As the 2024 campaign moves towards a general election, so too will transition planning. That's because, months before this November's election, Congress is asking the White House to prepare for withdrawal even as President Joe Biden aims to remain in the country.
Large-scale transition plans were not always mandated by Congress, and many transitions were characterized by poor cooperation. But the well-prepared and widely praised handover from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, amid the global economic collapse of 2008, was a year in which Congress tightened the laws governing presidential transitions in 2016 and 2019. This gave me an opportunity to do so.
Remarkably, after accepting few offers of aid from the outgoing Obama administration in 2016, the Trump campaign complied with this law in the run-up to the last election, working with the Biden campaign to support the Biden campaign. In cooperation with the United Nations, they established a transition council to name the transition to a federal government in case of defeat. coordinator. Nevertheless, we now know that early signs of compliance with federal law and traditions of cooperation were quickly abandoned.
Recall that in 2020, it took until Saturday after the election ended and thousands of provisional and mail-in ballots were counted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to be declared the winner. Once this happened, transition leaders, who had been preparing since the spring, knew what to do next. On November 9 and 10, 2020, leaders of the Biden-Harris transition announced the names of hundreds of people who will become members of the transition team. It includes nearly all members of 39 agency review teams and five transition communities. -A chairperson and an advisory board consisting of 15 members.
The announcement by the 12-member COVID-19 Advisory Committee was almost unprecedented in past transitions, but what happened next is not only for the leaders of the transition team, but at least for the public. It was truly amazing. President Donald Trump did not concede his election even days after the votes were counted. This is the first time since 2000, when there was a virtual tie in Florida and thousands of votes were recounted, a defeated presidential candidate did not immediately deliver a concession speech or accept the election results.
This meant waiting for action from the General Services Administration (GSA), the government agency with the authority to release post-election public funds and government space to the transition team. In this case, action means “confirming” the election results, which is usually seen as a formality, but in 2020 that formality did not happen immediately. A week later, General Services Administration (GSA) Secretary Emily Murphy, like her predecessors, issued a letter authorizing nearly $10 million in federal funding, office space, and federal aid for the Biden-Harris transition. had not yet been signed. After President Trump tweeted, “Well done, Emily!”, President-elect Biden criticized outgoing President Trump for delaying office, calling Trump's failure to concede an “embarrassment” and calling the president's failure to concede an “embarrassment”, leading to the most difficult crisis in U.S. history. It marked the beginning of two and a half months of political and legal wrangling.
Nevertheless, the Biden-Harris team complied with GSA's order to wait, even as they recognized the need to prepare to govern. And they were busy doing what they were allowed to do while waiting for the formal work on the transition to begin.
Rather than immediately interviewing administration members and risers, as they had imagined, they set up meetings with recently retired officials, think tankers, and interest group leaders. One person described the impact of confirmation delays as a “powerful tool” and said the Trump administration “inadvertently handed us something that turned out to be extremely valuable and extremely unique.” It's because they didn't check on us for so long that we were forced to talk to people outside the government.'' Another official said. “Rather than reaching out to stakeholders for the first time, we just talked to everyone we could talk to outside of the agency.” Another added: “When you go through a transition like this on an agency review team, you typically run into a lot of people just walking down the hall, and they all want to say something to me.'' agreed, but said in late November that “the Biden team did not want us to have that kind of contact” until the situation was confirmed in 2020.
The long days of transition lasted from the holidays to the New Year. Then the unthinkable happened. Rioters attacked the Capitol at the exact moment Congress was officially announcing what the country had known since early November: Joe Biden was the next president. Congress defeated the rebels and ultimately voted to certify the election late on January 6. Meanwhile, outgoing President Trump continued to defy convention, blocking cooperation with the Biden transition team in several key departments, particularly the Office of Management and Budget and the Cabinet Office. According to media reports, the Department of Defense.
While President Trump's unyielding stance has sparked outrage and headlines, many involved in the day-to-day work of the Biden transition have interacted with federal officials who were appointed by the Trump administration and have fully complied with transition laws. did. One official working on the agency's investigation team said that although the agency's secretaries were “pretty checked at that point,” “the undersecretaries and others were very proactive and arranged meetings. … They were very constructive and very cooperative.” Professional. ” Another person on a review team at another government agency agreed: [Trump] “Political appointees had instructed career staff not to be too aggressive with us.”[the career staff] Overall it was quite sociable. ”
While this may have characterized the work of some on the transition team, on certain issues the lack of cooperation from the Trump administration was real and consequential. A source working on international affairs said, “We received bits and pieces of information from various people, but not all of them were part of 'Team Obfuscation.'' Some people were just members of the Federation. He was an employee and had seen the whole transition and was just providing us with answers.” That's what they knew best. ” But about others, the person said: I knew I wasn't going to get an honest answer. ” That person had conducted his own investigation and knew that the outgoing Trump appointees he was meeting with were obfuscating the truth. They concluded: [the Trump] Strategies were just a waste of time…so no progress was made. ”
Another person on the 2020 transition team explained that cooperation depends on who you talk to. “Together with the C.I.A. [cooperation] It was very good [Director] Your career expert, Gina Haspel, was doing what career experts were doing in previous administrations. That meant creating a huge number of briefing books for people to discuss…The level of cooperation with the CIA was very good. ” Haspel had been with the CIA for 30 years when President Trump appointed him director in 2018. On the contrary, other stakeholders in the sector had lower support for the transition. “The case for the Director of National Intelligence was not so great…[John Ratcliffe] It was causing difficulties. ” Unlike Haspel, Ratcliffe was not a career civil servant. Instead, he served as a Republican congressman for five years before being elected President Trump in 2020. “Yet cooperation did occur…”[but] It was more of a reluctance,” said a member of the transition team.
Budget was also a top priority area during the transition period. The incoming administration is under intense pressure to produce its first presidential budget. Budgets are expected to be submitted to Congress immediately after inauguration and typically exceed 2,000 pages. This massive effort, involving complex statistical modeling, relies on financial data held by each agency and just a few people at his OMB. As a result, those involved in developing the first post-transition budget have traditionally relied on existing budget staff to help integrate current budget numbers with campaign commitments. “The practice of budget support goes back to the Eisenhower era,” said one person involved in the Biden-Harris transition. 2020 was different. Another official on the agency's review team recalled that, unlike in previous years, Trump's political appointees had to approve all requests for budget information from the Biden transition team. The transition team received several “backlash” from Trump appointees who deemed the demands “inappropriate,” leading to what the person called “flashing red lights not to participate.” Ta.
Then-OMB Director Russell Vought explained as much to the Biden-Harris team in a New Year's Eve letter to former Sen. Ted Kaufman of Delaware, a longtime Biden adviser. Management policy should be driven by that team… It is not OMB Transition's responsibility to redirect staff and resources to create a budget proposal for the team. As a result, Biden's first budget proposal was delivered much later than usual, a “serious consequence of the failure to work more closely” with federal budget officials, it said. A government transition team official said: Another person on the team concluded: [budget] staff. It's not that the transition didn't happen at all…but a lot of the serious work that we should have been doing, like collaborating on the budget…we weren't able to do it. We couldn't work together in traditional ways. ”
Obfuscation, concealment, and wasted time were especially harmful in high-priority problem areas. International economics and national security policy are examples, and cooperation was a priority for the incoming administration, where cooperation is important for national security and security. For those working on these areas of the transition, the Trump administration's response worried many. “The administration has been incredibly obstructionist, and they have obstructed the process more than what has been reported in the media so far,” said the official, who focuses on international affairs. “There was a political figurehead in every meeting who would interrupt or stop government officials from speaking…Those meetings ended up being much less candid than they could have been.” The person revealed the following: “This wasn't because the political appointees themselves wanted to be obstructionists… They all cared about the mission and the country and what they were doing.” But , there was apparent interference from the White House and the conversation was suppressed. ” Another person succinctly explained why this is important. [September 11th], we wouldn't have had that information. ”
If past is prologue, 2020 raises serious questions about what comes next for this country. As the Biden White House begins coordinating with Trump's transition team ahead of the election, questions are being raised about the cooperation required by federal law and accepted as a norm for a peaceful transfer of power. So far, President Biden has met the expectations set out in federal law. Last November, he complied with a requirement that he set up a public website with up-to-date information on the transition process one year before the election. All indications are that the administration will meet the six-month requirement to establish a transition committee this spring.
What remains uncertain is how President Trump's transition will respond. The very mixed record of 2020 suggests that a smooth and collaborative planning process before the election is not guaranteed. And what will happen after the election if Trump wins is even more uncertain.
While the election is still a long way off and the next transition is as unpredictable as the outcome of the election, all eyes are on this common but important precursor to what will happen this fall. should be abandoned. This may not feature prominently in heated campaign speeches or future debates, but it could indicate whether future transfers of power will be cooperative or even worse for the country's safety and security. It will be.
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