How Donald Trump's transition will work and what happens next

WASHINGTON (AP) – Donald Trump The impending return to the White House means he wants to establish an entirely new government than the one that served under the president Joe Biden. His team also promises that the second one won't look anything like the first one, which Trump set after his 2016 victory.

The president-elect now has 75 days Transition period He wants to expand his team before Inauguration Day on January 20th. One item at the top of the to-do list: filling around 4,000 government positions with political representatives, people who are specifically selected by Trump's team for their tasks.

This includes everyone from the Secretary of State and other heads of Cabinet departments to those selected for part-time employment on boards and commissions. About 1,200 of these presidential appointments require Senate confirmation, which should be easier with that The Senate now passes into the hands of the Republicans.

Here's what awaits you:

What will the transition look like?

Although there will be total turnover in the new administration, Trump will know what he has to achieve. In his first term in office, he set up a completely new administration and has concrete ideas about what he wants to do differently this time.

He has already announced a few names.

Trump said at his victory party early Wednesday that the former presidential candidate and Anti-vaccination activist Robert Kennedy Jr. is enlisted to “help make America healthy again,” adding, “We'll let him do it.” In the run-up to the election, Trump did not reject Kennedy's calls No more fluoridated water. Trump has also pledged to make South Africans Elon MuskA vocal supporter of the Trump campaign, a federal “cost-cutting” minister and the CEO of Tesla, has suggested he can find trillions of dollars in government spending to cut.

The transition is not just about filling jobs. Most elected presidents 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, 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 the president's briefings with Biden did not begin until November 30.

Who is helping Trump in this process?

Trump's transition is being driven primarily by friends and family, including Kennedy Jr. and former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbardas well as the president-elect's adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and his vice president, JD Vance. Co-chairs of the transition 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 “as different as possible” from the 2016 operation, which was first led by Chris Christie. After winning eight years ago, Trump fired Christie, scrapped the former New Jersey governor's plans and gave the job of leading the transition to the then-vice president-elect Mike Pence.

Early in his first term, Trump assembled an initial Cabinet that included a few more mainstream Republicans and business leaders who ultimately disappointed him, broke publicly with him, or both. This time, Trump has promised to value loyalty as highly as possible – a philosophy that could see him making decisions more in line with his ideological beliefs and bombastic professional style.

Unlike the Democratic Vice President's election campaign Kamala HarrisTrump's team did not sign anything before Election Day Transitional arrangements with the General Services Administration, which essentially acts as the federal government's landlord. As a result, he has already missed deadlines to agree with the GSA on logistical issues such as office space and technical support, and with the White House on access to authorities, including documents, staff and facilities.

New transition rules

In 2020, Trump argued that widespread voter fraud – which hadn't actually happened — cost him the election and delayed the start of the transition from his outgoing administration to Biden's new administration for weeks.

Four years ago, the Trump-appointed head of the GSA, Emily Murphynoted that it had no legal authority to declare a winner in the presidential race because Trump was still challenging the results in court. This delayed funding and cooperation for the transition.

First Trump's attempts to undermine the election results had collapsed in important states that Murphy has officially agreed ” determine a president-elect ” and begin the transition process. Trump eventually announced on social media that his administration would cooperate.

To prevent such a delay in future transitions, the Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 requires the transition process to begin five days after the election — even if the winner is still in dispute. This is intended to avoid lengthy delays and means that “a 'positive determination' by GSA is no longer a requirement for receiving transition support services,” the agency's guidance on the new rules states.

The uncertainty continued even longer after the 2000 election, when five weeks passed before the Supreme Court has settled the disputed election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. That left Bush with about half the usual time to deal with the change in government of the outgoing Clinton administration. This ultimately led to questions about national security lapses that may have contributed to the U.S. being underprepared for the September 11 attacks the following year.