Donald Trump in Transition Is a Danger to Us All | Opinion

You’ve probably heard about Project 2025, the extreme agenda for former President Donald Trump’s second term. But what you may not know, because Trump is going to unprecedented lengths to keep it secret, is that the groundwork for the MAGA takeover of the entire government is already underway.
Funded by rightwing billionaires, Trump is running the most secretive presidential transition since the process was formalized through the Presidential Transition Act of 1963. He could be hiding plans even more extreme than Project 2025, all with zero transparency or accountability. What’s not a secret is that a chaotic transition would threaten America’s security and set the stage for a disastrous presidency.
Transitions are supposed to turn campaign promises into government action. I learned how important this work is as co-director of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential transition (yes, we followed the law and ran a serious transition for the three months leading up to the election). Campaigns typically receive federal funds and office space so they can run an orderly process and coordinate with the outgoing administration. Experts vet potential appointees and write papers that tee up choices the new president will make to craft and implement policy. This work doesn’t get much public attention while candidates are barnstorming the swing states, but it will have a big impact on people’s lives and freedoms.
Trump’s previous transitions have been turbulent. In 2016, Trump first told former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who was overseeing his transition, that his work was so good they could “do the entire transition if we just leave the victory party two hours early” — only to fire him days after the election and start from scratch. It turned planning into total chaos and meant Trump had the most incomplete team in modern history when he assumed office. Three-quarters of the top 100 jobs did not have nominees on Day One, far behind his predecessors.
A sea of empty desks can have disastrous consequences. The 9/11 Commission found that when transition planning was paused in 2000 due to the contested election between Al Gore and George W. Bush, it delayed the appointment and eventual confirmation of key national security officials, leaving America vulnerable to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Twenty years later, Trump’s refusal to accept that he’d lost the 2020 election led to the Jan. 6 insurrection and also an unprecedented lack of cooperation with the incoming Biden team in the middle of a deadly pandemic.
This time around, Trump has refused to even participate in the government’s official transition planning process so he can skirt rules around fundraising, ethics, and disclosure. Instead, he’s leaning on MAGA donors Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, chair of the America First Policy Institute, to plan his federal takeover. One reason for this unprecedented secrecy is that he doesn’t want the public, press, Congress, or investigators to later have access to records like they did after 2016. For example, when special counsel Robert Mueller was investigating whether Trump colluded with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election, transition emails and other materials were handed over.
We must assume that Project 2025 wasn’t written as a folly and a distraction and take it for what it is—a 900-page rightwing blueprint to imprint MAGA on every part of the federal government.
Many of the career civil servants and more moderate Republicans who staffed Trump’s first administration will be replaced by Trump loyalists who have spent the last four years studying the levers of power and preparing their takeover. They’ll also likely implement a plan called Schedule F that Trump announced before the 2020 election, which would have stripped civil servants deemed disloyal to the president of employment protections and opened the door to politicizing the federal workforce. President Joe Biden rescinded the order, but Trump has obsessed over reinstating it to combat what he calls the “deep state.” Not only is it fundamentally anti-democratic, but overhauling the civil service would make the government understaffed and unprepared to respond to crises. And there are many to plan for: wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, extreme weather due to climate change, economic uncertainty… the list goes on.
The stakes of this election and our nation’s future are too high for it to be decided in secrecy. That’s why it’s imperative voters elect Vice President Kamala Harris. (It’s also why bankrolling a federal presidential transition with private donations from billionaires, regardless of whether candidates accept money from the federal government, should be prohibited.) If Trump wins in November, whether his transition team succeeds or fails could hurt us all. If he succeeds and implements Project 2025 and guts the federal government, American institutions and individuals will suffer as a result. And if his shadow transition fails to prepare his administration, our national security could be imperiled. Either way, ignoring a transition shrouded in secrecy will cost us dearly in the years to come.
Ann O’Leary previously served as the co-director of Hillary Clinton’s Presidential transition team and led Governor Gavin Newsom’s transition as his first chief of staff.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.