Kash Patel, who served in senior advisory roles in the intelligence community and State Department during the first Trump administration, is the preferred candidate of the MAGA faction of the Republican Party and has proposed drastic reforms for the nation’s premier domestic intelligence agency. Meanwhile, former Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican and former FBI special agent, once served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and is seen as a candidate with a more centrist approach.

Other possible candidates, including former U.S. Customs and Border Protection official Mark Morgan and former U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen of Missouri, were floated in a CNN report.

The head of the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), American entrepreneur Elon Musk, mocked the “independent” Russian and Ukrainian media outlets that are currently without funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“Independent media, I’m laughing my ass off“, Musk wrote on the social network X, attaching a photo to the post that says “independent media outlets in Russia and Ukraine are losing funding due to the USAID freeze“.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, appointed by Trump on Monday as acting head of USAID, said on Wednesday that officials would review the agency “from top to bottom“ to determine whether program funding is consistent with the current administration’s foreign policy, as USAID has spent money “in ways that are harmful“ to the United States.

According to him, after the revaluation, aid will be unfrozen or increased in some cases. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier announced that all of its directly employed staff worldwide, with a few exceptions, would be placed on administrative leave. CBS previously reported that all USAID missions abroad had been ordered to close.