Election 2024: Trump wins election; what’s next in the process?

Since President-elect Donald Trump secured more than the minimum 270 electoral votes needed for his return to office, what happens next?

Trump earned 292 electoral votes while Vice President Kamala Harris earned 224 with three states yet to be called as of Wednesday, The Associated Press.

Trump’s win has started the process from now until he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2025, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

The electors who are part of the Electoral College will cast their votes in the state they represent on the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December, the National Archives said. That means it will happen on Dec. 17, 2024.

After the votes for each — the president and vice president — are completed, the results will be sent to Congress where they will be officially counted on Jan. 6, 2025.

The sitting Vice President, in this case, Harris, oversees the count as the President of the Senate as a formality. She will then declare the official winners of the two offices.

Trump will take the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C.

While all that is going on, Trump will be in his transition period which will last 75 days. During that time, he and his team will select about 4,000 political appointees including Cabinet secretaries and members of various boards and commissions. About 1,200 of them will need Senate confirmation. The Republican party also controls the Senate, which, the AP said should make the process relatively easy.

The AP reported that Trump’s plans will look different from the last time he was in office, already saying that Robert Kennedy Jr. would “help make America healthy again.” Kennedy is anti-vaccination and wants to end the adding of fluoride to water. Trump also said that he would have Tesla billionaire Elon Musk look at “cost-cutting” removing trillions of dollars of government spending.

Trump will also get intelligence briefings during the transition period, the AP reported.

Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, along with Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric, are leading the team.

The co-chairs are Howard Lutnick and Lind McMahon. Lutnick is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald while McMahon was a founder and former CEO of professional wrestling’s WWE. She was also the head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term.

Trump and his team had not signed a transition agreement with the General Services Administration prior to Election Day. The GSA, as the AP described, is the government’s landlord and helps with logistics such as office space and tech support. It also works with the White House to get access to agencies, documents, employees and facilities.

The agency also helps the outgoing president and vice president to set up their post-administration facilities. The GSA finally works with the National Archives and Records Administration “as necessary, to provide support to the former Presidents in the establishment and maintenance of their libraries.”

Because of the delay in the transition between Trump and President Joe Biden, attributed to Trump’s challenges of the election results, the Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 mandates that the transition process starts five days after the election.

There were also delays because of the contested election of George W. Bush and then-sitting Vice President Al Gore, which gave Bush half the traditional transition time, the AP reported.

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