Politics
Donald Trump’s transition starts now. Here’s how it will work
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump ‘s impending return to the White House means he’ll want to stand up an entirely new administration from the one that served under President Joe Biden . His team is also pledging that the second won’t look much like the first one Trump established after his 2016 victory. The president-elect
Donald Trump ‘s impending return to the White House means he’ll want to stand up an entirely new administration from the one that served under President Joe Biden. His team is also pledging that the second won’t look much like the first one Trump established after his 2016 victory.
The president-elect now has a 75-day transition period to build out his team before Inauguration Day arrives on Jan. 20. One top item on the to-do list: filling around 4,000 government positions with political appointees, people who are specifically tapped for their jobs 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 commissions. Around 1,200 of those presidential appointments require Senate confirmation, which should be easier with the Senate now shifting to Republican control.
Here’s what to expect:
What will the transition look like?
Though the turnover in the new administration will be total, Trump will be familiar with what he needs to accomplish. He built an entirely new administration for his first term and has definite ideas on what to do differently this time.
He’s already floated some names.
Trump said at his victory party early Wednesday that former presidential hopeful and anti-vaccination activist Robert Kennedy Jr. will be tapped to “help make America healthy again,” adding that “we’re going to let him go to it.” Ahead of the election, Trump didn’t reject Kennedy’s calls to end fluoridated water. Trump has also pledged to make South African-born Elon Muska vocal supporter of the Trump campaign, a secretary of federal “cost-cutting,” and the Tesla CEO has suggested he can find trillions of dollars in government spending to wipe 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. When Trump was preparing 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 of the election’s results delayed the start of the transition process for weeks, though, and presidential briefings with Biden didn’t begin until Nov. 30.
Who is helping Trump through the process?
Trump’s transition is being led 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 running mate, JD Vance. Transition co-chairs are Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick 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 effort, which was first led by Chris Christie. After he won eight years ago, Trump fired Christie, tossed out plans the former New Jersey governor had made and gave the job of running the transition to then-Vice President-elect Mike Pence.
At the start of his first term, Trump assembled an original Cabinet that featured some more mainstream Republicans and business leaders who ultimately disappointed, or broke publicly with him, or both. This time, Trump has promised to value loyalty as much as possible — a philosophy that may ensure he makes picks that are more closely aligned to his ideological beliefs and bombastic professional style.
Unlike the campaign of Democratic Vice President Kamala HarrisTrump’s team didn’t sign any pre-Election Day transition agreements with the General Services Administration, which essentially acts as the federal government’s landlord. He has therefore already missed deadlines to agree with GSA on logistical matters like office space and tech 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 hadn’t actually occurred — cost him the election, delaying the start of the transition from his outgoing administration to Biden’s incoming one for weeks.
Four years ago, the Trump-appointed head of the GSA, Emily Murphydetermined that she had no legal standing to determine a winner in the presidential race because Trump was still challenging the results in court. That held up funding and cooperation for the transition.
It wasn’t until Trump’s efforts to subvert election results had collapsed across key states that Murphy agreed to formally “ ascertain a president-elect ” and begin the transition process. Trump eventually posted on social media that his administration would cooperate.
To prevent that kind of holdup in future transitions, the Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 mandates that the transition process begin five days after the election — even if the winner is still in dispute. That is designed to avoid long delays and means that “an ‘affirmative ascertainment’ by the GSA is no longer a prerequisite for gaining transition support services,” according to agency guidelines on the new rules.
The uncertainty stretched even longer after the 2000 election, when five weeks elapsed before the Supreme Court settled the contested election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. That left Bush with about half the usual amount of time to manage transitioning the government from the outgoing Clinton administration. That ultimately led to questions about national security gaps that may have contributed to the U.S. being underprepared for the Sept. 11 attacks the following year.
WASILLA, Alaska — Three weeks out from Election Day, President Donald Trump took a helicopter to a plane to another helicopter to a motorcade to an ice hockey rink in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Valley, traversing nearly 4,000 miles over more than eight hours to turn out his base here to help Republicans defend the Senate.
But Trump’s trek might not be enough to save Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s running in a tougher-than-expected race against Democrat Mary Peltola in a state where the president’s approval rating is underwater and independents outnumber both Republicans and Democrats.
Alaska strategists and voters who spoke to Blue Light News acknowledged that Sullivan faces a difficult path to reelection, despite Trump’s time investment and the outside money pouring in.
“Very conservative MAGA voters can’t vote for you harder,” said Scott Kendall, a veteran political strategist who worked on two of Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s campaigns and was chief of staff to former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker. “Donald Trump’s support in this current climate is both a blessing and a curse.”
Even some Trump supporters at the Tuesday night rally admitted the outlook appeared bleak.
“I think Alaska’s turning blue,” said Matt Niessink, a 45-year-old general contractor from Wasilla. He said he had voted for Trump three times and planned to support Republicans this year.
What did he wish the president would do differently? “I wish he’d shut his mouth sometimes and not be such a pompous ass,” Niessink said.
The president was in Wasilla — population 10,556 — because the outlook is darkening for his party in a state he carried by 13 points just two years ago. In a midterm year defined by the cost of gas and groceries, the Last Frontier has been hit particularly hard, with the average price of diesel nearing $7 per gallon. In the Senate race, Peltola is flush with cash and leads Sullivan in most polls. MAGA Inc., the cash-rich Trump-aligned super PAC, is increasingly focusing on Alaska as one in a slate of states that can help Republicans hold the Senate.
Enter Trump, who has been spending the cycle’s crucial final weeks holding rallies in red states to juice support among his base, which tends to see depressed turnout in years when he’s not on the ballot.
“That was a lot of flying,” the president said at the top of his remarks. “In fact, they were thinking about canceling. They said, ‘Sir, you’re very busy, this is very tough.’” But, Trump continued, he refused to cancel for a state he won three times.
Echoing his comments at other red-state rallies, Trump asked the roaring crowd for “one big favor” — to “pretend that I’m on the ballot, because every time I’ve been on the ballot, we win.” He repeated his promise that Americans will receive $5,000 dividends if Republicans hold both chambers.
“What this is about is getting out the vote,” Sullivan told reporters before Trump’s speech. “A rising tide of enthusiasm lifts all the candidates.”
Unlike some other Republican candidates in tight races, Sullivan has shied away from distancing himself from the least popular aspects of Trump’s presidency.
Sullivan proclaimed on stage at the rally that “the conflict in the Middle East is temporary. The true forever war is the national Democrats’ war against Alaska oil and gas and our jobs.” And although a campaign aide released a statement condemning Trump’s move to import Russian diesel, Sullivan did not join four of his Republican Senate colleagues, including Murkowski, who called on Trump to reverse the decision.
Art Hackney, a veteran Republican strategist in Alaska, said that “most of the people who support” Sullivan “think that he should” break more with the president.
Hackney, who runs a pro-Sullivan super PAC called “We Stand with Dan,” attributed that choice to loyalty — but suggested the president’s demand of fealty, and treatment of frequent dissenter Murkowski, could also be part of Sullivan’s calculus.
“A lot of his longtime supporters and the people who are in the industries that would benefit from that wish he would be more blunt,” Hackney said. “But with what Murkowski has done, if Dan did something considered a disrespectful trigger or something, what do you think would happen? It could well have implications for things that affect Alaska’s economy.”
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Some top congressional Republicans have privately concluded that it is likely impossible for them to keep control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, and they are now focused on limiting the scale of the defeat and salvaging the party’s Senate majority.
Five senior Republican lawmakers, all granted anonymity to speak candidly about their party’s dire position, told Blue Light News the House had all but slipped away.
One senior House Republican said the GOP’s goal at this point was to “save as many Republican seats as we can.” The president, this person said, was not helping.
“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” the lawmaker said. “Now we have to survive that political storm.”
A second Republican member of Congress said the movement of campaign advertising made plain which side was in control of the midterms. This lawmaker predicted Democrats would pick up about 10 seats, more than enough to take control of the chamber.
Even in newly redistricted red states like Florida and Texas, this person said, Republican candidates were “hanging on with their fingernails.”
Republicans have already fallen back from several contested House districts that they feel are no longer winnable, including those held by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey. Trump carried their districts just two years ago. The party last week gave up on an Omaha-based district held by retiring Rep. Don Bacon.
Trump officials and other top GOP operatives say more candidates may be cut off in the coming days, in order to shift advertising money to races where it can make more of a difference. Republican groups have already given up on multiple races where they once hoped to unseat Democratic lawmakers.
The Republican Party is under extreme pressure across the Midwest, where it is now spending heavily to defend Senate seats in once-reliably MAGA states like Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
Bacon, a maverick often at odds with the White House, said there was no mystery in his party’s political tribulations.
“I’ve talked to some who are making these decisions: The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables,” Bacon said.
White House officials insist they’re not giving up on either chamber of Congress. In a statement, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said Trump remained “committed to maintaining Republican majorities in both the House and Senate.”
As he departed on Tuesday to campaign in Alaska for embattled GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, Trump professed optimism about the midterms but acknowledged that sitting presidents typically see their party lose seats in the off year.
“But I’m doing a tour right now and I’m doing rallies,” Trump added. “The level of enthusiasm for the Republican Party is way up.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson went even further, flatly declaring during a campaign stop in deep-red Texas that “the polling is wrong” in showing his party on the brink of a broad defeat.
Yet at a tactical level, the Republican Party’s moves to shift money away from defending the House and toward saving the Senate are clear enough. In recent days, the Congressional Leadership Fund, the top super PAC for House Republicans, canceled advertising for key House candidates in Nebraska and Iowa and allowed the Senate Leadership Fund – a Republican group focused on the upper chamber – to swoop in and claim the airtime to support Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts and Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running for Senate in Iowa.
“These are not the moves of a party that’s going to keep the House,” a third Republican lawmaker said.
In statements to Blue Light News, both CLF and the National Republican Congressional Committee said they had no intention of giving up on the fight for control of the House.
NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said districts are won “one by one,” and that the GOP has “the financial firepower and ground game needed to win.”
Chris Winkelman, president of CLF, said his group would keep moving money around to maximize the impact nationally.
The goal, he said, was to “keep the pressure on the most vulnerable Democrats and preserve a path to 218 seats.”
Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who lost his swing seat in Trump’s first midterm election eight years ago, said his former colleagues were clear-eyed about where the election seemed to be headed.
“The environment is about as tough as one could expect,” Curbelo said. “There is no one who has privately stated that they believe Republicans can hold the House — not in recent weeks, anyway.”
Megan Messerly, Lauren Fedor, Lisa Kashinsky and Myah Ward contributed to this report.
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff said Tuesday he will not run for president in 2028 and committed to serving a full six-year Senate term if reelected.
“I have zero interest in running for president. I’m not running for president. I’m running for reelection to the Senate,” Ossoff said during a Georgia Senate debate against Republican Rep. Mike Collins.
Asked by Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution whether he would serve his full term if he wins in November, Ossoff replied: “Yes, I will.”
The remarks are Ossoff’s most forceful rejection yet of a potential 2028 presidential bid even as his name has repeatedly surfaced in national Democrats’ conversations about possible contenders for the party’s nomination. His public commitment to a full Senate term on Tuesday is the latest of his campaign’s many efforts to tamp down that speculation.
Ossoff gained national attention this year given his strong fundraising numbers, his consistent lead in public polling against Collins and his ability to generate viral moments on the campaign trail, particularly through his attacks on President Donald Trump. Democrats are bullish about Ossoff’s ability to hold onto his Senate seat — so much so that the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC said Tuesday it was removing its ad spending in Georgia for the week.
He’s also taken steps to boost the state Democratic party in Georgia, a perennial battleground that has been and will be key to winning the presidency. If November brings historic wins up and down the ballot, Ossoff will get some of the credit — and he’ll have confirmed his status as a leader in the swing state.
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