Transition Lab

The peaceful transfer of power occurred successfully at noon on Jan. 20, 2025, when President Joe Biden handed control of the federal government to President-elect Donald Trump. After an election cycle characterized by intense partisanship and distrust, how did officials manage this monumental task? Today on the final episode this season of “Transition Lab,” transition expert Heath Brown reflects...

‘Tis the season – and not just for the holidays! The 2024 transition is in full swing, so for this episode of Transition Lab, we invited our CEO and president  Max Stier  to join us for a discussion of President-elect Donald Trump’s (second!) presidential transition and how it stacks up against those of the last few administrations.   Max Stier has served as president and CEO of the Partnership fo...

Assigning one job to two people can be a recipe for disaster. Yet, presidential candidates typically have two policy teams—one for the campaign operation and one for the transition operation. Campaigns already do policy work, so why does a transition need a policy team, too? Today on “Transition Lab,” we’re joined by Lanhee Chen , the policy director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, t...

Political pundits wax on about government waste, red tape and inefficiency, but the truth is that while the federal government can learn plenty from the private sector, no magic wand would make government operate exactly like a business—and for good reasons. This week on “Transition Lab," we speak with our resident expert on government management, the Partnership for Public Service’s Jenny Matting...

Getting a job can be really hard—but getting a job as a Senate-confirmed, presidential appointee can be even harder. Today on “Transition Lab,” we welcome Kathryn Dunn Tenpas for a conversation about the role of political appointees in the federal government and the pathway to these jobs. Tenpas is director of the Katzmann Initiative and a visiting fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Ins...

During every presidential transition, flocks of people parachute into agencies across the federal government. From November to January, these agency review teams serve as the bridge between the president-elect and the mammoth organization they will soon oversee, relaying information back and forth to prepare for a smooth handoff of power. Organizing these teams is no small task, so today on “Trans...

The federal government seems broken, but it might not be for the reasons you think. In this episode of “Transition Lab,” Yuval Levin talks with us about the surprising ways in which a the U.S. Constitution—despite being centuries old—could help us address our most pressing modern social and political problems. Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the Ameri...

A law on presidential transitions bears former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt's name for a reason: he wrote the book on managing the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next. Twelve years ago, Leavitt built “the ship that never sailed:” the Romney Readiness Project. He memorialized this work in a book by the same name, creating a playbook and record of what many experts consider to be...

We remember the 2016 election as one of the most bruising, knockdown, polarized elections of our time, but behind the scenes, representatives for both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were quietly preparing each candidate to transition into office. Today, we speak with Ann O’Leary , co-executive director of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, and Rich Bagger , leader of the Trump for America tra...

Red versus blue, Republican versus Democrat, liberal versus conservative. Today’s politics are driven by intense partisan conflict, but things haven’t always been this way. In this episode of “Transition Lab,” we talk to Lee Drutman about how our two-party system and winner-take-all elections have inflamed our political divisions. Not to worry, though: He also tells us how we can reform our govern...

Once we leave high school social studies behind, government can feel distant, complex, impersonal and overwhelming. On today’s episode of Transition Lab, we talk with Eric Liu , co-founder of Citizen University. Eric established Citizen University to rebuild a civic culture in America and help individuals engage with one another across partisan lines and create positive ways for people to particip...

As the 2024 presidential election approaches, you can almost feel the tension rising in the air. Today on Transition Lab, we talk with Harvard professor Archon Fung about why political discourse today feels so rough, why our democratic institutions feel so fragile and what we might do about it.  Archon Fung is the director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the current...

Journalist Judy Woodruff spent the last two years “reporting on America” by traveling the country to speak to people and try to find out why we’ve become so polarized. Today on Transition Lab, she tells us about how politics has changed since she arrived in Washington, D.C., during the Carter administration, how these changes inspired her current series, “America at a Crossroads,” and what she’s l...

Do you know all the ways that America’s first presidential elections look like today’s? We sure didn’t! In this episode of Transition Lab, historian Lindsay Chervinsky tells us the story of America’s first two presidential transitions and how George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson established a tradition for the peaceful transition of power while navigating extreme partisanship, foreig...

Welcome to season two of Transition Lab, hosted by Valerie Boyd, Director of the Center for Presidential Transition. During the first season, we introduced the public to the inner workings of a presidential transition by featuring former White House chiefs of staff, members of Congress and other government leaders who worked behind the scenes to ensure the continuity of government from one U.S. pr...

Rachel Klein-Kircher and Loren DeJonge Schulman are joined by three practitioners and experts on presidential transitions who discuss the major challenges the Biden-Harris team had to overcome during the toughest transition in modern U.S. history.

Coming soon! Season two of the Partnership for Public Service podcast. This is the last episode on the 2020 transition, but the podcast will return later in the year with a new focus. Stay tuned.

Chris Liddell is the Trump administration’s leading transition expert. A deputy chief of staff, he previously served as executive director of the Romney transition team and helped author The Romney Readiness Project, a comprehensive presidential transition guide. In this episode of Transition Lab, Liddell joins host David Marchick to discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of the 2020 transition. L...

In this episode, host David Marchick spoke with Abraham about leading the Biden-Harris team, the lessons he has learned from previous transitions, and how the country’s health and economic crises have affected his work.

This week’s episode of Transition Lab focuses on the Senate confirmation process with Phil Schiliro and Candi Wolff. Wolff, the head of global government affairs at Citi, served as the Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs under President George W. Bush. She was the first woman to hold that position. Schiliro worked on Capitol Hill for nearly three decades before serving as congressio...

Ted Kaufman and President-elect Joe Biden go way back. Kaufman helped organize Biden's first Senate office in 1972 and served as his chief of staff for nearly two decades. Kaufman left the Senate in 1994, but later returned to fill his old boss’s seat after Biden became Barack Obama’s vice president in 2009. More recently, Kaufman helped pass two laws, one in 2010 and another in 2016, that improve...

Representative Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.) is the chair of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, a bipartisan panel that has produced nearly 100 recommendations focused on improving the way Congress works. During this episode of Transition Lab, Kilmer joined host David Marchick to discuss the panel’s recommendations for increasing civility, bipartisanship and trust among members of Con...

Host David Marchick, along with award winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, former George W. Bush chief of staff Josh Bolten, and historian Eric Rauchway, reflects on the current state of the transition, the costs of delay, and how this moment will be remembered.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Melody Barnes has had a distinguished political career. She has worked in various roles on Capitol Hill, held senior positions with the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign and transition teams, and led the White House Domestic Policy Council from 2009-2012. Currently, she is the co-director for policy and public affairs at the University of Virginia’s Democracy Initiative. In this episode of T...

On this week’s episode of Transition Lab, host David Marchick unpacks the contested 2000 election with David J. Barram, who served as GSA administrator from 1996-2000. Barram discusses the process of ascertainment, his work during the 2000 election and how that contest differed from the 2020 race.   Find out more at the Center for Presidential Transition.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/p...