WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s impending return to the White House means he will want to create an entirely new administration compared to the one that served under President Joe Biden. His team also promises that the second one won’t be much like the first one Trump set up after his 2016 victory.
The president-elect now has a 75-day transition period to build out his team before Inauguration Day on January 20. One top item on the to-do list: filling about 4,000 government positions with political appointees, people who are specifically tapped. for their work by Trump’s team.
That includes everyone from the secretary of state and other heads of Cabinet departments to those selected to serve part-time on boards and committees. About 1,200 of those presidential appointments require Senate confirmation, which should be easier now that the Senate is coming under Republican control.
This is what you can 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 government for his first term and has clear ideas about what to do differently this time.
He has already mentioned a number of names.
Trump said at his victory party on Wednesday that former presidential hopeful and anti-vaccination activist Robert Kennedy Jr. will be deployed to “make America whole again,” adding that “we will let him go there.” Before the election, Trump did not reject Kennedy’s calls for an end to fluoridated water. Trump has also promised to make South African-born Elon Musk, an outspoken supporter of the Trump campaign, minister of federal “cost savings,” and the Tesla CEO has suggested he can find trillions of dollars in government spending to go away to wipe.
The transition is not just about filling jobs. Most presidents-elect also receive daily or near-daily intelligence briefings during the transition.
In 2008, outgoing President George W. Bush personally briefed newly elected President Barack Obama on covert US 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. However, in 2020, Trump’s legal challenges to the election results delayed the start of the transition process for weeks, and presidential briefings with Biden did not begin until November 30.
Who will help Trump through the process?
Trump’s transition is being led primarily by friends and family, including Kennedy Jr. and former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, as well as the adult sons of President-elect Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and his running mate, JD Vance. Transition’s co-chairs are Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, and Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who previously led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term.
Lutnick said this year’s operation is “about as different as possible” from the 2016 operation, which was first led by Chris Christie. After winning eight years ago, Trump fired Christie, threw out the plans the former New Jersey governor had made and gave the job of leading the transition to then-Vice President Mike Pence.
Early in his first term, Trump put together an original Cabinet with some more mainstream Republicans and business leaders who ultimately disappointed him or publicly broke with him, or both. This time, Trump has vowed to value loyalty as much as possible — a philosophy that could help him make choices that better suit his ideological beliefs and bombastic professional style.
Unlike Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, Trump’s team did not sign any transition agreements before Election Day with the General Services Administration, which essentially acts as the federal government’s landlord. As a result, he has already missed deadlines to reach an agreement with the GSA on logistics issues such as office space and technical support, and with the White House on access to agencies, including documents, employees and facilities.
New transition rules
In 2020, Trump argued that widespread voter fraud — which had not actually occurred — had cost him the election, delaying for weeks the start of the transition from his outgoing administration to Biden’s incoming administration.
Four years ago, the Trump-appointed head of the GSA, Emily Murphy, determined that she had no legal standing to determine a winner in the presidential race because Trump was still challenging the results in court. This hampered financing and cooperation for the transition.
Only after Trump’s efforts to undermine the election results had failed in key states did Murphy agree to formally “determine a president-elect” and begin the transition process. Trump eventually posted on social media that his administration would cooperate.
To avoid these types of delays in future transitions, the Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 requires the transition process to begin five days after the election – even if there is still disagreement about the winner. That is intended to avoid lengthy delays and means that “an ‘affirmative determination’ by the GSA is no longer a requirement for obtaining transition support services,” according to the agency’s guidance on the new rules.
The uncertainty lasted even longer after the 2000 election, when five weeks passed before the Supreme Court ruled on the disputed election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. That gave Bush about half the usual time to arrange the transition from the outgoing Clinton administration. That ultimately led to questions about gaps in national security that may have contributed to the U.S. being underprepared for the September 11 attacks the following year.
