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Donald Trump’s presidential transition begins now. Here’s how it will work.

Online Niel November 7, 2024

WASHINGTON – Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House it means he’ll want to support an entirely new administration from the one that served under President Joe Biden. His team also promises that the second won’t look too much like the first that Trump established after his 2016 victory.

The elected president it is now 75 days old the transition period to build their team before Inauguration Day on January 20th. Top of the to-do list: filling about 4,000 government jobs with political appointees, people who are handpicked for their jobs by the Trump team.

This includes everyone from the Secretary of State and other heads of cabinet departments to those selected to serve part-time on boards and commissions. About 1,200 of those presidential appointments require Senate confirmation, which should be easier with The Senate now shifts to Republican control.

Here’s what to expect:

What will the transition look like?

While turnover in the new administration will be total, Trump will be familiar with what he needs to accomplish. He has built an entirely new administration for his first term and has clear ideas about what to do differently this time.

He has already named a few.

Trump said at his victory party Wednesday morning that the former presidential candidate and anti-vaccination activist Robert Kennedy Jr. will be invited to “help make America healthy again,” adding that “we’ll let him go at it.” Before the election, Trump did not reject Kennedy’s appeals the end of fluoridated water. Trump also pledged to be born in South Africa Elon Muska vocal supporter of the Trump campaign, a federal “cost-cutting” secretary and Tesla CEO has suggested he can find billions of dollars in government spending to eliminate them.

The transition is not just about filling jobs. Most presidents-elect also receive daily or near-daily briefings during the transition.

In 2008, incumbent President George W. Bush personally briefed President-elect Barack Obama on US covert operations. As Trump prepared to take office in 2016, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, briefed Michael Flynn, her designated successor in the new administration. In 2020, Trump’s legal challenges to the election results delayed the start of the transition process by several weeks, and presidential briefings with Biden did not begin until November 30.

Who is helping Trump through this process?

Trump’s transition is being led primarily by friends and family, including Kennedy Jr. and the former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbardas well as the president-elect’s grown sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and his running mate, JD Vance. The transition co-chairs are Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, the former wrestling director who previously led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term.

Lutnick said this year’s operation is “as different as possible” from the 2016 effort, which was first led by Chris Christie. After winning eight years ago, Trump fired Christie, scrapped the plans the former New Jersey governor had made, and gave the task of leading the transition to the then-vice president-elect. Mike Pence.

Early in his first term, Trump assembled an original Cabinet that included several Republicans and business leaders who eventually disappointed him or publicly broke with him, or both. This time around, Trump has vowed to value loyalty as much as possible — a philosophy that may ensure he makes choices that are more closely aligned with his ideological beliefs and bombastic professional style.

Unlike the Democratic vice presidential campaign Kamala HarrisTrump’s team did not sign a day before the election transitional agreements with the General Services Administration, which essentially acts as the owner of the federal government. As a result, he has already missed deadlines to agree with the GSA on logistical matters, such as office space and technology support, and with the White House on agency access, including documents, staff and facilities.

New transitional rules

In 2020, Trump claimed that widespread voter fraud— which had not actually happened — cost him the election, delaying the start of the transition from his outgoing administration to the incoming Biden administration by several weeks.

Four years ago, the head of the GSA appointed by Trump, Emily Murphyruled that she did not have legal standing to determine a winner in the presidential race because Trump was still challenging the results in court. This hindered funding and cooperation for the transition.

Only after Trump’s efforts to undermine the election results collapsed in key states which Murphy formally agreed to” establishing an elected president ” and the transition process begins. Trump eventually posted on social media that his administration would cooperate.

To prevent this kind of deadlock in future transitions, the Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 calls for the transition process to begin five days after the election — even if the winner is still in contention. This is designed to avoid long delays and means that “an ‘affirmative confirmation’ by GSA is no longer a prerequisite for obtaining transition support services,” according to the agency’s guidance on the new rules.

The uncertainty widened further after the 2000 election, when five weeks passed before the Supreme Court. settled the contested election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. This left Bush with about half the usual time to manage the government transition from the outgoing Clinton administration. This ultimately led to questions about national security gaps that may have contributed to the US being unprepared for the 9/11 attacks the following year.