What we know about the transition so far

By: CNN

Posted: Nov 6, 2024 12:10 PM EST

Evan Vucci/AP via CNN Newsource

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- With the presidential election called for President-elect Donald Trump, the Biden administration is now preparing for a peaceful transfer of power to its predecessor 76 days from now – even though Trump’s team has actively skipped a series 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 readiness,” according to a White House official.

But the president-elect still has not signed a pair of critical memoranda of understanding with the Biden administration to unlock transition activities that could begin as soon as Wednesday to ensure the next administration can hit the ground running quickly and begin to receive the information needed.

“I don’t think it is possible run an effective transition without entering into the MOUs in order to get access to critical government support,” Max Stier, the president and CEO of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, told CNN.

Stier added, “The Biden team undoubtedly will do everything they can to square this circle 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 selected its 2024 nominee.

CNN has reached out to the OMB and GSA for comment.

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

By September 1, both Trump and Harris campaigns were expected to sign a memorandum of understanding with the GSA that gives them access to office space, communications, equipment and IT support. The campaigns were also expected to submit an ethics plan and to identify the initial 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 spokesperson said.

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

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

Trump’s transition team also has not met that deadline.

Declining the federal government support, Stier said, “is a tremendous and unnecessary risk to national security and readiness.”

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

The Agency Transition Directors Council, co-chaired by OMB deputy director Jason Miller and the GSA’s federal transition coordinator, Aimee Whiteman, began meeting monthly with career representatives from each agency.

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

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

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

Those materials focus less on policy and more on organizational structure, logistical information, and topics like budget processes and the distribution of political appointees. The memos and briefing materials serve as a “useful guide” to help organize the expected conversations 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 partisanship looms large, leading to questions of how – or whether – such briefing materials would be used by a future administration.

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

“We were waiting for the phone calls [from the Trump team], waiting for people to show up, and they never did. They never took our memos,” said one senior official who has served under both President Joe Biden and Obama. The Trump campaign, this official said, has “not shown any indication they want to use anything that we provide to them.”

Trump has also indicated that he plans to enact sweeping changes for career officials in federal government, including changing thousands of those jobs into politically appointed positions, 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.

Those experts warn that the moves would hollow out and politicize the federal workforce, force out many of the most experienced and knowledgeable employees, and open the door to corruption and a spoils system of political patronage.