Ask who the next person out of the Trump cabinet will be and you are really asking two questions at once. One is about people, and every political reader already has a hunch. The other is about words, and almost nobody thinks about it until a contract they were sure they understood settles the other way. A prediction market answers the first question with a price. It answers the second one in the rules, and the rules are the whole reason a page like this exists. This week handed us a live lesson in both. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll submitted his resignation on Aug. 31, and the contract on his departure still has not paid out. Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao was nominated for the permanent job on Sept. 1, and two days later Kalshi listed a confirmation clock on him on which a few hundred dollars had traded when we pulled it. Both get their own section below, and both come back to the same question: what, exactly, does the contract count?
The Quick Answer
As of the early hours of Sept. 4, 2026, Kalshi's out-before-2027 board is led by Amy Gleason, the acting DOGE administrator, at 45 cents bid, with Howard Lutnick and Pete Hegseth a stride behind at 32 and 31, and Hegseth leads the separate next-to-leave-the-cabinet field at 18.
Dan Driscoll's contract sits at 94 cents even though he has resigned, and Hung Cao's new confirmation ladder opened with quotes on every rung and $318 of face value traded, all of it on one rung. Why those two contracts look the way they do, and what the rest of the board did since this page first ran on Aug. 13, is below.
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Which Contracts Are Actually Listed
There are two shapes on the board, and mistaking one for the other is the first way people misread this market.
The first shape is a single-official contract. It names one position, say a cabinet secretary, and resolves yes or no on whether the person holding it has left by the contract's date. The second shape is a field market: one market, many names, priced as a race to answer "who is the next to go." A name that looks expensive on its own single-official contract can look cheap inside the field, because the two are answering slightly different questions. One asks whether a specific person leaves at all; the other asks whether they are the first to do so.
The universe of seats is the cabinet and the senior White House roster, the sort of positions that turn over in every administration: the executive departments and the top advisory posts. The board below shows all three ways a name can sit on it. Pete Hegseth is 31 on his own contract and 18 in the field. Markwayne Mullin is in the field at 10 with no single-official contract at all. Kash Patel carries $392,000 of open interest on his single-official contract and no field entry at all; the exchange simply has not listed him in the next-to-leave race. Which names the exchange lists, and where each is priced, moves on news no page can schedule, so the board carries its pull date, and the machinery underneath it is what survives that date.
The Board: Kalshi's Departure Prices, Sept. 4, 2026
Kalshi's book, pulled at 1:08 a.m. ET on Friday, Sept. 4, 2026. Prices are the yes side in cents, shown as bid and ask, meaning the most a buyer was offering and the least a seller would take. The first price column is the "leaves before 2027" contract on each seat; the second is the "next person to leave the Trump Cabinet" field, where a name that has no single-official contract, or no field entry, shows as not listed. Open interest is stated in face value. The table is a selection, not the whole book: the ten highest bids on the out-before-2027 event, which lists 30 seats in all, plus Mullin, who has a field entry but no single-official contract, and Rubio as the biggest name near the bottom of the book.
| Official | Seat | Out before 2027 (bid/ask) | Next to leave (bid/ask) | Open interest, out before 2027 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amy Gleason | Acting Administrator, US DOGE Service | 45/46 | not listed | $13,060 |
| Howard Lutnick | Secretary of Commerce | 32/33 | 7/8 | $92,652 |
| Pete Hegseth | Secretary of Defense | 31/32 | 18/19 | $406,731 |
| Susie Wiles | White House Chief of Staff | 28/29 | 5/6 | $68,090 |
| Bill Pulte | FHFA Director | 25/26 | not listed | $11,862 |
| Steve Witkoff | Special Envoy to the Middle East | 24/25 | not listed | $9,581 |
| Chris Wright | Secretary of Energy | 22/23 | 8/9 | $13,150 |
| Kelly Loeffler | SBA Administrator | 20/21 | 1/2 | $2,430 |
| Kash Patel | Director of the FBI | 20/21 | not listed | $392,244 |
| Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | HHS Secretary | 19/20 | 17/18 | $96,699 |
| Markwayne Mullin | Secretary of Homeland Security | not listed | 10/11 | not listed |
| Marco Rubio | Secretary of State | 11/14 | 0/1 | $77,457 |
Start at the top row, because it is not a cabinet secretary. The out-before-2027 board is led by the acting head of the DOGE Service, and her contract carries about $13,000 of open interest against roughly $407,000 on Hegseth's. Those are two different kinds of number. One is a deep market that has survived a lot of disagreement; the other is a sketch a single order could redraw, and the difference matters more than the two-digit price does.
The row I keep coming back to, though, is Hegseth's, because it shows the two shapes doing different jobs at once. On his own contract he trails Lutnick by a cent, and both of them trail Gleason. In the next-to-leave field he is on top by a cent over Kennedy, with Mullin further back. Lutnick, a cent above him on the first question, sits far down the field on the second. Same news cycle, same trader pool, and the field market has settled on a different name than the single-official board. It is asking who goes first rather than who goes at all.
What Moved Since Aug. 13
This page first ran on Aug. 13 and, by design, printed no prices. The moves below are Kalshi's daily session closes, read in Eastern time, from that day to the Sept. 3 close, so a reader can see what the news of the past three weeks actually did to the board.
- Hegseth, Out Before 2027: 30 cents at the Aug. 13 close, down to 25 by Aug. 22, then 34 at the Sept. 1 close, the session after Driscoll's resignation landed and the busiest session in our tracked set, at about $32,700 of face value traded. It closed Sept. 3 at 31.
- Hegseth, Next To Leave The Cabinet: 11 cents at the Aug. 13 close to 20 at the Sept. 3 close. In percentage terms, that is the sharpest move on the standing board in our tracked set; only Driscoll's brand-new contract moved further.
- Kash Patel, Out Before 2027: 32 cents at the Aug. 13 close to 22 at the Sept. 3 close. He was priced above Hegseth when this page first ran. He is well below him now.
- Howard Lutnick, Out Before 2027: 30 cents at the Aug. 13 close, a 37-cent close on Aug. 29, and 32 at the Sept. 3 close.
- Susie Wiles, Out Before 2027: 39 cents at the Aug. 13 close to 28 at the Sept. 3 close, the biggest drop in cents among the contracts we tracked.
- Amy Gleason, Out Before 2027: 43 cents at the Aug. 13 close to 45 at the Sept. 3 close, with two 71-cent session closes on almost no volume in between. The top of the board is one of its thinnest contracts, behaving exactly as the liquidity section below describes.
- Dan Driscoll, Out Before Oct. 1: listed Aug. 21. The last trade on Aug. 28 was 42 cents. The Aug. 31 session, the evening his resignation was reported, closed at 96 on about $2,900 of face value. It was 94 bid at the 1:08 a.m. pull.
The Patel line is the one to study. Patel gave up 12 cents between Aug. 13 and Aug. 26 with no Patel-specific catalyst in the record, bounced to 26 by Aug. 28, and the Driscoll news did not move him: he closed 22 on Aug. 31 and 23 on Sept. 1. The drift is real; it just happened before the Pentagon story, not because of it. In April, Kalshi's own news desk was quoting a Politico report in which a White House official called Patel "likely the next Trump Cabinet-level official to go." Four months later the board has him behind seven other names. That is what a departure market does with a rumor that does not become a resignation: it lets it bleed out a cent at a time.
Driscoll: What A 94-Cent Contract Is Still Waiting On
Kalshi listed the Driscoll contract on Aug. 21 with three deadlines, Oct. 1, Nov. 1 and Jan. 1, and for ten days it was a longshot with a wide, mostly empty book. Then on the evening of Monday, Aug. 31, NBC News reported that Driscoll had submitted his resignation to the White House. PBS reported that he spoke with President Trump about the state of the Army and then submitted it. The White House, through spokesperson Anna Kelly, called him "highly effective in advancing President Trump's agenda to Make America Strong Again at the Department of the Army." The contract closed that session at 96 cents.
The reporting on why is consistent across outlets and worth stating plainly, because it is the record behind the Hegseth price too. NBC News reported that Driscoll had differed with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over a number of issues, that Hegseth had pushed out Navy Secretary John Phelan and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George in the spring, and that he had blocked the promotions of several senior Army officers. A source told NBC that Driscoll "brought up concerns with the administration surrounding Army transformation and readiness and Hegseth's blocking those efforts specifically by firing the generals who were responsible." Al Jazeera, citing Reuters, noted that Phelan's April exit made him the first head of a military service to leave in Trump's second term.
So the man has resigned, the White House has confirmed it, and his Oct. 1 contract reads 94 bid with the ask sitting at a full dollar. Why not 100? Because Kalshi's rule counts Driscoll as leaving on the date he ceases to hold the office according to official records, regardless of when that is announced or when he stops carrying out its duties, which is the one clause that turns a headline into a settlement. Until the record shows a vacated seat within the deadline, the 94-cent bid is a near-settled market with timing and rule risk still attached, and the six cents between the bid and the dollar is what the market charges for that risk. The Nov. 1 rung of the same series sat at 98 bid, on thin volume, so most of that gap is the market's price for the record landing before Oct. 1 specifically, not for whether it lands at all. This is the resignation route from the table in the next section, the simplest of the three ways out of a job, and even the simplest one waits on paperwork.
What "Leaves The Administration" Actually Means
Here is the sentence the entire page turns on. There are three different ways a cabinet official stops holding a job, and they are not the same event.
| Route Out | What happens | Who decides |
|---|---|---|
| Resignation | The official chooses to step down | The officeholder |
| Removal | The official is fired or asked to go | The president |
| Reassignment | The official moves to a different administration role | The president, with confirmation where required |
Read that third row twice. A resignation and a removal both end with the same fact on the ground: the person is no longer in the named seat, so most departure contracts treat the two the same way and settle yes on either. Reassignment is the case that splits. Someone moved from one senior post to another has left the first seat but has not left the administration, and whether the contract pays turns entirely on which of those two things it was written to measure. A market that resolves on "no longer serving in this specific role" pays on a lateral move; a market that resolves on "no longer part of the administration" does not. Same person, same news, opposite settlement.
This is why "read the rule before you trust the price" is not a slogan here, it is the difference between a contract you understood and one you only thought you did. The exchange spells the resolution source out in each market's terms, and on anything as contestable as a job change, there is a formal process for disputed outcomes if a resolution is ever argued. The habit of reading that fine print is the same one that separates the resignation contract from the removal contract in the related question of whether the president himself leaves office, where quitting and being forced out are, again, two different contracts.
Driscoll took the first route, and even that one is waiting on a date. The Cao market is the mirror image, a seat being filled rather than vacated, and it shows what a ladder looks like before more than a few hundred dollars have traded on it.
Cao's Confirmation Clock: Quotes On Four Rungs, One $318 Trade
The Navy seat has been held by an acting secretary since spring. John Phelan left as Navy Secretary on April 22, a departure NBC News reported Hegseth had pushed, and Hung Cao, confirmed as Under Secretary by a 52-45 Senate vote on Oct. 1, 2025, stepped up as acting secretary. On Sept. 1, Trump nominated Cao to hold the job permanently. At 5:46 p.m. ET on Sept. 3, Kalshi created a new event, "When will Hung Cao be confirmed as Secretary of the Navy?", with four deadline rungs. When we pulled the board later that night, every rung had a quote and only one had traded:
- Before Sept. 25: 1 bid, 5 asked
- Before Oct. 3: 10 bid, 20 asked
- Before Nov. 21: 25 bid, 95 asked, with $318 of face value traded at 30
- Before Dec. 19: 55 bid, 65 asked
Look at the width of those spreads before you look at the level. A 10-cent gap between bid and ask on the Dec. 19 rung, with zero volume and zero open interest, is a market maker's opening guess with nothing behind it. It is the "rough sketch" case from the liquidity paragraph further down, in its purest form. On a day-old ladder neither the width nor the level means much yet, and the Nov. 21 rung proves it: the only rung with a print is also the widest, one $318 trade at 30 cents sitting inside a 25-to-95 quote. The "price" there is whatever the last person to show up paid. The level says the maker thinks confirmation by mid-December is more likely than not; the width says nobody has yet paid to disagree with it. A quote is not a price until someone trades it, and a page that reported "the market gives Cao 60 percent" off that ladder would be reporting the maker's homework, not the market's.
The rule clause here is the one that changes the trade: each rung pays only if Cao is the first person confirmed as Secretary of the Navy before its date. A withdrawn nomination followed by someone else's confirmation settles every rung no, and so does a confirmation that slips a day past the deadline. The Senate's calendar, not Cao's standing, is what those rungs are really pricing.
How To Read The Prices Without Fooling Yourself
These contracts normally settle at $1 or $0, so the price in cents reads straight across as the market's probability, and it converts cleanly into American odds if that language sits better. Howard Lutnick's 8-cent ask in the next-to-leave field is an 8 percent claim that he is the first cabinet member out; selling it collects $8 to risk $92, so one loss eats about 11 winners, which is why selling long shots is so unforgiving.
One more habit belongs next to that one. On a thin contract the quoted price is mostly the last handful of traders who bothered to show up, so how much a number actually means depends on how much has traded behind it. A departure contract that has moved real volume carries a number that survived a lot of disagreement; a quiet one is a rough sketch, and a single order can jerk it around. It is the Gleason-versus-Hegseth gap from the board, about $13,000 of open interest against about $407,000, and it is the entire Cao ladder.
The one thing to carry off this page: a cabinet-departure contract does not price "will they leave" in the loose way you mean it in conversation. It prices one written definition of leaving, and a resignation, a firing, and a move to another chair can settle it three different ways.
The row that matters most is the reassignment one from that middle table, because it is the only place where the same news can pay two different ways. The board can show you a price on a name, but the price is only ever answering the exact question in the rules, and the reader who checks which of the three routes out the contract counts is the one who is not surprised on settlement day.
Where These Markets Live, And Where We Stop
These contracts sit in the same regulated family as the exchange's other politics markets, alongside election prediction markets, the pardon market, and questions like who fills or leaves a Supreme Court seat. They are traded on Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated exchange with broad, state-specific availability under federal oversight, and each contract can lose its full value. If you want the single biggest version of the "does someone leave" question, there is a dedicated market on the president's own early departure that bundles the routes these single-official contracts keep apart.
And this is where we stop. Stokastic trades event markets on Kalshi and holds positions in them, which is exactly why we hold the line between reporting a market and recommending one. Nothing here is a pick, a play, or a lean. Where the page names a controversy, it is the documented record other outlets reported and lawmakers put on the record; Lutnick, second on the board, faced calls to resign from lawmakers in both parties in February, including Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, after Justice Department releases of Epstein-related files, as ABC News reported at the time. We say nothing beyond that about any official's standing, conduct, or future. We report what the board prices and what the contracts count; that is the whole of it. The mechanics of how we follow these boards are laid out in our piece on how these markets work, with the weather boards as the example. Where our analysts publish actual selections is the sports markets we cover every day, on the free expert picks page.
The instinct this page rewards, reading a contract's exact rule before you trust its number, is the same one that catches a soft sportsbook line, where OddsShopper's tools line up the number you are offered against the market across 100+ books. OddsShopper Pro comes with a free week trial, so you can see whether that workflow suits you before paying anything, and code CABINET20 takes 20% off if you stay past the week.
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The Headline Is A Smaller Question Than It Sounds
So, who does the market expect to leave the Trump cabinet next? On the morning of Sept. 4 it says Gleason on the out-by-year-end question and Hegseth on the next-to-leave question, and those are two different answers to two different contracts, which is the point. Every one of those prices is answering a definition of "leave" that is narrower than the word feels in conversation, and Driscoll's contract makes the case better than any explainer could: a resignation the whole country has read about is still worth 94 cents, not a dollar, until a date shows up in the record. Resignation, removal, and reassignment are three roads out of a job, and a contract only ever pays on the ones its rules name. Learn which road each market is measuring and the board stops being a rumor mill and starts being what it actually is, a set of precise, priced questions.
Prices quoted are Kalshi market prices as of 1:08 a.m. ET on Friday, September 4, 2026, and will keep moving until these markets settle. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange; its platform policy requires users to be 18 or older, and availability varies by state. OddsShopper covers prediction markets as an independent analyst: the figures on this page are market prices and session closes, and any model or panel figures referenced on OddsShopper are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. Trading involves risk; contracts can go to zero.
Stokastic trades event markets on Kalshi and holds positions in them. We have no affiliate or commercial relationship with Kalshi. 18+, available where Kalshi operates. This page reports market prices and contract mechanics only. It asserts nothing about any individual's standing, conduct, or intentions, and nothing here is trading advice, a forecast, or a pick.
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