No shutdown panic at Mar-a-Lago

Dec 20, 2024

POLITICO'S West Wing Playbook: Transition of Power

By Gavin Bade, Eli Stokols, Lisa Kashinsky, Megan Messerly and Ben Johansen

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Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the preparations, personnel decisions and policy deliberations of Donald Trump’s transition. POLITICO Pro subscribers receive a version of this newsletter first.

The looming government shutdown is adding a unique twist to what was already an unprecedented presidential transition — one where the incoming administration all but refuses the federal government’s help.

A government shutdown would only exacerbate those delays.

“This is unprecedented on so many levels,” said ANN O’LEARY, who led the potential transition planning for the HILLARY CLINTON campaign in 2016. “We’ve never had a presidential team entirely privatize this effort.”

“At a minimum, a shutdown of the government is going to certainly add to the chaos and the vulnerability to the U.S. government,” she added.

The crew in Mar-a-Lago, however, is much calmer about the situation than their critics in Washington. Asked about the shutdown’s impact on the transition, a Trump spokesperson said the president-elect is “making brilliant Cabinet nominations at lightning pace while leading an efficient, streamlined Transition across the executive branch,” and declined to respond to any specifics about shutdown-related contingency planning.

Those inside the process are even more relaxed. Most officials feel the transition is self-contained due to its separation from federal agencies, said one person familiar with transition planning, granted anonymity to share internal dynamics. And DONALD TRUMP’s nominees don’t care as much about policy continuity as in many other transitions, so they don’t mind not being able to meet with outgoing agency officials, at least for a time.

“Nobody is freaking out” on the Trump transition team over the shutdown, the person said.

Still, a shutdown will pose new obstacles to what’s been an already unusual transition. Here’s what you need to know:

Can the feds assist Trump’s transition during a shutdown?

The Biden administration has long insisted that it’s been trying to facilitate an orderly handoff, but those operations would be pared back — even if they wouldn’t say which ones.

“Transition activities will be restricted,” press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE told reporters Friday during a White House briefing. “We’re doing everything to ensure a smooth transition, but the choice to allow a transition to move forward is in the hands of Republicans in Congress.”

That came after an OMB spokesperson on Thursday warned that such a shutdown “would disrupt a wide range of activities associated with the orderly transition of power,” but declined to specify what programs and personnel would be impacted.

Still, it’s not hard to infer some of the consequences. Because of Trump’s refusal to use government servers for the transition, some federal staffers are reluctant to share sensitive documents with their incoming counterparts over email, instead opting for in-person meetings.

Those will all but halt under a shutdown, and most federal workers would also be barred from communicating via phone or email from home. Some workers can avoid such furloughs by being designated “essential” under the Anti-Deficiency Act. But SETH HARRIS, a former acting Labor secretary who has worked on three Democratic presidential transitions, told POLITICO that most transition activities likely wouldn’t qualify, other than some staff who work on national security.

“It creates yet another barrier to a smooth transition,” said Democratic health policy consultant CHRIS JENNINGS, who served on transition teams for Presidents BILL CLINTON, BARACK OBAMA and JOE BIDEN.

Would an inauguration take place during a shutdown?

While Republican Sen. CYNTHIA LUMMIS told reporters Friday that Trump “doesn't care whether he gets a very modest swearing in,” West Wing Playbook isn’t so sure. And a shutdown will mean a delay to crucial preparations for Trump’s big bash.

ADRIENNE ELROD, the head of talent and external relations for Biden’s 2021 Presidential Inaugural Committee, said furloughs could affect nearly every aspect of inaugural planning, from who hands out tickets to who escorts guests and ensures ample security.

“So the real question is, during a shutdown, can this team of people be deemed essential under the rules that apply for government shutdowns?” she said. “My guess is right now there’s a lot of furious planning going on, putting people on lists, ‘you’re essential, you’re not essential… and my guess is there’s a real case to be made that most of the people working on this [inauguration] committee are essential.”

What are the national security concerns?

But the risks stretch beyond Trump’s big party in DC and could even affect U.S. national security readiness early in Trump’s second term. The 9/11 Commission report found that delays in the 2000 presidential transition due to the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case “delayed the national security appointments and national security information being shared in a timely manner.”

The national security risk is “not just speculation,” O’Leary said. “It is documented that this has happened in the past and we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

As the shutdown looms, health experts are closely watching the H5N1 bird flu that is spreading among dairy cattle, one of many government responsibilities that are subject to vulnerabilities in a transition and a shutdown.

“It’s really hard to convey just how disruptive shutdowns are,” said TOM FRIEDEN, who led the Centers for Disease Control during the 2013 shutdown and is now the president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, a non-profit that works to prevent epidemics and cardiovascular disease.

“If you’re on multi-year [project] money you [remain working], if you’re on fee-based money you stay, if you’re taking care of lab animals you stay because it’s property,” Frieden said, “whereas if you’re tracking an epidemic that hasn’t yet blown up, you may not stay.”

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POTUS PUZZLER

Which president famously hosted more than a thousand guests at the White House over the Christmas holidays despite, as their press secretary later disclosed, suffering from a chronic hemorrhoid condition?

(Answer at bottom.)

Pro Exclusive

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THE BUREAUCRATS

PLAN C TAKES SHAPE: With a government shutdown just hours away and his future as House GOP leader increasingly in doubt, Speaker MIKE JOHNSON now plans to put forth a bill to fund the government through mid-March after House Republicans expressed support for the strategy in a closed-door meeting.

As our MERIDITH LEE HILL and JORDAIN CARNEY report, the vote is likely to come Friday ahead of the midnight deadline for keeping the government funded. The package would also include a one-year farm bill extension and the $110 billion disaster aid package Republicans negotiated with Democrats, although it’s not clear if Democrats will lend any support.

The package does not include the debt ceiling increase Trump has demanded Johnson pass. Should be pretty straightforward from here!

ELON TAKES HIS FLEX WORLDWIDE: As he pushes Trump and Republicans toward a government shutdown in the U.S., the world’s richest man and most powerful nonstate actor is flooding the zone elsewhere, threatening to back primary challenges against some Democrats and weighing in on the looming elections in Germany.

In a post on X, ELON MUSK on Friday threw his support behind the far-right Alternative for Germany party, writing that “Only the AfD can save Germany!” As our NETTE NÖSTLINGER reports, Musk has been on quite a kick with public endorsements of far-right politicians around the world and has previously questioned characterizations of AfD as extreme, despite the party’s ethnically tinged anti-migrant positions, Islamophobia, defamation of state institutions and government officials and the uptick in right-wing violence that has mirrored the party’s ascent.

And as our ANTHONY ADRAGNA reports, Musk also took aim at Rep. RICHARD NEAL (D-Mass.), threatening to fund a primary challenger against the sometimes Trump-aligned (for a Democrat, at least) ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee. In another post on X responding to a clip of Neal’s floor speech blaming Musk and Trump for blowing up a bipartisan funding agreement that could cause a government shutdown, Musk vowed he would be “funding moderate candidates in heavily Democrat districts, so that the country can get rid of those who don’t represent them, like this jackass.”

Surely, Musk already knows that Neal is a moderate who has repeatedly drawn the ire of his party’s progressive wing.

HE’S BACK: AJIT PAI, Trump’s former chair of the Federal Communications Commission, is again shaping agency policy, this time from the transition team, five people familiar with transition planning told our JOHN HENDEL and DANIEL LIPPMAN. Pai’s involvement comes as the administration settles on its policy priorities and nominations for an open GOP seat on the five-member commission. That pick, who will require Senate confirmation next year, is needed to hand incoming FCC Chair BRENDAN CARR a majority.

One person helping with the FCC transition said there are potential conflicts of interest with Pai holding a leadership role on the FCC transition team while pursuing a job at the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association. They added that the transition team is interviewing several career staffers for appointments to various FCC leadership roles, including the heads of bureaus that deal with issues like wireless, space and enforcement. Filling FCC appointments with staff would be convenient for longtime agency veterans but less likely to shake up agency business.

“The concern is that he’s just putting in people who would do CTIA’s bidding,” the person said. “CTIA has a substantial interest in keeping the status quo.”

OFF TO ROME: Trump on Friday also announced plans to nominate BRIAN BURCH, a strong critic of POPE FRANCIS, to serve as ambassador to the Vatican, our ERIC BAZAIL-EMIL reports. Burch, who worked to organize Catholics for Trump this year through his Catholic Votes organization, has criticized Francis for what he termed “progressive Catholic cheerleading.” In a post on X, Burch said he is “committed to working with leaders inside the Vatican and the new Administration to promote the dignity of all people and the common good.”

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Agenda Setting

FIVE PERCENT IS THE NEW TWO PERCENT: Trump’s team has told EU officials that he wants NATO members to increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP, FT’s LUCY FISHER, HENRY FOY and FELICIA SCHWARTZ scooped on Friday. That’s more than double the 2 percent benchmark Trump demanded allies meet during his first term. Largely in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, 23 of the 32 NATO countries are now spending 2 percent or more of GDP on defense. But none of them have gotten to 5 percent. Poland is the only country currently spending over 4 percent.

Trump also told allies he plans to continue supplying military aid to Ukraine, three people briefed on the discussions told the FT. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, many EU leaders have spoken about the need for Europe to shoulder more of the burden for its own defense; and most are likely to be more receptive to Trump’s pressure than they were in 2018 when he threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO although increasing domestic weapons production won’t happen overnight.

“1-2-3-4, I DECLARE A TRADE WAR”: Any effort by European leaders to form a united front against a potential trade war with the U.S. under Trump is being hampered by the increasingly “sclerotic politics” across the continent, NYT’s JIM TANKERSLEY, JENNY GROSS, LIZ ALDERMAN and MELISSA EDDY report. And just Friday, the president-elect upped the pressure on the EU in a social media post, declaring that Europe “must make up their tremendous deficit with the United States by the large scale purchase of our oil and gas,” or else. “Otherwise, it is TARIFFS all the way!!!”

The EU, which did more than $1.5 trillion in trade with the U.S. in 2023, is already one of the biggest buyers of American liquified natural gas. In Brussels, the EU’s administrative arm, the European Commission, is already studying the impact of potential tariffs on different economic sectors — and discussing what American products to target with tariffs in retaliation, a senior EU diplomat told the Times.

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What We're Reading

Judges increasingly alarmed as Trump’s Jan. 6 clemency decision nears (POLITICO’s Kyle Cheney)

Elon Musk’s X Endgame (The Atlantic’s Ali Breland)

And then there was Matt… (Puck’s Dylan Byers)

Inside the Demise of DC’s Most Hated Political Watering Hole (POLITICO Magazine’s Michael Schaffer)

POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER

Unfortunately for him, it was President JIMMY CARTER whose holiday hosting responsibilities in 1978 were complicated by that rather painful malady. Despite the condition, which aides thought might require surgery, Carter stood in a photo line with more than 1,000 people, according to this contemporaneous WaPo report.

We honestly can’t decide if this makes us nostalgic for that bygone era of greater transparency around presidents and their health. The public deserves to have this information, although maybe there are some things we don’t all need to know?!

A CALLOUT! Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents, with a citation or sourcing, and we may feature it!

Edited by Jennifer Haberkorn and Isabel Dobrin

A message from Electronic Payments Coalition:

The Durbin-Marshall Credit Card Bill threatens valuable rewards like cash-back and airline miles at a time when Americans need them the most. According to a recent US News survey, 68% of Americans are worried about affording gifts for loved ones this holiday season. With inflation and rising costs weighing heavily, 55% of Americans plan to use credit card rewards to cover groceries, gifts, and travel. Instead of cutting off a vital source of financial support, Senators Durbin and Marshall should focus on helping families find relief and joy during the holiday season.