What we’re watching: Jostling for number two at CIA

Here’s what we’re watching in transition world today:

 ????️ What we're watching

• The Trump transition has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Biden White House after an unprecedented delay in signing the agreements that lasted weeks after a winner was declared. The signing clears the way for coordination between incoming Trump officials and the federal agencies they will soon take over.
• Trump transition advisers and outside allies have been discussing ways to quickly unwind the various Biden-era initiatives that offered new or easier paths to student loan forgiveness for borrowers.
• Kash Patel and Cliff Sims are jostling for the deputy director gig at the CIA. 

????What’s up with the nominees?

• A new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll shows that the public isn’t very familiar with the people President-elect Donald Trump has chosen for prominent and consequential roles in his second administration, save for a few high-profile celebrities, West Wing Playbook reports.

????ICYMI: Here are the latest administration picks 

• Trump picked Jamieson Greer to be U.S. trade representative
• Vince Haley was tapped to lead the Domestic Policy Council
• Jim O’Neill, a close associate of early Trump backer Peter Thiel, was tapped for HHS deputy secretary
• Trump selected businessperson John Phelan as his nominee for Navy secretary
• Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University physician and economist known for his controversial views during the Covid-19 pandemic, was picked for director of the National Institutes of Health
• Kevin Hassett is heading back to the White House as director of the National Economic Council