President Donald Trump’s first term in the Oval Office was referred to by some as a revolving door, with dozens of notable people leaving his administration. Continuing the trend, his second term has been marked by multiple pulled nominations, firings and resignations.
The turnover started even before Trump officially took office, when former Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew his name for the role of attorney general in November 2024. Several other Trump nominees for agencies ranging from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the Bureau of Land Management also did not make it to their confirmation votes.
Though the waters calmed for a bit after Trump saw his nominees gain Senate confirmation, they churned up again more recently, with the departures of Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Trump’s second term has been a pointed loyalty test for his inner circle and beyond, with several dismissals of people who served under former President Joe Biden – and even some going back to the first Trump administration – coming after comments that didn’t align with Trump’s agenda.
The departures listed are just the most recognizable tip of an iceberg of government employees at all levels who have resigned, been fired or otherwise left public service under Trump.
Here is a look some of the notable departures from Trump’s second term:
Name: Pam Bondi
Position: Attorney General
Reason for Leaving: Trump removed Bondi from the position, posting on social media that “she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector.” The move came after criticism over the agency’s handling of the Epstein files.
Name: Kristi Noem
Position: DHS secretary
Reason for Leaving: Noem became the first Cabinet member pushed out of Trump’s second term after he took issue with some of her Congressional testimony.
Name: Susan Monarez
Position: CDC Director
Reason for Leaving: The White House announced it fired Monarezwith a spokesman saying she had “not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again.”
Name: Drew Snyder
Position: Director and deputy administrator of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS)
Reason for Leaving: Swindler reportedly departed the agency in June 2025 due to “personal family matters” that were not related to any policy changes.
Name:Jared Isaacman
Position: NASA administrator nominee
Reason for Leaving: Trump withdrew Isaacman’s nomination “after a thorough review of prior associations,” the president posted on social media in May 2025. Trump changed his mind about Isaacman, who was a close associate of Musk, after reportedly finding out he previously donated to Democrats.
Name: Elon Musk
Position: Special government employee
Reason for Leaving: Musk stepped back from his role helping to lead the Department of Government Efficiency in May 2025, saying his “scheduled time” as a special government employee had come to an end. But Trump left the door open for him, saying, “Elon is really not leaving. He’s going to be back and forth, I think – I have a feeling.”
Name: Shira Perlmutter
Position: Top U.S. Copyright Office role
Reason for Leaving: Perlmutter received an email from the White House on May 10, 2025, that said “your position as the Register of Copyrights and Director at the U.S. Copyright Office is terminated effective immediately.” Her service dates back to the tail end of the first Trump administration in October 2020 and came amid a purge of government employees deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump.
Name: Cameron Hamilton
Position: Acting FEMA director
Reason for Leaving: Hamilton was fired in May 2025 – a day after he told lawmakers that he did not support the Trump administration’s goal of eliminating his agency.
Name: Carla Hayden
Position: Head of the Library of Congress
Reason for Leaving: Trump on May 8, 2025, fired Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to be librarian of Congress, as a part of his efforts to revamp the federal government to align with his agenda. Confirmed to a 10-year term in 2016, she served through Trump’s first term only to more recently be targeted by conservative critics as “woke” and “anti-Trump.”
Name: Janette Nesheiwat
Position: Surgeon General nominee
Reason for Leaving: Trump on May 7, 2025, announced he withdrew former Fox News medical contributor Nesheiwat’s nomination after doubts arose over whether she could gain Senate approval for the role amid questions about her credentials and criticism from the far right about her support for the COVID-19 vaccine.
Name: Mike Waltz
Position: National security adviser
Reason for Leaving: Trump, on May 1, 2025, announced that he removed his national security adviser after reporting placed Waltz at the center of a scandal in which a journalist was given access to sensitive war plans over a group Signal chat. Waltz, unlike others Trump has targeted, landed on his feet when he was appointed to serve as ambassador to the United Nations.
Name: Kathleen Sgamma
Position: Bureau of Land Management director nominee
Reason for Leaving: Sgamma in early April 2025 withdrew herself from consideration for the role after a 2021 email she wrote that criticized Trump was publicized.
Name: Elise Stefanik
Position: Ambassador to the United Nations nominee
Reason for Leaving: Trump, on March 27, 2025, announced that he pulled the nomination to help Republicans maintain their slim majority in the House so they can advance his “America First” agenda.
Name: Dave Weldon
Position: CDC director nominee
Reason for Leaving: The White House, citing a lack of support for the former member of Congress over his skepticism of vaccines, withdrew Weldon’s nomination shortly before his confirmation hearing in March.
Name: Vivek Ramaswamy
Position: DOGE co-leader
Reason for Leaving: After helping to create the Department of Government Efficiency that he was supposed to co-lead with Musk, Ramaswamy left the DOGE effort in January 2025 amid rumors of friction with Musk.
Name: Matt Gaetz
Position: Attorney general nominee
Reason for Leaving: Gaetz, who was previously the subject of a federal sex-trafficking investigation that did not result in charges, withdrew his nomination in November 2024, saying it “was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition.”