This article is amazing. Must read.
"Since his victory, Trump has ignored many of the rules and practices intended to guide a seamless transfer of power and handover of the oversight of 2.2 million federal employees. Instead, the president-elect, who has pledged to fire thousands of civil servants and slash billions of dollars in spending, has so far almost fully cut out the government agencies his predecessors have relied on to take charge of the federal government.
Trump has yet to collaborate with the General Services Administration, which is tasked with the complex work of handing over control of hundreds of agencies, because he has not turned in required pledges to follow ethics rules. His transition teams have yet to set foot inside a single federal office.
In calls with foreign heads of state, Trump has cut out the State Department, its secure lines and its official interpreters."
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"At the root of this unprecedented approach, say those close to Trump’s transition, is an abiding distrust and resentment of federal agencies that the president-elect blames for blocking his agenda in his first term, leaking his plans to the press, and later sharing his documents with investigators and bringing criminal charges against him.
For Trump, who campaigned on radically reshaping the federal government by moving entire departments out of Washington, closing others and replacing scores of civil servants with political loyalists, fulfillment of that vision begins with a privately run transition from Palm Beach and nearby offices."
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"To date, he has not signed memorandums of understanding that include a robust ethics pledge from the transition staff and — in a new provision added by Congress after ethical issues dogged the first Trump administration — from the president-elect himself, who must delineate how he would avoid his own conflicts of interest."
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"The day after Trump won the election, congratulatory calls began pouring in from world leaders from French President Emmanuel Macron to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a traditional post-Election Day ritual.
However, Trump did not include State Department officials or U.S. government interpreters on the line, according to government and transition officials."
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"Trump’s transition team has also dispensed with the FBI’s role, in place since before World War II, in performing the background checks that form the backbone of security clearances for political appointees. By law these checks must be performed by federal employees, not private contractors with no agency oversight, to ensure that key decisions affecting public trust are made by “accountable government officials,” according to federal statute."
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"A Justice spokesperson said the department was committed to an orderly transfer of powerand that discussions about signing a memorandum of understanding, as past presidents-elect have done, remains “ongoing.”
“We are prepared to deliver briefings to the transition team on our operations and responsibilities, and we stand ready to process requests for security clearances for those who will need access to national security information,” the spokesperson said."
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"Even before he is sworn in for a second term, Trump told House Republicans he addressed on Capitol Hill last week that he might need their help to bypass the Constitution to allow him to run for a third term. The crowd laughed, taking the remark as a joke.
The next day, one House Democrat raced to block a Trump 3.0, introducing a resolution that reaffirms support for the Constitution’s two-term limit for presidents even if the terms are not consecutive."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/19/trump-transition-fbi-state-gsa/Archived:
https://archive.is/RvVU7
