Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House means he will want to put in place a completely new administration compared to the one that served under President Joe Biden. His team also promises that the second one won’t look much like the first one that Trump established after his 2016 victory.
The president-elect now has a 75-day transition period to build his team before Inauguration Day, January 20. for their work by the Trump team.
This includes everyone from the Secretary of State and other Cabinet department heads to those selected to serve part-time on boards and commissions. About 1,200 of these presidential nominations require Senate confirmation, which should be easier since the Senate now comes under Republican control.
Here’s what to expect:
What will the transition look like?
Even though the change in the new administration will be complete, Trump will know what he must accomplish. He’s built an entirely new administration for his first term and has clear ideas about what he needs to do differently this time around.
He has already thrown out a few names.
Trump said during his victory party Wednesday that former presidential candidate and anti-vaccination activist Robert Kennedy Jr. would be tapped to “help make America healthy again,” adding that “we will let it go.” Before the election, Trump did not reject Kennedy’s calls to end fluoridated water. Trump also pledged to make South African-born Elon Musk, a staunch Trump campaign supporter, a federal “cost-cutting” secretary, and the Tesla CEO suggested he could find billions of dollars in government spending to be wiped out.
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 President-elect Barack Obama on U.S. covert operations. As Trump prepared to take office in 2016, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, briefed Michael Flynn, his designated successor in the new administration. In 2020, legal challenges to the election results by Trump 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 the process?
Trump’s transition is being led primarily by his friends and family, including Kennedy Jr. and former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, as well as the president-elect’s adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and his running mate, JD Vance. The transition co-chairs are Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, and Linda McMahon, a former wrestling executive who previously led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term.
Lutnick said this year’s operation was “about as different as possible” from the 2016 effort, first led by Chris Christie. After winning eight years ago, Trump fired Christie, rejected plans laid out by the former New Jersey governor and handed the task of leading the transition to Mike Pence, then vice president-elect.
Early in his first term, Trump assembled a quirky Cabinet of more traditional Republicans and business leaders who ultimately disappointed him, or publicly broke with him, or both. This time, Trump promised to value loyalty as much as possible — a philosophy that could allow him to make choices more closely aligned with his ideological beliefs and bombastic professional style.
Unlike Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, Trump’s team did not sign a pre-election transition agreement with the General Services Administration, which essentially acts as an owner of the federal government. So he has already missed deadlines to agree with the GSA on logistical issues such as offices 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 did not actually occur — cost him the election, delaying the start of the transition from his outgoing administration to Biden’s by several weeks.
Four years ago, Trump-appointed GSA chief Emily Murphy determined that she had no legal authority to determine the winner of the presidential race because Trump was still challenging the results in court. This has delayed funding and cooperation for the transition.
Only when Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results collapsed in key states did Murphy agree to “formally nominate a president-elect” and begin the transition process. Trump ultimately announced on social media that his administration would cooperate.
To avoid this kind of delay in future transitions, the Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 requires the transition process to begin five days after the election — even though the winner is still in dispute. This is intended to avoid lengthy delays and means that “a ‘positive check’ from GSA is no longer a prerequisite for receiving transition assistance services,” according to the agency’s guidance on the new rules .
Uncertainty grew further after the 2000 election, when five weeks passed before the Supreme Court decided the disputed election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. That 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 failings that may have contributed to the United States’ underpreparedness for the September 11 attacks of the following year.
