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Who Paid for Trump’s Transition to Power? The Donors Are Still Unknown.
After six weeks in office, President Trump has not disclosed the names of the donors who paid for his transition planning, despite a public pledge to do so.
Preparing to take power and fill thousands of federal jobs is a monthslong project that can cost tens of millions of dollars. Previous presidents, including Mr. Trump himself in 2017, used private contributions as well as federal money to foot the bill.
Those presidents made public the names of donors and their contributions within 30 days of taking office, as required under agreements they had signed with the departing administration.
The agreements offered the transition teams millions of dollars in federal funding and a variety of services, such as security, office space and the use of government servers, in exchange for following strict rules on fund-raising, including the disclosure obligation.
Mr. Trump’s 2024 transition team declined to sign such an agreement, stating in late November that it wanted to “save taxpayers’ hard-earned money” by forgoing federal support and financing its operations privately. At the same time, it promised that “donors to the transition will be disclosed to the public” and volunteered that it would “not accept foreign donations.” It did not state whether it would limit individual contributions to $5,000, as previous administrations had.
No disclosures about that financing have been made by the Trump transition, and neither it nor administration officials have given indications of a timeline for releasing that information.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, did not respond to requests for comment.
The leaders of the Trump transition were Howard Lutnick, now the commerce secretary, and Linda McMahon, who was confirmed Monday as the education secretary. Neither Mr. Lutnick nor Ms. McMahon responded to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for the General Services Administration, which works closely with presidential transitions, said in a statement that the “the Trump-Vance Transition Team is not required to publicly disclose transition-related donations since they did not accept the services and funds outlined in” the memorandum of understanding that the agency offered the transition last fall.
Experts on government accountability noted that without a public accounting of donors, it was exceedingly difficult to know whether individuals or corporations had tried to buy influence with the new administration behind closed doors.
“Transparency on the question of private interests influencing public power is really fundamental to the health of our system, and we’re seeing that break down in very big ways,” said Max Stier, the president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit that promotes best practices in the federal government. “They made a promise. They owe it to the public to fulfill that.”
Mr. Trump’s previous transition, after the 2016 election, had roughly 120 employees, used government office space and email servers and received $2.4 million in federal funds. In exchange, it disclosed that more than 3,000 people, companies and advocacy organizations donated $6.5 million to the effort, with those contributions capped at $5,000 apiece, as required by the G.S.A. agreement.
Far less is known about the financing of the most recent Trump transition. Operating largely out of private offices in West Palm Beach, Fla., and eschewing government servers, the transition appears to have heavily involved the billionaire Elon Musk — who spent at least $288 million to help elect Mr. Trump and now leads the so-called Department of Government Efficiency — as well as a number of other technology industry executives.
Trump Vance 2025 Transition Inc., as the transition is formally known, was registered in Florida as a “dark money” nonprofit that does not have to disclose its donors to the Internal Revenue Service. The funds cannot be used to enrich the transition’s officers, but they can be directed to support political candidates or to pay Mr. Trump’s businesses for services provided.
Mr. Trump’s post-election fund-raising was not limited to the transition. His inaugural committee, which is a separate entity, brought in more than $170 million in private donations as of early January, a record.
Unlike the transition, the inaugural committee is legally required to report donations to the Federal Election Commission. Although the inaugural committee has not yet filed a report with that regulator, a number of high-profile donors have revealed their contributions. Many of those entities have government contracts or are engaged in legal cases involving federal agencies.
Among them are the technology companies Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft, each of which donated $1 million. Kraken, a cryptocurrency exchange that was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023, put in $1 million as well. On Monday, the S.E.C. said it was dropping the case voluntarily. Last week, it dismissed a suit against another cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, which also donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
David A. Fahrenthold contributed reporting.
The mammoth triumphal arch President Trump wants to build would sit under one of the most complex sections of the national airspace — directly in the paths of flights in and out of Ronald Reagan National Airport and just a few miles from the site of a catastrophic midair collision last year.
Airplane traffic in April 2026
The Trump administration said on Thursday that the Federal Aviation Administration had compiled preliminary findings from an initial review of whether the proposed arch presented any risks to Washington’s airspace.
But the extent to which those findings, which have yet to be made public, will influence the administration’s plans to move ahead with construction as planned is uncertain. According to a New York Times analysis, the arch as currently planned would warrant further study under at least one F.A.A. guideline.
The F.A.A. had been looking into the administration’s plan for about a month to determine whether the proposed 250-foot structure — a height chosen to commemorate 2026 being the 250th year since American independence — would pose any hazard to flights in and out of Reagan National.
But in recent days, the National Park Service, acting on behalf of the Trump administration, appeared to change tack, quietly asking the F.A.A. to conduct a feasibility study — an advisory review that is normally preliminary and that, according to the F.A.A.’s own procedures, is usually given lower priority than official evaluations.
The reason for the new request, which administration officials defended as routine, was not immediately clear. Though the F.A.A. requires proposed structures over 200 feet to submit to a formal evaluation to determine their impact on local air traffic, feasibility studies are voluntary.
Some aviation experts said the administration’s decision to pursue one at this stage could indicate that possible problems had been identified with the height of the structure, which climbed from 250 feet in the initial filing to 259 feet in the feasibility study request, making the top of the arch sit 288 feet above sea level. In that case, they said, asking for an advisory study could be a strategy to avoid the potential black mark of having Mr. Trump’s pet construction project labeled a risk to flight safety.
It could suggest a project “ran into some issues and is more complicated than they had hoped,” said Michael O’Donnell, an aerospace consultant who previously worked as a senior F.A.A. official focused on air traffic safety.
The change in approach may reflect the sensitivity with which the federal government has approached potential risks in the airspace surrounding Washington since a midair collision last year that killed 67.
In the wake of that accident, in which an Army helicopter flew into a commercial jet 278 feet up in the air just southeast of Reagan National Airport, the F.A.A. shut down much of the surrounding sky to most helicopter traffic. It also instituted new prohibitions against pilots relying on “see and avoid” methods to avoid hitting planes going in and out of the airport.
Change in helicopter traffic
An airspace of unparalleled complexity
Should the arch proceed as planned, some aviation experts said it could be just the latest complication to befall a section of airspace already considered one of the nation’s most complicated.
Air traffic within a half-mile radius of the proposed arch location
Reagan National poses special challenges to pilots navigating the surrounding airspace. Planes cannot fly below 18,000 feet over the National Mall — a wide swath of Washington sitting just north of the airport — and the Naval Observatory, where the vice president lives, meaning that pilots routinely have to make tight turns when ascending from and descending to the airport to avoid them.
Flight restrictions for special events and security surrounding movements of government officials are frequent. Noise concerns in the surrounding metro areas push planes to tightly follow the Potomac River. And two of the airport’s three runways are short, which reduces the margin of error for flights landing or taking off — and contributes to the congestion of Runway 19, which is the nation’s busiest commercial runway.
Air traffic in April 2026 for Runway 19
The Reagan airspace has “just about every congested airspace issue that you can have,” said Dennis Tajer, a 737 pilot who is a spokesman for the American Airlines pilot union. “And we know the tragedy that happened — there’s room for error, but not much.”
A New York Times analysis of federal regulations, traffic patterns and flight procedures found that if the arch were built at the 250-foot height, it would penetrate what is known as the 40-to-1 obstacle clearance surface, an imaginary slope that begins at the departure end of the runway and represents a baseline standard for evaluating the impact of a nearby structure.
How the arch would penetrate the 40-to-1 slope
A structure that breaks through the surface does not necessarily pose a risk but requires further study to determine whether it can safely be built; whether changes such as reducing its height or adding obstruction lighting may be necessary; or whether the F.A.A. could make reasonable changes to flight operations and procedures to accommodate its construction as proposed.
The top of the arch as planned only slightly pushes through the bottom of the 40-to-1 slope — an altitude that virtually all planes would be well above when passing over the planned structure.
Still, some experts speculated that throwing an arch of such height and proximity into the mix could still prompt the F.A.A. to change flight procedures in and out of Reagan National in order to minimize risk. Such changes could affect the work of pilots and air traffic controllers, limit the number of planes allowed to take off or land, or change the maximum amount of weight they can carry.
“The accommodation may be just: Change other things that make it work,” said Scott Dunham, a former air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board and former air traffic controller.
Buildings taller than the arch are farther from the airport
While the height of the planned arch would put it among the tallest structures in the airport’s vicinity, the structure wouldn’t break records. Both the Capitol building and the Washington Monument are taller, but they are both located in a no-fly zone. Memorial Circle, the planned location for the arch, is not.
The arch would also be dwarfed by some structures in Arlington, Va., including a pair of highrise apartments in the Crystal City neighborhood and the towers at Amazon’s new campus in the Pentagon City neighborhood, all less than a mile from the perimeter of Reagan National — and all of which were the subject of heated debate and intense F.A.A. scrutiny. But those structures are not under the main flight path in and out of the airport like the location of the planned arch is.
The nearest buildings that are over 250 feet and in proximity to the climb and descent paths to the airport are clustered in the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington, but those sit nearly a mile farther north than the arch, at a greater distance away from the airport.
Several of the buildings in Rosslyn have red obstruction lights to warn approaching pilots to steer clear, a common way to mitigate concerns about height.
Almost 1,700 public comments about the arch, nearly all in opposition, had flooded into the National Capital Planning Commission ahead of its Thursday meeting. Commenters protested issues ranging from its appearance to its significance to its potential impact on flight patterns.
The Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, said in a statement that feasibility studies, like the one the administration requested, were “standard practice as part of the compliance process.” It did not respond to questions about what prompted the study at this stage or what may have been communicated by the F.A.A. during the previous evaluation.
Under federal regulations, the arch must still complete the full evaluation to receive a final determination about whether it poses a hazard. But the F.A.A.’s determinations are not enforceable. A notice of hazard would typically prevent a commercial structure from obtaining insurance, a factor unlikely to prevent the president from proceeding if he so wishes.
Aviation experts and former F.A.A. officials interviewed by The Times said they trusted that any actions ultimately taken by the F.A.A. would not compromise safety standards. Among them was Michael McCormick, a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine committee reviewing risks in the Reagan National airspace in light of the 2025 collision.
But “in my assessment, the airspace and procedures in and out of Washington National are very complex and should not be modified to accommodate a new structure being built,” said Mr. McCormick, who previously led the F.A.A.’s air traffic control operations. “Instead, the structure should be modified to accommodate the procedures in and out of Washington National.”
Sources
Air traffic data shown in this article is for the entire month of April 2026 and Jan. 1-28, 2025, as provided by ADS-B exchange historical records.
The obstacle clearance surface shown is based on the Aeronautical Information Manual and is not a complete set of surfaces that the F.A.A. will review.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (left) talks to President Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in April 2025.
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President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started the war with Iran together, but they have different ideas for how to end it.
Host Scott Detrow steps in for Mary Louise Kelly again this week. He speaks with NPR National Security Correspondent Greg Myre and NPR White House Correspondent Franco Ordoñez about the current friction between the two leaders, and where pain points have come up in the past. Also, where the elusive deal with Iran stands.
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Lawyers for what is currently called the Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts are instructing staff to immediately begin switching the name of the facility back to its original title.
The instructions, laid out in a memo sent Thursday by the center’s general counsel and obtained by CBS News, are the first official signal the national arts hub is complying with a federal court order to drop President Trump’s name and reconsider plans to close for two years of renovations.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper last week ruled in favor of Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, a member of the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees, who filed a lawsuit challenging the institution’s name change and plans to close for two years for extensive repairs beginning this summer.
Cooper found the board had overstepped its authority and ordered the president’s name to be removed from “the institution’s title, as represented on the façade of the Center, any other physical or digital signage, and official materials.”
The memo to staff Thursday said staff “must immediately change email signatures, letterhead, and other documents to reflect the name as ‘The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,’ or ‘Kennedy Center.’”
Changes to interior and exterior signage and any furniture carrying the current name must be switched back by next Friday, according to the memo.
The Kennedy Center didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The memo also says center officials still are “considering their options and will provide further guidance shortly” on whether the center will remain open after July 5, when extensive renovations costing $257 million are set to begin.
In his order, Cooper agreed renovations to the arts center are “sorely needed,” but he wrote his preliminary injunction does not “categorically” bar the board from closing the Kennedy Center, “should it come to this decision anew after independently balancing its multiple obligations to the Center in a prudent fashion.”
“By way of this opinion, the Court does not purport to dictate how the Center should be run, nor does it prescribe any particular plan for the institution — construction, closure, or otherwise — moving forward,” he wrote. “It simply holds the Kennedy Center Board to certain minimum requirements imposed by law. Beyond that, the Court will let the parties play on.”
In the early weeks of his second term, Mr. Trump replaced several members of the center’s Board of Trustees with senior members of his administration and close allies, who then elected him as chair.
In December, the Kennedy Center’s board voted to change the performing arts institution’s name to The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Within hours, the Kennedy Center’s website was updated to read “The Trump Kennedy Center” and crews went to work adding Mr. Trump’s name to the building’s facade. But lawmakers and legal scholars said such a change required congressional action.
Several artists who were set to perform at the institution canceled performances and the executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra, which performs at the Kennedy Center, left for a new job.
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