Here’s what we’re watching in transition world today:
🗓️ What we’re watching
- Which administration hopefuls and Republican members of Congress are going to spend Christmas Eve at Mar-a-Lago with President-elect Donald Trump? If any attendees are bringing their 7-year-olds, they may want to have a chat about Santa ahead of time.
- Conservatives who want to slash the federal budget are hoping they can enlist Trump and Elon Musk in their efforts. But last week’s government funding meltdown underscored that Trump doesn’t always share their fiscal restraint, our Jordain Carney reports. Though Trump and Musk helped upend the initial bipartisan bill loathed by fiscal hard-liners, his big demand in the next bill — a looser limit on Washington’s borrowing authority — is a reminder for them that in Trump’s first term, he exploded the deficit and green-lighted billions in additional spending.
- Is Greenland the next territory on Trump’s Santa list? Greenland Prime Minister Múte Egede on Monday shot down any claim that the territory is up for grabs. “Greenland is ours,” Egede wrote on Facebook. “We are not for sale and will never be for sale.”
- The president-elect’s approach to the media has evolved by taking his message straight to podcasts and online influencers, our Eli Stokols writes. But last week’s funding mess showed that some of the old rules of mainstream media still apply.
- Elon Musk is creating his own town.
🚨What’s up with the nominees?
- Trump now has landing teams set up at the Office of National Intelligence, our John Sakellariadis and Daniel Lippman learned. Patrick Witt, Joe Francescon and Joe Kent will coordinate the Trump team’s transition into ODNI.
- Trump has tapped multiple people for overlapping foreign affairs posts — which may cause battles and confusion over who’s in charge, our Nahal Toosi writes.
