The slower pace applies not only to key appointments throughout his administration, but also to Trump’s lower-profile agency review teams, whose nitty-gritty work with Obama’s career bureaucrats could make or break Trump’s pledge to get his presidency off to a barn-burning start.
Obama administration officials assigned to the transition say Trump’s representatives have been AWOL at some agencies, leaving them sitting on binders full of briefing materials that have been amassed since March.
The slower pace of agency-level transition efforts could have a real impact on Trump’s ability to quickly tackle big issues such as Obamacare, infrastructure and immigration reform.
“I’ve just been hearing all’s quiet on the western front, that sort of thing,” said Bill Valdez, who as president of the Senior Executives Association represents the high-level career employees assigned to help introduce the Trump teams to their agencies. “One of my colleagues worked at Department of Labor, and they’ve seen one person there — very low-level staffer — who has basically just come in and said, ‘Where are the keys to the men’s room?’ And then the rumor was that somebody at a higher level was going to come this week, but so far nobody’s shown up.”
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