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 on this question and discusses what we can learn for future transitions. Heath Brown is an associate...
Feb 18, 2025•52 min
‘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 for Public Service since its creation in 2001. Under his leadership, the Partnership grew from a small sta...
Dec 10, 2024•35 min
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, to talk about the differences between these teams, why they’re both essential to a successful transit...
Nov 12, 2024•42 min
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 Mattingley , about why government runs the way it does and how political leaders can make it work better. J...
Oct 29, 2024•39 min
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 Institution. She also is an advisory board member of the White House Transition Project and a practitio...
Oct 15, 2024•52 min
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 “Transition Lab,” we speak with Melody Barnes , who co-led this work for former President Barack Obama’s 2...
Oct 01, 2024•49 min
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 American Enterprise Institute. He is the founder and editor of National Affairs, a senior editor at The N...
Sep 17, 2024•46 min
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 the best, most thorough presidential transition ever organized. Today, as our first returning guest on ...
Sep 03, 2024•40 min
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 transition operation, about what they learned from the 2016 transition, how to prepare for a transfer o...
Aug 20, 2024•53 min
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 government to reorganize our political conversations and create a healthier, more productive democracy. Le...
Aug 06, 2024•43 min
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 participate in democracy. He tells us about this work and the importance of the peaceful transfer of power a...
Jul 23, 2024•55 min
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 Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School....
Jul 09, 2024•40 min
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 learned from it. Spoiler alert: the problems are as big as you imagine, but so are the ideas of Ameri...
Jun 25, 2024•44 min
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, foreign interference and questions of democratic legitimacy. Lindsay Chervinsky is a scholar at the Center...
Jun 11, 2024•37 min
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. president to the next. In the second season, Transition Lab will explore the relationship between pres...
May 28, 2024•5 min
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.
Oct 14, 2022•47 min
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.
Jan 26, 2021•47 min
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. Liddell talks about managing a delayed post-election transition, his experiences working with the Bid...
Jan 21, 2021•37 min
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.
Jan 19, 2021•35 min
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 congressional liaison for the 2008 Obama transition and director of legislative affairs for the Obama White Ho...
Jan 04, 2021•47 min
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 improved the presidential transition process. He currently co-chairs the Biden-Harris transition team. In t...
Dec 18, 2020•39 min
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 Congress, helping new members transition from campaigning to governing and better preparing the institu...
Dec 07, 2020•34 min
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.
Nov 23, 2020•46 min
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 Transition Lab, Barnes joined host David Marchick to discuss post-election transition planning, how n...
Nov 16, 2020•39 min
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/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Nov 09, 2020•9 min
John Podesta served as President Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff from 1998 to 2001, founded the Center for American Progress, was the co-chair of Barack Obama’s presidential transition in 2008-2009 and chaired Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016 while overseeing her pre-election transition activities. Podesta talked to Transition Lab Host David Marchick about his transition experiences during victorious and unsuccessful elections, offered advice on political and judicial ap...
Nov 01, 2020•41 min
This week’s episode of Transition Lab features three leaders from the Partnership for Public Service. One is special guest host Loren DeJonge Schulman, a national security expert who spent 10 years at the Defense Department and National Security Council, most recently as the senior advisor to National Security Advisor Susan Rice during the Obama administration. Currently, she serves as the vice president of Research and Evaluation at the Partnership. Joining Schulman is Max Stier, the Partnershi...
Oct 26, 2020•40 min
On October 2, the Center for Presidential Transition, the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, and several presidential foundations and libraries hosted a virtual conference called “Talking Transitions: Perspectives for First-term and Second-term Administrations.” The event included former government officials, journalists and scholars to discuss managing presidential transitions during national crises. You can view the full event here. This week’s episode of Transition Lab features one panel...
Oct 19, 2020•53 min
Stephen Hadley held key national security positions in three Republican administrations before working on the George W. Bush transition in 2000-2001 and serving as Bush’s national security advisor. Kurt Campbell is an expert on East Asian affairs who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations, and co-authored, “Difficult Transitions: Foreign Policy Troubles at the Outset of Presidential Power.” In this episode of Transition Lab, Hadley and Campbell join host David Marchick to discuss their ...
Oct 12, 2020•35 min
Michael Froman has had an extraordinary career. After serving in the Department of the Treasury under President Clinton, he became the head of personnel for the 2008 Obama-Biden transition team and later served as a White House deputy national security advisor and as the U.S. Trade Representative. In this episode of Transition Lab, host David Marchick asks Froman for an inside look at the world of vetting, selecting and appointing key presidential personnel. They discuss how Froman got involved ...
Oct 05, 2020•32 min
