Tracking President Trump’s second-term Cabinet and appointees

This page tracks the pace of confirmations at the 100-day mark, and eventually will include data at the 200- and 300-day mark within the first year of President Trump’s second term. The first 100 days span from January 20 to April 29, 2025; the second 100 days end on August 7, 2025; and the third 100 days end on November 15, 2025. An unusual feature of the American political system is the practice of replacing the most senior leadership across the executive branch after a new president is inaugurated. Executive agencies in other similarly situated democracies typically have a much higher percentage of civil servants in top offices and therefore less opportunity for the chief executive to appoint a large number of individuals at the start of a new presidency. Presidency scholar David Lewis of Vanderbilt University has found that there are roughly 1,340 Senate-confirmed positions for which a new president needs to select, vet, and formally nominate. During the first 300 days of the Biden administration, the Senate confirmed only 140 of them. The trendline shows that the process has grown slower with each new president, suggesting that the first 300 days of President Trump’s second term may see an even lower yield.

Monitoring this “shared” constitutional power—presidents nominating and the Senate confirming—offers insight into the separation of powers, checks and balances, and the overall health of U.S. democracy. The data below and inferences drawn from them continue a long-standing effort to monitor presidents’ ability to staff the executive branch by identifying nominees and persuading the Senate to confirm them. This tracker helps us understand the functional capabilities of these two branches to fulfill a key responsibility at the start of a new administration. View the Notes section at the end of this page to learn more details about the data.

The data below show the pace of confirmations and the total number of confirmations during the first 200 days of a new president’s term.

In then-Vice President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, he pledged to appoint diverse candidates to the many political appointments afforded a new president. In the analysis below, we continue to monitor the diversity of the Senate-confirmed candidates. The analysis below examines gender and race/ethnicity breakdown, based on categories in the 2020 U.S. census. 

List of Senate confirmations

Set out below are the individuals whom the Senate has confirmed during the first 100 days of President Trump’s second term in office.

1. Limiting the sample to the 15 executive departments in the presidential line of succession excludes military and judicial offices, as well as U.S. attorneys, seats on commissions and appointments to agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency. In addition, high-level positions like the White House chief of staff and White House counsel, among other top roles, do not require Senate confirmation. Regarding the 1,340 positions that require Senate confirmation, Yale University scholar Christina Kinane has found that only about 696 of those Senate-confirmed positions are drawn from the 15 cabinet departments and four agencies: the CIA, EPA, OPM and OMB. Though 696 is just over half of the total positions, it remains a considerable challenge for the Senate to confirm that many nominees.
2. The first 100 days span from January 20 to April 29, 2025; the second 100 days end on August 7, 2025; and the third 100 days end on November 15, 2025.
3. I relied on the U.S. Census categories. I classified as “Unknown” the few individuals for whom I was unable to identify race/ethnicity. In some cases, individuals have more than one race/ethnicity. For example, an individual could be both “Black” and “Hispanic/Latino,” and would be counted in both categories. Finally, in March 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau changed its categories in advance of the 2030 census, adding a category for those who are “Middle Eastern or North African” (MENA). In the 2020 census, these individuals were categorized as White. This tracker abides by categorization of the 2020 census.
4. Special thanks to Adelle Patten, Anaya Bhatt, and Amelia Nason for expert research assistance.

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