November 26, 2024 - Presidential transition news

Our live coverage of the Trump administration’s transition has ended for the day. Follow the latest updates or read through the posts below.

The north lawn of the White House on November 5.

President-elect Donald Trump’s team signed a key agreement with the White House unlocking transition briefings and activities after a lengthy delay amid concerns, in part, over a mandatory ethics agreement.

The White House agreement, which was due October 1, serves as the gatekeeper for access to agencies and information and could lay groundwork for Trump’s team to receive security clearances necessary to begin receiving classified information, though it was not immediately clear how that information sharing with the Biden administration would proceed.

White House spokesperson Saloni Sharma confirmed Trump’s team signed the White House memorandum of understanding, adding that the Biden White House and General Services Administration “repeatedly made the case” to Trump’s team to sign the pair of agreements starting in September.

Catch up on the latest headlines from the transition:

Additionally, Trump announced a flurry of picks in his administration Tuesday:

Here’s the list of all Trump’s picks.

Kevin Hassett waits for the beginning of a hearing before the Joint Economic Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on March 7, 2018.

Kevin Hassett, a widely respected economist and a key economic adviser during Donald Trump’s first term, will be joining the president-elect’s incoming administration as director of the White House National Economic Council.

Trump’s decision to pick Hassett, who previously served as chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, for the role stands as yet another sign the president-elect is choosing conventional and safe candidates to fill out his economic team.

In a statement, Trump said Hassett “stood with me as we pursued our enormously successful agenda to Make America Great Again. He will play an important role in helping American families recover from the Inflation that was unleashed by the Biden Administration.”

In 2019, Hassett left his White House role to rejoin the private sector, and he briefly served as a CNN commentator. But he temporarily returned to the Trump White House in March 2020 to help the administration in its attempts to reboot the economy.

More background: Scott Bessent, Trump’s pick to serve as the secretary of the Treasury Department, was almost universally praised by Wall Street when he was announced late Friday evening, and markets rallied Monday in the first trading session after Trump announced his pick.

Like Bessent, Oregon Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Trump’s selection to serve as Labor secretary, is a moderate. And the president’s pick to lead the Commerce Department, Cantor Fitzerald CEO Howard Lutnick, is also widely respected, if a bit more bombastic than his peers.

Hassett is similarly viewed as a somewhat right-of-center voice on financial and economic issues. He helped Trump navigate the post-pandemic economic boom from the steepest, albeit briefest, recession since the Great Depression that coincided with the Covid lockdowns.

President-elect Donald Trump has named Jim O’Neill to be the deputy secretary of Health and Human Services.

Trump said in a statement that O’Neill “will oversee all operations and improve Management, Transparency, and Accountability to, Make America Healthy Again.”

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya speaks at the Forbes Healthcare Summit in New York, on December 5, 2023.

President-elect Donald Trump has named Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as his pick to lead the National Institutes of Health.

Bhattacharya received his medical degree from the Stanford University School of Medicine and a doctorate from the university’s Department of Economics. He now a professor of medicine at Stanford University, according to the school.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, he emerged as a critic of strict lockdown policies. Bhattacharya co-authored the “Great Barrington Declaration,” which called for a focus on protecting the elderly and most vulnerable while ending lockdown measures such as school closures, saying they caused disproportionate damage to the overall population’s health and well-being. This stance was at odds with views held by public health officials — with then-NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins calling the open letter’s writers “fringe epidemiologists.” Bhattacharya later said he was targeted for censorship by federal government officials.

In 2022, Bhattacharya and Trump’s pick to lead the US Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Marty Makary, were among a group of eight scientists and researchers who created “a blueprint containing key public health questions for a COVID-19 commission” on the nation’s pandemic response. The Norfolk Group’s document questioned such topics as “failures to protect older high-risk Americans,” “collateral lockdown harms,” “misleading risk communication” and “downplaying infection-acquired immunity.”

The NIH is a research center that comprises 27 institutes and centers such as the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Aging, the National Library of Medicine and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Nominees for director are subject to Senate confirmation.

This post was updated with more background on Bhattacharya.

President-elect Donald Trump has named John Phelan as his choice to be the secretary of the Navy.

Trump did not note any military experience in his statement announcing Phelan — who founded and leads private investment firm Rugger Management, based in Palm Beach, Florida — making the businessman an unorthodox choice for the role.

If confirmed by the Senate, Phelan would lead more than 900,000 sailors, Marines, reservists and civilian personnel, with an annual budget that exceeds $210 billion, according to the Navy. Phelan would also come in at a time of heightened focus on the shipbuilding capacity of the United States, especially as China’s navy outnumbers that of the US.

The current secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, graduated from the US Naval Academy and had a 22-year Naval career with high-level appointments at the Pentagon and numerous tours of duty at sea, including as the commanding officer of a guided missile destroyer.

Many past Naval secretaries have had lengthy military careers, but not all of them have served in the armed services.

Before being appointed by President George W. Bush, Donald C. Winter, who served as Navy secretary from 2006-2009, held executive roles with prominent defense contractors, including as a vice president of Northrop Grumman and president of TRW Systems.

President-elect Donald Trump has announced Jamieson Greer as his pick to serve as US Trade Representative.

Greer is no stranger to the role, having served as chief of staff to the trade representative during Trump’s first term, Robert Lighthizer. At the time, the administration implemented across-the-board tariffs on China and other countries, as well as signed onto the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Trump has routinely referenced the passage of the USMCA trade agreement — which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — as a political victory and a highlight of his presidency.

If confirmed by the Senate, Greer will assume the role as Trump is expected to pursue an ambitious trade agenda.

More background: Since winning the election, Trump has already promised to implement new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China on the first day of his administration — until, he said, the countries prevent the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs across the border.

Greer, speaking on other countries’ trade and tax policies, told The New York Times in June that “if you level out that playing field, it makes it so that Americans don’t have to compete unfairly.”

He has most recently worked as a partner on the international trade team at law firm King & Spalding, according to his company bio. In that role, he has covered cases on topics including trade policy and negotiations and trade agreement enforcement. He previously focused on trade-related matters in private practice and served in the US Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps, during which he deployed to Iraq, according to the bio.

Read more here about Greer

Vince Haley is seen at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 17.

President-elect Donald Trump has named Vince Haley as his director of the Domestic Policy Council.

As CNN has previously reported, Haley was involved with the fake electors strategy and repeatedly pushed the idea in battleground states.

Texts and emails that Haley turned over to the January 6 committee show how he repeatedly pushed the idea of using illegitimate GOP slates of presidential electors in battleground states to some of Trump’s closest staff members.

The leaders of Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign defended their decision to not directly respond to a withering attack ad over transgender rights that became one of the most poignant closing arguments of Donald Trump’s re-election bid.

They blamed the vice president’s defeat on “ferocious” political headwinds and an abbreviated general election campaign.

Three weeks after the election, Plouffe and three other Harris advisers spoke out for the first time on the liberal podcast, “Pod Save America.” They said a 107-day campaign did not give Harris time to distinguish herself from President Joe Biden and his low approval ratings.

“If there’s a belief that if only we had responded to this trans ad with national and huge battleground state ads we would have won,” Plouffe said. “I don’t think that’s true.”

The attack ad, which closed with the memorable line “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” was seen by the Trump campaign as one of its most successful decisions. The ad used Harris’ own words, highlighting support for taxpayer-funded sex reassignment surgeries for transgender prisoners.

“Obviously, it was a very effective ad at the end,” said Quentin Fulks, a deputy campaign manager for Harris. “I think that it made her seem out of touch.”

Yet the architects of the Harris campaign dismissed suggestions that some Democrats have made since the election that not responding to the ad played a major role in Harris’ defeat. The advisers said they tested several response ads, but none were seen in focus groups as particularly effective.

“We took it very seriously,” Plouffe said, adding that it did not determine the election. “This was not driving voter behavior, like the economy.”

In a wide-ranging conversation with podcast host Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to Barack Obama, the Harris aides defended the strategic decisions they made on the campaign, including extensive outreach to moderate Republicans in the final weeks of the race. None called out Biden by name and his decision to step aside in July, but they argued such a short race put Harris in a nearly impossible situation.

President Joe Biden walks to the Rose Garden to deliver remarks at the White House on Tuesday, November 26.

While President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team was not involved in the negotiation of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Lebanon, Biden officials kept them apprised of key developments during talks to end the conflict with Hezbollah.

“They were not involved in these negotiations, which reached their most intense point before the election,” a senior administration official said.

When those talks appeared to be making significant progress after the election, the official briefed Trump’s senior national security team “on the tenets of the deal and my expectations that that it was a higher likelihood of it coming to fruition.”

“I felt that they needed to know what we were negotiating and what the commitments were,” the official said.

That official briefed Trump’s senior national security team again “in the last 24 and 48 hours,” characterizing the reaction as “supportive.”

Trump’s team appeared to agree, the official indicated, that it was “good for Israel … good for Lebanon … and it is good for the national security of the United States. And most importantly, doing it now versus later will save countless lives on both sides.”

While Biden’s team is “clear-eyed” that its time in office is coming to an end in 55 days, it will continue to push forward on a deal in Gaza and keep the incoming team abreast.

“We won’t do this unless they know what we’re doing,” the official said of the Trump team.

Keep up with the latest news from the Middle East here.

Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Democratic vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz greet supporters at the conclusion of a campaign rally on October 28 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz thanked grassroots supporters who contributed to their 107-day campaign during a virtual call on Tuesday afternoon as they both urged voters to continue fighting for democracy.

Three weeks post-election day, Harris echoed her concession speech in which she urged voters to continue the “fight that fueled our campaign.”

The vice president said that the campaign raised roughly $1.4 billion in grassroots donations as she praised them for their efforts. And she encouraged voters to continue advocating for fundamental freedoms including equal justice, women’s reproductive rights and the rule of law.

Harris thanked her running mate, Walz, calling him an “extraordinary leader” and a “dear friend.”

Walz expressed his “deep gratitude” for being on the Democratic ticket with Harris, reiterating it was “the privilege of a lifetime.”

As Walz thanked grassroots organizers, he acknowledged the flurry of emotions some people are feeling but stressed that “now more than ever, we need the light to shine through.”

“We need to be able to be that hope for the neighbor who’s really wondering. We need to be that anchor for the folks who are wondering what’s next,” Walz said.

The White House in Washington, DC, on Friday, May 17, 2024.

White House spokesperson Saloni Sharma confirmed that President-elect Donald Trump’s team signed the White House memorandum of understanding, adding that the Biden White House and General Services Administration “repeatedly made the case” to Trump’s team to sign the pair of agreements starting in September.

President Joe Biden and his chief of staff, Jeff Zients, pressed Trump and his incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles, to sign the agreements during their November 13 Oval Office conversation, people familiar with that conversation said, and Trump and Wiles expressed openness to moving forward.

Zients, a person familiar said, met once more with Wiles on November 19 to stress the importance of starting transition briefings for national security and other continuity purposes. Ultimately, there was a recognition that delaying the transition activities any further was not in the interest of a smooth transition.

The signed White House agreement “will allow for certain, authorized members of the Trump transition team to have access to agency and White House employees, facilities, and information,” according to Sharma. White House officials said that federal agencies will receive guidance on facilitating secure information sharing with Trump’s team.

Still, Trump’s team declined to sign a separate memorandum with the General Services Administration, due September 1, which would provide access to office space and secure communications, among other provisions. The Biden White House did “not agree” with the decision to forego that agreement.

Separately, the Trump team has yet to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Justice, White House officials said, but “progress has been made towards an agreement.” DOJ, the officials noted “is ready to process requests for security clearances for those who will need access briefing materials and national security information once the MOU is signed.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s team has signed a key agreement with the White House unlocking transition briefings and activities after a lengthy delay amid concerns, in part, over a mandatory ethics agreement.

Wiles continued, “This engagement allows our intended Cabinet nominees to begin critical preparations, including the deployment of landing teams to every department and agency, and complete the orderly transition of power.”

The White House agreement, which was due October 1, serves as the gatekeeper for access to agencies and information and could lay groundwork for Trump’s team to receive security clearances necessary to begin receiving classified information, though it was not immediately clear how that information sharing with the Biden administration would proceed.

“The Transition already has existing security and information protections built in, which means we will not require additional government and bureaucratic oversight,” the transition said in a statement.

Trump’s team also said it “will not utilize taxpayer funding for costs related to the transition.”

It added that it “will not use government buildings or technology provided by GSA (the General Services Administration) and will operate as a self-sufficient organization.” It said that its existing ethics plan “will meet the requirements for personnel to seamlessly move into the Trump Administration,” noting that that agreement will be posted to the GSA’s website.

With the agreement in place, the Biden administration can now begin to prepare their incoming counterparts for a handoff on January 20.

CNN has reached out to the White House, the Office of Management and Budget, and the GSA for comment.

Special Counsel Jack Smith continued to defend his appointment as special counsel in court, even though the prosecutor has indicated he’s dropping the charges he brought against President-elect Donald Trump.

Smith laid out a final round of written arguments for why Judge Aileen Cannon was wrong to conclude that his appointment as special counsel was unlawful. In a brief on Tuesday, he urged a federal appeals court to reverse the trial judge’s ruling that ended his prosecution against Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents.

Smith noted that Trump is no longer listed among the case’s defendants on the filings.

On Monday, Smith told the 11th US Circuit of Appeals that he was dropping his case against Trump because of the Republican’s re-election this month, but that he was continuing to pursue the prosecution of Trump’s co-defendants, two employees of the former president facing obstruction-related charges.

The Justice Department also has an interest in continuing to appeal Cannon’s dismissal of the case because her ruling could be used to try to undermine future special counsel investigations. Her ruling was the first to deem the department’s dependence on a special counsel unlawful after other courts have upheld their use.

It’s unclear when the 11th Circuit will resolve the appeal, and it’s likely that the incoming Trump DOJ will have to decide whether and how to move forward with the case.

The appeals court has not scheduled oral arguments in the dispute, but could opt to do so.

Shipping containers are seen at Nanjing port in Nanjing, in eastern China's Jiangsu province on October 17, 2024.

In 2018, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) launched a tariff exclusion process that would allow businesses to apply to have certain products shielded from the levies on China.

To win a badly sought-after and potentially lucrative exclusion, companies were asked to demonstrate that the tariffs would cause “severe economic harm” to the firm or US interests. They also were asked to prove that substitute products were not available outside China or that the product wasn’t strategically important to China.

Between 2018 and 2020, USTR received about 53,000 exclusion requests and denied 87% of them, according to a Government Accountability Office review.

The GAO review found “inconsistencies” in how USTR reviewed applications and that the agency “did not fully document all of its internal procedures.”

Relatedly, the Commerce Department’s inspector general in 2019 found shortfalls with a separate exclusion process run by that agency for Section 232 tariffs on other countries besides China. The review found “a lack of transparency that contributes to the appearance of improper influence in decision-making for tariff exclusion requests.” A subsequent inspector general report released in 2021 concluded that US companies were “denied exclusions based on incomplete and contradictory information.”

The murky and unpredictable nature of the process during the last Trump administration is making some fear exclusions will be used as a way to curry favor with special interests.

Read more about how the tariffs impacted workers during the last Trump administration here.

During President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, America launched an all-out trade war with China to boost US manufacturing, secure US national security interests and resolve what Trump believed was an extremely out-of-balance trade relationship.

President Joe Biden kept most of those tariffs in place and added a few new ones, too. While leaders of the two nations continue to butt heads, US consumers have paid the price, shelling out more money on goods imported from China.

Now Trump is focusing his attention on America’s largest and third-largest trading partners: Mexico and Canada. And he’s pledging something extraordinary: Come January 20, the day Trump is inaugurated, he pledged to slap a new 25% across-the-board tariff on all goods the US imports from the two nations — goods that are almost all coming across the border for free because of the Trump-negotiated US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA.

Translation: Brace yourself for a potential trade war that could seriously lighten your wallet.

Some of the top consumer goods Americans buy from their neighbors to the north and south, including gas, produce and cars, could get more expensive if Trump follows through with his tariff plan.

Read more on potential rising costs here.

The Republican Jewish Coalition endorsed Randy Fine for Congress in Florida’s 6th Congressional District after President-elect Donald Trump threw support behind Fine in a Truth Social Post on Saturday.

Rep. Michael Waltz, who previously represented Florida’s 6th Congressional District, is leaving Congress to serve as Trump’s national security adviser, creating an even thinner Republican majority in the House until his replacement is sworn in.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gives a keynote speech during the Bitcoin 2024 conference at Music City Center July 26 in Nashville.

The announcements came Friday night, one after another, of President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for the country’s premier health leadership roles: a New York family physician and Fox News medical contributor for surgeon general; a Florida physician and former congressman to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a surgeon and researcher at Johns Hopkins for the US Food and Drug Administration.

Public health experts, former government officials and researchers — including 10 who spoke with CNN — began meting out praise, critiques and questions about Trump’s picks: Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for US surgeon general, Dr. David Weldon for CDC director and Dr. Marty Makary for FDA commissioner, each of whom will face a Senate confirmation hearing.

Several health experts said Makary and Nesheiwat were reasonable choices who may be tested under a federal health department with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, at the helm of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Several also raised concerns about Weldon, Trump’s pick to lead the CDC, who had previously introduced legislation that would have shifted vaccine safety oversight away from the CDC and has repeatedly raised questions about the safety of vaccines that had already been studied.

A key challenge for all of the Trump administration’s new public health leaders, the experts said, will be keeping politics out of science.

CNN has reached out to Nesheiwat and Makary for comment and did not receive a response. CNN was not able to reach Weldon.

New vehicles sit on a Dodge Chrysler-Jeep Ram dealership's lot on October 3, 2023 in Miami.

Shares of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler owner Stellantis all retreated Tuesday after President-elect Donald Trump vowed to impose 25% tariffs on all products coming from Mexico and Canada on his first day in office.

The stock drops reflect concerns that Trump’s tariffs will mess up delicate supply chains that rely on both Mexico and Canada for parts and production.

Trump has promised to use tariffs to protect workers and American-made cars, but in reality the auto industry has long operated as if North America is a single, unified market.

Sometimes parts pass over the border of the three countries multiple times before installation is completed and cars are sold at dealerships. The same is true for foreign automakers that have plants in the United States, such as Toyota and Honda.

GM shares suffered the steepest losses, dropping 8% as of Tuesday morning. Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Ram, lost nearly 5%. Ford shares fell 2%.

US-listed shares of Toyota and Honda fell about 2% apiece.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks at a news conference in Austin, Texas on June 8, 2021.

Texas is quickly becoming the blueprint for how incoming Trump officials expect to work with states on border security – a stark pivot from recent years when it was the epicenter of a bitter feud between state and federal officials.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott challenged President Joe Biden at almost every turn on the handling of the US southern border, as the state grappled with multiple border surges. The ongoing feud has resulted in a slew of lawsuits over Texas’ operations and public spats over the handling of the border.

As part of his Operation Lone Star, launched in 2021, Abbott transported migrants on buses to Democratic-led cities, blocked a portion of the border to federal agents, set up buoys in the Rio Grande to deter migrants, and signed a bill into law that would give state law enforcement the authority to detain migrants, among other measures.

The state also recently announced a new unit of troopers that will patrol the border on horseback. “We’re not letting up at all,” Abbott said last week on Fox News’ “Hannity.”

In a spate of recent announcements, Texas said it would offer up to 1,400 acres of land for the government to use for detention centers and introduced a new unit of troopers to patrol the border on horseback.

Those moves have frustrated the Biden White House. But Texas’ preparations to bolster its operation on the US southern border is serving as a roadmap for how President-elect Donald Trump’s team plans to lean on states as part of its immigration plans, according to two sources familiar with discussions.

“We need to cooperate; we need to work together,” one of the sources told CNN. “We’ve had to do it at a much greater level over last few years.”

In a sign of the changing nature of the relationship, Trump is weighing one of Abbott’s senior advisors — Texas border czar Michael Banks — to lead US Customs and Border Protection, according to multiple sources.

Read more about how Texas is providing a blueprint for handling the border to an incoming Trump administration.