Two Cabinet members in the Trump administration are reportedly on thin ice after the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday.
President Donald Trump has considered replacing Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to two White House officials who spoke to The Washington Post.
Chavez-DeRemer, a former GOP congresswoman from Oregon, is facing accusations she had an affair with her bodyguard. She and the bodyguard, Brian Sloan, allegedly went to Las Vegas together.
DeRemer is married to Shawn Deremer, who himself was banned from the Labor Department’s building after he allegedly touched two staffers inappropriately.
DeRemer has denied the affair with Sloan, who resigned from his position two weeks ago.
However, she has also been accused of drinking in her office, taking her staff to a strip club and using taxpayer dollars to finance personal trips to her home state.
DeRemer has denied all allegations of impropriety and said she is cooperating with the Inspector General’s investigation.
Lutnick is not at the center of any major scandal, but numerous White House aides are frustrated with his boisterous communication style and tendency to make loose, off-the-cuff remarks that at times contradict the administration’s messaging, according to the Post.
After President Donald Trump’s firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, reports have emerged that two other Cabinet members could be next
Trump has discussed replacing Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who has been accused of having an affair with her former bodyguard. She denies this
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick could also be out of a job soon. White House aides are reportedly frustrated with his tendency to make loose, off-the-cuff remarks
The clearest example of Lutnick not sticking to the script was when he said in April 2025 that Trump’s global tariff policies were ‘not a negotiation’.
Hours after Lutnick’s comments, Trump said the exact opposite: ‘The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. They always have.’
As Trump’s second term has progressed, he has used tariffs – and at times the mere threat of them – to extract trade concessions from other nations in exchange for carveouts.
Lutnick has also repeatedly suggested that the tariffs will being many jobs that were outsourced to other nations back to the United States quickly, despite experts consistently saying that process typically unfolds over many years.
The 64-year-old former Wall Street executive was also exposed in for having closer ties to Jeffrey Epstein than he previously let on.
In late January, when the Department of Justice released millions of pages of documents from its investigative files on Epstein, it was revealed that Lutnick continued communication with the disgraced financier well after his 2008 conviction.
Lutnick was also forced to admit in front of Congress that he and his family had lunch with Epstein on his private Caribbean island, one of the main locations he sex trafficked underage girls.
Trump has not made any final personnel decisions, according to reporting from the Post and Politico.
Pictured: A group shot of Trump’s Cabinet picks and other nominees two days before the inauguaration last January. De-Rener us seen bottom row, third from left, with Lutnick pictured to her immediate right
The White House has said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is safe in her role for now
Kristi Noem, who served as the Homeland Security secretary for a little over a year, was the first major firing in Trump’s second term
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was rumored to be on her way out as well, but Trump has publicly stood by her.
Gabbard has a history of criticizing ‘regime-change wars’ and ran for president as Democrat in 2020 largely on a platform of non-interventionism.
She continues to brief Trump on intelligence, even as earlier this week he said Gabbard is ‘a little bit different in her thought process than me’ on the war in Iran.
A White House official told the Post that Gabbard is ‘safe’ in her role for the time being.
White House spokesperson David Ingle described Gabbard, Lutnick and Chavez-DeRemer as ‘patriots’ in a statement to the Daily Mail.
‘DNI Gabbard, Secretary Lutnick, and Secretary Chavez-DeRemer are tirelessly implementing the President’s agenda and achieving tremendous results for the American people. They continue to have the president’s full confidence,’ Ingle said.
So far, Trump has been reluctant to make any major firings, in an effort to avoid his second term being labeled as chaotic as the first, which had one of the highest turnover rates in modern presidential history.
Among the major figures to lose their jobs in the first term were James Comey (FBI Director), Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State), Jeff Sessions (Attorney General) and John Bolton (National Security Advisor).
Anthony Scaramucci, who has gone on to become a harsh Trump critic, served as White House Communications Director for just 10 days in July 2017 before getting axed.
Kristi Noem, who served as the Homeland Security secretary for a little over a year, was the first major firing in Trump’s second term.