Trump picks North Dakota governor for secretary of interior

President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday evening said that North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum was his pick to head up the U.S. Department of the Interior. He made the informal announcement in a speech from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. The department manages more than 500 million acres of the country’s public lands and its natural resources such as gas and oil leases. It also oversees most of the United States' relationships with its Native American tribes.

Has Trump recently nominated anyone else for other positions recently? The president-elect nominated several individuals late on Thursday.

• He nominated Dean John Sauer to be the solicitor general. Sauer recently represented Trump before the Supreme Court, arguing about the boundaries of presidential immunity.

• He also named Todd Blanche as his pick for the position of deputy attorney general. Blanche is another former attorney for Trump.

• Jay Clayton was his pick to serve as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Clayton was the former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

• Trump named former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., as his pick to be the secretary of veterans’ affairs.

Dig deeper: Read my report in The Sift about a House ethics committee investigation of former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who is Trump’s pick for attorney general. And read Christina Grube’s report about how Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is Trump’s pick to serve as the health secretary.