The upcoming presidential transition — the massive undertaking where control of the entire executive branch changes hands — could get messy.
The bureaucratic process has been glitchy at times in the past, but the past two transitions featuring either an incoming or outgoing Trump administration were particularly chaotic. This upcoming changeover is already shaping up to be unusual, and agency officials and transition experts are bracing for another wild ride.
Several scenarios could arise to make this transition particularly complicated or contentious.
For starters, a contested outcome could mean dueling transition teams enter agencies at the same time.
An outright Trump victory might get tricky as former President Donald Trump’s team has been reluctant to enter into formal transition agreements with the government, which could pose hurdles to his team getting access to agencies and information.
And a win by Vice President Kamala Harris could be awkward. Even though she’d be taking over from a friendly administration, Harris would undoubtedly want to pack the executive branch with some fresh faces.
Here’s where things could get complicated:
Scenario 1: Outcome uncertain
It’s entirely possible — likely, even, given the close polling — that the outcome of the presidential election won’t be known the night of the election. It could be a while before ballots are tallied, possible legal challenges play out and there’s an obvious winner.
Recent changes to a law governing presidential transitions mean that both candidates’ transition teams can enter federal agencies to receive briefings and prepare to take over the government.
That means both Trump and Harris’ teams could potentially be entering agencies at the same time between Election Day and Inauguration Day. Agencies’ transition officials have been working behind the scenes to figure out how exactly that would work, but it could get cumbersome.
The presidential transition law states that if neither candidate concedes by Nov. 11, both candidates’ teams could theoretically start receiving transition briefings.
“The five days after the election may be quiet, but Nov. 11th is when the flood gates open,” said Valerie Smith Boyd, director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.
One possible hurdle: The Trump team still hasn’t signed formal agreements with the Biden administration or the General Services Administration. Those are necessary for the Trump team to receive transition resources and to gain access to federal facilities and transition briefings.
The Biden White House and GSA have said the federal transition coordinator is working with the Trump team to finalize those agreements.
Scenario 2: Trump wins
Trump’s past presidential transitions have not gone smoothly.
Following his 2016 election, Trump replaced his transition leader, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, as soon as he won the race.
During Trump’s last transition after the 2016 election, career officials in agencies waited to hear from his team. Stan Meiburg, who served as EPA acting deputy administrator during the Obama administration, recalled “a certain sense of consternation” from agency staff.
“They felt they were supposed to be talking to somebody and weren’t sure who that was, and that persisted all the way up until the actual transition itself,” Meiburg said. “And then people started to appear.”
The 2020 transition from Trump to Biden was chaotic as well.
As Trump and his allies contested the election results, the Trump-appointed head of GSA delayed triggering the federal transition process. That created hurdles for the incoming Biden team and complicated the government handover.
In response, Congress passed a new law in 2022 that aimed to simplify that process. The government must now provide transition resources to all eligible candidates until the winner has been determined.
But with Trump’s team not signing the formal agreement with the White House, they might not get access to the available transition information.
The agreement with the White House “is necessary to define the terms of access to federal personnel, documents and facilities,” said Boyd. “It is impossible to picture a situation in which a team could be fully briefed by federal agencies” without having that document — known as a memorandum of understanding — in place.
Meanwhile, the Harris team has signed formal transition agreements with the GSA and the White House.
Cooperation between the outgoing and incoming administrations is important for a host of reasons, Boyd said, including to plan for security threats. After the 2008 election, she said, the outgoing George W. Bush team worked with then-President-elect Barack Obama’s team on security planning for the presidential inauguration “because there was a terrorist threat at the time.”
“If you imagine a scenario where an incoming president’s team is not talking to the outgoing president’s team about a serious national security threat, that endangers the public, and it comes at a grave risk to the opening days of their administration,” Boyd said.
Scenario 3: Harris wins
A Harris to Biden transition could also be dicey.
The president is responsible for filling more than 4,000 jobs throughout the executive branch, and Harris would no doubt want to make some personnel changes if she wins the White House.
A Harris victory would be one of only a handful of times in history that a sitting vice president has been elected to the White House and the first time it’s happened since President George H.W. Bush came in after serving as vice president to Ronald Reagan.
Andrew Card, who served as Bush’s transportation secretary, later recalled that the incoming Bush administration faced the “added burden” of “managing the expectations of people who are working for President [Ronald] Reagan who just assumed they would stay in their jobs if George Bush was elected.”
The Biden and Harris teams have largely been on the same page so far during the turbulent election season that involved a sudden pivot from Biden to Harris as the Democrats’ nominee. But it’s possible that intraparty feuds will emerge if Harris wins, and there’s uncertainty about which political appointees will keep their jobs in her administration.
Clay Johnson, who served as executive director for President George W. Bush’s transition team, had to deal with a tough changeover, given the contentious 2000 election. His advice for the next administration was to staff up and be clear about their goals.
“You need to have warm bodies below the executive offices,” Johnson said. “The best way to approach the transition is to be sure it’s really clear what you want to accomplish.”
