people can come from the same background and understand a diverse country,” Sharpton said in a phone interview. “It’s just not possible.”
Former NFL player Scott Turner is the only Black person nominated for a cabinet post in the second Trump administration.
The president-elect’s selections “reflect his priority to put America First,” Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in an email statement.
“President Trump will continue to appoint highly-qualified men and women who have the talent, experience, and necessary skill sets to Make America Great Again,” Leavitt said.
Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who is Latina, is Trump’s pick to lead the US Labor Department. Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, is poised to become the first Latino to serve as secretary of state.
There are other firsts in Trump’s picks. If confirmed, Scott Bessent would be the first openly gay Treasury chief. He would also be the second openly LGBTQ person ever to be confirmed for a US cabinet role, after Pete Buttigieg served as secretary of transportation under Biden. Susie Wiles, a veteran Republican political operative, will be the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff and will hold considerable power over operations in the West Wing.
When Ronald Reagan made his picks more than 40 years ago, his cabinet was made up almost entirely of White men, according to data from the Miller Center, a nonpartisan affiliate of the University of Virginia specializing in political history. Diversity, particularly when it comes to gender, became more of a consideration beginning in Bill Clinton’s first term, according to Suzanne Chod, a political science professor at North Central College who has tracked the diversity of presidential cabinets. When he tapped Janet Reno as his nominee for attorney general, it followed the “Year of the Woman” in 1992 when a record number of women won major party nominations for US Senate and House of Representative seats.
Proponents of diversity like Hanis argue that historic firsts can spur others to pursue similar roles in government or politics, and that a wide range of perspectives in decision-making roles has value. “The more homogenous those tables are, the less likely our people will trust and support those policies,” he said.
(1) Methodology: The main cabinet is defined as the vice president and the department-head roles that were in the presidential succession at the beginning of an administration. Additional positions highlighted as cabinet-level were those designated as such by each president. In the second graphic, the person shown is the first who was confirmed for each role — or for jobs that don’t require US Senate confirmation, the first person who served in that position. For President-elect Trump’s second administration, the people shown for positions requiring Senate confirmation are the nominees on track to face that process as of publication. Race and ethnicity for each person were identified through research from Inclusive America, the Miller Center and Bloomberg News reporting.