What we know about the transition so far

Washington
CNN
—

With the presidential election called for President-elect Donald Trump, the Biden administration is now preparing for a peaceful transfer of power to his predecessor 76 days from now—even though Trump’s team has actively skipped a number of key deadlines during the initial planning process.

Representatives from Trump’s team met with federal agency transition planners last week to discuss “post-election preparedness,” according to a White House official.

But the president-elect still not signed a pair of critical memorandums of understanding with the Biden administration to unlock transition activities that could begin as soon as Wednesday to ensure that the next administration can quickly get up and running and begin receiving the necessary information.

“I don’t think it’s possible to make an effective transition without going into the MOUs to access critical state aid,” Max Stier, the president and CEO of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, told CNN.

Stier added: “The Biden team will undoubtedly do everything they can to turn this cycle around, but there are legal limits to what they can do without the Trump team’s agreement to follow the law.”

Led by the White House Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration, planning for a transition began before either the Republican or Democratic Party had chosen its 2024 nominee.

CNN has reached out to OMB and GSA for comment.

Trump’s transition team is led by Linda McMahon, who led the Small Business Administration during his first term, and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick.

On September 1, both the Trump and Harris campaigns were expected to sign a memorandum of understanding with the GSA giving them access to office space, communications, equipment and IT support. The campaigns were also expected to submit an ethics plan and identify the first people who would need security clearances to begin receiving classified information during a transition.

Trump’s team has not signed that memorandum.

GSA “is prepared to provide services to the Trump transition team once an MOU is executed and services are accepted,” a GSA spokesman said.

The federal transition coordinator, a White House spokesman told CNN, is “actively working” with the president-elect’s transition team to finalize his MOU.

By Oct. 1, both the Harris and Trump campaigns were expected to sign a separate memorandum of understanding with the White House outlining the terms of agency access, including personnel, facilities and documents.

Trump’s transition team has also failed to meet that deadline.

Denying the federal government support, Stier said, “is a huge and unnecessary risk to national security and preparedness.”

The Biden administration began preparing for this transition in 2023, beginning with the appointment of a federal transition coordinator, a senior career official who serves as the main liaison between the candidates and the eventual president-elect. Activity picked up in early 2024, and in April OMB issued a memo to each federal government agency outlining what needed to be done.

The Agency Transition Directors Council, chaired by OMB Deputy Director Jason Miller and GSA Federal Transition Coordinator Aimee Whiteman, began meeting monthly with career representatives from each agency.

Career officials—of whom there are more than 2 million—generally serve from administration to administration, while political appointees—of whom there are about 4,000—serve under one president and resign at the start of a new administration, though they can stay if they is asked. of the new team.

Each government body was required to identify a succession plan for all its senior political officials by 15 September. And by November 1, each agency must have prepared briefing materials for the final president-elect’s team.

The goal of these briefing materials is “to help inform the next administration of what they’re facing coming in, what the problems are, what the administration has done to address them, and where they think the priorities should be going forward ,” according to Valerie Boyd, director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service.

These materials focus less on politics and more on organizational structure, logistical information, and topics such as budget processes and distribution of political appointees. The memos and briefing materials serve as a “useful guide” to help organize the expected talks between the Biden administration and the next administration’s transition team, a senior administration official told CNN.

While organizations like Stier’s have worked to institutionalize the transition process in recent years, the specter of bias looms large, leading to questions about how — or whether — such information material would be used by a future administration.

Several Biden appointees, who also served under former President Barack Obama, have suggested their experiences preparing for the 2016 transition provided both muscle memory and a cautionary tale: Hours spent preparing memos and briefings could be covered by an incoming administration , who have no desire or need for them.

“We waited for the phone calls (from the Trump team), waited for people to show up, and they never did. They never took our notes,” said a senior official who has served under both Presidents Joe Biden and Obama. Trump campaign, this official said, has “shown no indication that they want to use anything that we’re giving them.”

Trump has also indicated that he plans to implement sweeping changes for career civil servants in the federal government, including changing thousands of those jobs to political appointees, CNN has reported. Policy experts have warned that federal workers could be fired unless they put loyalty to Trump ahead of serving the public interest.

These experts warn that the moves will erode and politicize the federal workforce, forcing out many of the most experienced and knowledgeable employees and opening the door to corruption and a barter system of political patronage.