Who could be in Trump’s next Cabinet? Here are leading contenders.

Former President Donald Trump, who is in the throes of a tight campaign, has not engaged in formal conversations about a potential Cabinet. But that hasn’t stopped him from spitballing potential contenders during his frequent plane rides to campaign events, or when he is impressed by one of his allies on television.

“He would be great at this,” or “She would be great at that,” Trump has said on recent occasions while watching surrogates on television, according to a person with knowledge of his comments who was granted anonymity to speak freely. And like with his monthslong search for a running mate, the TV circuit has become an important venue for the aggressive jockeying underway by allies eager to secure a Cabinet job. Some candidates for the Cabinet have even hired their own public relations teams.

Trump’s potential second-term picks will likely have to get through tight Senate margins, even if Republicans take back the majority. His first Cabinet was confirmed at a slow pace, due to Democrats slow-walking the process, only to see high turnover in those top jobs during his four years in office.

Despite all the chatter, the Trump campaign said Trump isn’t touching the issue yet.

“There have been no discussions about who will serve in a second Trump administration,” said his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. “President Trump is focused on winning the election and when he does, he will then choose the best people to help him make America great again.”

This is POLITICO’s snapshot of the leading contenders for Trump’s top jobs.

Secretary of State

Trump’s first term demonstrated how secretaries of State can crumble — or thrive — as the nation’s top foreign policy official.

Trump had a frosty relationship with his first secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, slowly shutting him out of U.S. policymaking before firing him in front of the world on social media. But Tillerson’s replacement, Mike Pompeo, became one of Trump’s most trusted advisers and one who could find another job in a second administration.

Trump’s pick for secretary of State will be closely watched across Europe after years of his taunts about distancing the U.S. from NATO and his eagerness to wind down military support for Ukraine. It will also serve as a measure of how much power the Russia hawks in the GOP still have.

Treasury Secretary

Voters care about few things more than the economy, and Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary would be advancing an agenda that shapes an issue central to his legacy.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin proved to be among Trump’s most durable Cabinet secretaries in an administration marred by frequent turnover in the top jobs.

But regardless of who wins, the next secretary will steer the administration through key fiscal battles set to dominate Washington in the coming year: a potentially bruising debt ceiling fight and negotiations over the expiring 2017 Republican tax law.

Trump’s next picks for Treasury secretary and other key economic posts will be closely watched for whether he might advance any of the populist ideas he espoused during the campaign — such as a new suite of tariffs of 20 percent on most imports — or govern as a more traditional, business-friendly Republican.

Business leaders, Wall Street executives and congressional Republicans have embraced Trump’s calls to slash regulations and taxes on companies, even as they disagree with his protectionist trade policies.

Defense Secretary

The secretary of Defense under Trump will need to spend time defending his mostly isolationist worldview against the national security establishment and the department’s 2 million-plus employees.

It’s also a role where loyalty will be important since the person in the job must be persuasive with the public and members of both parties.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, once a darling within Trump’s Cabinet, quietly broke with the president on a range of strategic decisions, ranging from Trump’s desire for a Space Force, a ban on transgender servicemembers and deploying thousands of troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. When he ultimately announced his resignation in 2018, he did so by publicly disagreeing with Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria.

Mattis later criticized Trump’s decision to deploy the U.S. military to police American streets after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, saying the administration was making a “mockery of the Constitution.”

Trump has subsequently expressed anger at Mattis and his replacement, Mark Esper, who he says didn’t follow his policy directives. As a result, he’ll likely look for someone who he knows beforehand will be committed to rolling back things like Biden-era personnel policies centered on promoting racial and gender diversity in the armed forces.

Attorney General

Picking the nation’s next attorney general will likely be one of Trump’s biggest prizes in winning back the White House. The attorney general will have the power to help Trump accomplish two of his top legal objectives: getting rid of the federal criminal cases against him and prosecuting his enemies.

If Trump retakes the presidency, he will be facing one active federal criminal prosecution and a separate dismissed federal criminal case that special counsel Jack Smith is seeking to reinstate. One of Trump’s first acts of business is sure to be ordering his Justice Department to make sure both of these cases come to an end.

Trump is also charged in a state-level criminal case in Georgia and is due to be sentenced for his hush-money conviction in Manhattan. While the attorney general won’t oversee those matters, it’s almost certain the cases would be put on hold until after Trump leaves office.

Trump has spoken frequently about his other objective: using the Justice Department to exact revenge on his perceived enemies.

Interior Secretary

The Interior Department manages nearly every acre of public land in the country — and when he was president, Trump steered it toward fossil fuel production almost to the exclusion of everything else.

Two of the agency’s responsibilities fall in line with Trump’s promise to “drill, baby, drill”: It sets safety standards for offshore oil rigs and leases out land for oil, natural gas and coal development.

Under Trump, Interior sought to roll back rules on rig safety, climate change and Endangered Species Act protections in attempts to make things as easy as possible for oil companies to drill on public land. With Trump’s most recent talk of oil being “liquid gold” and that crude production would be four or five times higher under him than Biden, expect the former president to look for new ways to remove regulatory speedbumps the current administration has put in place.

Trump’s love of energy has not extended to renewables. Whoever he selects to run the agency is likely to scale back or end many of the Biden efforts to set up vast wind farms off the East Coast and other renewables on public lands.

Given how vast public land is in the West, one common thread through most Interior secretaries — including Trump’s — is that they hail from states that side of the Mississippi.

Agriculture Secretary

The Agriculture Department is the Cabinet agency with the strongest connection to Trump-dominated rural America and the farm communities that are often struggling to compete with global conglomerates.

This post shapes everything from farm subsidies at home and food deliveries abroad to school lunches and hunger programs for more than 50 million low-income Americans.

Candidates for the job tend to come from the Midwest (a box Indiana’s Kip Tom or Ted McKinney would check) or the South. The agency also directs millions of dollars every year into rural areas for economic development.

But in recent years, Republicans on Capitol Hill have grown more intent on trimming back food programs like SNAP that is a political lightning rod in particular for urban-centered Democrats.

Commerce Secretary

The Commerce Department is the hodgepodge of agencies ranging from business development to economic sanctions, tariffs and the census. While typically a low-profile, workhorse agency, Trump elevated it to help implement his new-look trade policy.

Under its Bureau of Industry and Security, Commerce played a central role in setting economic sanctions and trade restrictions against foreign nations. The secretary of Commerce has been tasked with advancing U.S. trade interests abroad, a core part of Trump’s “America First” economic message. Under Trump, the agency was also key to enacting tariffs on steel and aluminum that hit allies and adversaries alike, and an ill-fated attempt to alter the U.S. Census.

Under the Biden administration, Secretary Gina Raimondo has pivoted the agency back toward allies, playing a key role in negotiating three of the four sections of its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, setting new investment networks and voluntary labor and environmental standards for U.S. trading partners in South Asia. But she has continued weaponizing the agency against China, Russia and other adversaries through sanctions and trade restrictions at BIS — efforts likely to escalate no matter who wins the White House.

Labor Secretary

The Labor Department is rife with targets for a Republican administration, so the mission for any Trump pick is straightforward: undo Biden’s myriad new labor regulations — particularly those that shifted power to labor unions.

It’s an agenda that would undercut organized labor’s gains under Biden, but one that hasn’t deterred the Trump supporters among rank-and-file union members.

Yet, it was also a political minefield for Trump the first time around.

His first choice for the top job at the agency — fast food executive Andrew Puzder — withdrew from consideration less than a month into Trump’s term after POLITICO reported on past allegations of domestic abuse (which he denied).

Trump then turned to Alexander Acosta, who was ultimately forced out in 2019 after losing the president’s trust amid renewed scrutiny of how the former prosecutor handled well-connected sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s case during his time as a U.S. attorney in Florida. Trump’s third Labor secretary was Eugene Scalia, a management-side labor attorney and son of the late Supreme Court justice, who was comparatively drama-free and executed on the administration’s business-friendly regulatory agenda after Acosta’s resignation.

The role is not typically a coveted Cabinet spot in Republican administrations, though it could appeal to a business-minded candidate who misses out on agencies like Treasury or the SEC.

Health and Human Services Secretary

What Trump seeks in an HHS secretary varies — and is at times contradictory — according to officials from his first administration.

Trump might want an HHS leader who has significant leadership experience, executive presence and a strong will to bring one of the largest federal agencies to heel. But he might also opt for a secretary with deep institutional knowledge of the agency itself and the ability to effectively move policy and fly under the radar for the Senate confirmation process.

Finding someone with a blend of those qualities — and who is both deeply loyal without being a pushover — could prove difficult. And a Trump-appointed HHS secretary could be key to using federal leverage to reduce abortion access or change how the Affordable Care Act is implemented.

Deciding how to balance those skills could depend on the kinds of policies Trump ultimately settles on, and which policy battles will consume most of a potential administration’s energy.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary

Trump’s campaign-trail concern about rising housing costs isn’t likely to temper the kind of hostility the Department of Housing and Urban Development faced during his first administration.

The agency has a $70 billion budget and roughly 8,000 employees — two things Trump and Ben Carson, his HUD secretary, sought to wear down.

Carson faced criticism from Democrats about his family’s involvement in the agency’s operations, his relative lack of knowledge about its mission and his eagerness to cut its budget. But the biggest policy whiplash among Barack Obama, Trump and Biden has been over the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, the agency’s most public fight.

The rule would require states and localities to track and address patterns of residential segregation to receive federal funding as part of a broader agenda to narrow the racial wealth gap and improve racial equity. It eventually became something Trump latched onto during the 2020 campaign as evidence that Democrats wanted to “abolish the suburbs,” before scrapping the rule entirely that year.

Biden officials proposed an updated version of the Obama-era regulation early last year, but it’s unlikely to be finalized unless Democratic nominee Kamala Harris wins in November.

Transportation Secretary

In many ways, the Transportation secretary is a great post for a politician: It’s filled with ribbon-cuttings and doling out millions of dollars for roads, bridges and transit.

Trump’s first DOT secretary, Elaine Chao, previously served as George W. Bush’s Labor secretary and brought gravitas and ties to Washington’s established political machine into the Cabinet when much about how Trump might govern was uncertain.

A Trump pick this time around is likely to have a mandate to cut spending and claw back some of the $1.2 trillion handed out by Biden under the 2021 infrastructure law — especially for climate-focused initiatives like EV charging and equity initiatives like tearing down highways that have divided poor, often minority, communities. Trump’s next potential Transportation chief will be expected to focus taxpayer money on “hard” infrastructure like roads and highways instead of equity programs or transit.

Energy Secretary

The Energy secretary under Trump would serve as a measure of his commitment to the fossil fuel industry.

The agency’s core responsibilities include maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, regulating everyday appliances, managing the 17 national labs and cleaning up Cold War-era radioactive waste. Over the past 15 years, however, it’s also become a massive engine for doling out billions of dollars in grants and loans to quicken the transition to low-carbon power — making it a regular target for Republicans.

Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” is promising to claw back any unspent money Biden secured in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and could potentially slow down the pace of loans and grant-making.

If he really wants to pull a large amount of the money, Trump’s Energy secretary will need the political or technical savvy to navigate around members of his own party who are seeing the funds land in their districts.

Education Secretary

Trump has pledged to disband the Education Department if he becomes president again — no different than most Republicans since Ronald Reagan.

Despite how the GOP often treats the agency as a backwater, billionaire philanthropist Betsy DeVos made use of it as Trump’s Education secretary. She wielded it to relax rules that targeted for-profit colleges and to boost defenses for those accused of sexual misconduct on school grounds. But the position is likely far more appealing than it was at the outset of Trump’s first term now that conservatives — especially Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin — have seen political success in attacking diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

It’s a role Trump could use to agitate teachers unions, some of the nation’s largest labor organizations and among the most loyal to Democrats. A Trump-led Education Department is also certain to abandon Biden’s student debt relief agenda and reverse Democratic efforts to rewrite DeVos’ sexual misconduct and expand discrimination protections for transgender students.

Veterans Affairs Secretary

Whoever gets tapped to run the VA — the country’s largest integrated health system — needs a strong sense of purpose and a thick political skin.

David Shulkin, Trump’s first VA secretary, was fired by tweet in 2018 after controversy over a taxpayer-funded trip to Europe stemming from a watchdog report Shulkin called inaccurate.

Trump then nominated White House physician Ronny Jackson, who withdrew his nomination after allegations he created a toxic work environment and drunkenly wrecked a car while serving in the federal government. Jackson, now a Republican representative from Texas, denied the allegations. Robert Wilkie replaced him, got confirmed and served in the role for the rest of the administration, putting him in contention to take the job again.

It often doesn’t take long before addressing the health care needs of millions of military veterans puts a spotlight on many of the VA’s failings over the years, creating ready fodder for lawmakers in both parties.

The latest high-profile concern is the financial strain stemming from a bipartisan 2022 law expanding benefits for veterans exposed to Agent Orange and other toxins. That’s made the agency responsible for the care of more veterans than ever, and billions of dollars in shortfalls.

A Trump VA would also be expected to reverse a Biden policy that allows the agency to provide abortion counseling and, in some cases, the procedure itself, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.

Homeland Security Secretary

Immigration has been a driving force of all three Trump campaigns for the White House, and no part of the government intersects with it more than the Department of Homeland Security.

As president, Trump regularly pressed his DHS officials for statistics on deportations and illegal border crossings. His emphasis on security at the southwest border sometimes irritated senior department officials, as their remit is much broader. But since Trump’s time in office, immigration has become a politically promising issue for him: A recent poll showed that swing-state voters, by 12 percentage points, believe he’s more likely to improve the immigration system.

That means Trump’s DHS head would have significant power and face-time with the president –– as well as his intense scrutiny. The former president has called for dramatically increasing deportations and immigrant detention, as well as a hiring spree for the border patrol.

Another challenge will be advancing Trump’s immigration agenda without losing sight of the rest of DHS’s sprawling mission, which includes cybersecurity, counterterrorism, domestic extremism and disaster response.

White House Chief of Staff

When the president wants to do the impossible, the chief of staff needs to make it happen.

Since leaving the White House, Trump has made surrounding himself with loyalists a top priority and will want to install someone in the top staff role who he trusts and will help him efficiently carry out his legislative and regulatory agenda.

During his four years in office, Trump cycled through four chiefs of staff: Reince Priebus, Gen. John Kelly (Ret.), Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows. Each man approached the role with their own leadership style before eventually being sidelined or pushed out by Trump.

But the responsibility of running the West Wing — directing policy, managing daily operations, hounding agency heads — imbues them with almost as much power and influence as it does strain and frustration.

Trump wants to avoid the kind of chaos that plagued his first White House and tapping a chief of staff who can help him hit the ground running on day one will be a top priority — even if Trump himself was the source of much of the mayhem.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator

Over the past 15 years, the EPA has become the most important tool Democrats have had in addressing climate change domestically and in nudging other countries to follow suit.

If reelected, a new Trump administrator would likely seek to undo regulations that constrain fossil fuel production and consumption. Some of the biggest targets include Biden-era air regulations as well as the funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, even though a significant chunk of that money will have been already obligated. His first administration was slow off the block on issuing replacement rules, partly a result of not hiring enough people with deep knowledge of the agency’s complex workings. But a more streamlined approach is expected if Trump wins again.

During his stint in the White House, Trump appointed two men to lead the EPA who had radically different styles for delivering his deregulatory agenda. His first, Scott Pruitt, had repeatedly sued the agency as Oklahoma attorney general before drawing attention as administrator for unusual decisions like seeking a large security detail and installing a booth at EPA for classified conversations. But his second, Andrew Wheeler, a former staff director for the late Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a climate skeptic, pushed many of the same actions as Pruitt more efficiently and without the fanfare.

United States Trade Representative

It only took one term in the White House for Trump to turn the sleepy office of the U.S. Trade Representative into a key player in defining his America-first economic and diplomatic brand. Under a second, Trump is expected to be more aggressive.

The role, which was established more than 60 years ago and only has about 200 employees today, was central to market-opening deals such as NAFTA and founding the World Trade Organization. But the “Art of the Deal” co-author drastically elevated its profile, using Robert Lighthizer to translate campaign and television rhetoric into new trade agreements built around ribbing U.S. trading partners.

Trump has touted plans — with Lighthizer’s tutelage — for dramatically higher tariffs, floating rates as high as 20 percent for all imports, and much higher for China.

The former president has dismissed fears that his plans would stoke inflation and hit everyday consumers but much of it can be done without Congress.