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WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s return to the White House means he’ll want to stand up an entirely new administration from the one that served under President Joe Biden. His team is also pledging that the second won’t look much like the first one Trump established after his 2016 victory.

The president-elect now has a 75-day transition period to build out his team before Inauguration Day arrives on Jan. 20. One top item on the to-do list: filling around 4,000 government positions with political appointees, people who are specifically tapped for their jobs by Trump’s team.

That includes everyone from the secretary of state and other heads of Cabinet departments to those selected to serve part time on boards and commissions. Around 1,200 of those presidential appointments require Senate confirmation, which should be easier with the Senate now shifting to Republican control.

Here’s what to expect:

 What will the transition look like?

Though the turnover in the new administration will be total, Trump will be familiar with what he needs to accomplish. He built an entirely new administration for his first term and has definite ideas on what to do differently this time.

He’s already floated some names.

Trump said at his victory party early Wednesday that former presidential hopeful and anti-vaccination activist Robert Kennedy Jr. will be tapped to “help make America healthy again,” adding that “we’re going to let him go to it.” Ahead of the election, Trump didn’t reject Kennedy’s calls to end fluoridated water. Trump has also pledged to make South African-born Elon Musk, a vocal supporter of the Trump campaign, a secretary of federal “cost-cutting,” and the Tesla CEO has suggested he can find trillions of dollars in government spending to wipe out.

The transition is not just about filling jobs. Most presidents-elect also receive daily or near-daily intelligence briefings during the transition.

Who is helping Trump through the process?

Trump’s transition is being led primarily by friends and family, including Kennedy Jr. and former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, as well as the president-elect’s adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and his running mate, JD Vance. Transition co-chairs are Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who previously led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term.

Lutnick said this year’s operation is “about as different as possible” from the 2016 effort, which was first led by Chris Christie. After he won eight years ago, Trump fired Christie, tossed out plans the former New Jersey governor had made and gave the job of running the transition to then-Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

Unlike the campaign of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s team didn’t sign any pre-Election Day transition agreements with the General Services Administration, which essentially acts as the federal government’s landlord. He has therefore already missed deadlines to agree with GSA on logistical matters like office space and tech support and with the White House on access to agencies, including documents, employees and facilities.

New transition rules

In 2020, Trump argued that widespread voter fraud — which hadn’t actually occurred — cost him the election, delaying the start of the transition from his outgoing administration to Biden’s incoming one for weeks.

Four years ago, the Trump-appointed head of the GSA, Emily Murphy, determined that she had no legal standing to determine a winner in the presidential race because Trump was still challenging the results in court. That held up funding and cooperation for the transition.

It wasn’t until Trump’s efforts to subvert election results had collapsed across key states that Murphy agreed to formally “ascertain a president-elect ” and begin the transition process. Trump eventually posted on social media that his administration would cooperate.

To prevent that kind of holdup in future transitions, the Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 mandates that the transition process begin five days after the election — even if the winner is still in dispute. That is designed to avoid long delays and means that “an ‘affirmative ascertainment’ by the GSA is no longer a prerequisite for gaining transition support services,” according to agency guidelines on the new rules.

Associated Press 

A 53-year-old German man is believed to have been cured of HIV.

Researchers referred to him as “the Dusseldorf patient” to withold his identity, and is the fifth person in the world to be cured of the virus.

He reportedly has “no detectable virus” since not taking his medication four years ago.

“It’s really cure, and not just, you know, long term remission,” said Dr. Bjorn-Erik Ole Jensen, who presented details of the case in a new publication in “Nature Medicine.”

“This obviously positive symbol makes hope, but there’s a lot of work to do.”

What it means

This patient is only the fifth person cured of HIV, representing a small population which recieved a stem cell transplant which is often given to cancer patients, replacing a person’s immune system, in turn curing the infection.

The big picture

HIV was long considred a lifelong infection and millions have died from it. Modern medication has prolonged the lives of those infected.

Prosecutors will charge actor Alec Baldwin with two counts of involuntary manslaughter after cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed on set in 2021.

“I have determined that there is sufficient evidence,” Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said.

“On my watch, no one is above the law and everyone deserves justice.”

The big story

Baldwin was reportedly rehearsing a scene for the film Rust when the gun he held fired off, killing Hutchins. But he denied shooting Hutchins though he held the fatal weapon gun that fired off and hit the actress.

At the time he said, “I don’t know what happened on that set. I don’t know how that bullet arrived in that gun.”

The film’s armourer Hanna Gutierrez-Reed will also face charges.

Policy is that only cold guns should be onset–guns without bullets. It should have been checked and used as a prop only.

Baldwin served as the film’s executive producer.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden, known for her strict handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is set to resign within weeks, admitting she does not have the energy to seek re-election in the upcoming elections in October.

What Jacinda Arden says

“The decision was my own,” Ardern said. “Leading a country is the most privileged job anyone could ever have, but also the most challenging. You cannot and should not do the job unless you have a full tank, plus a bit in reserve for those unplanned and unexpected challenges.”

“I no longer have enough in the tank to do the job justice,” she added.

The big picture

Arden’s term will end by February 7, when a new Labour prime minister will be sworn in.

New Zealand’s general election will be held on October 14.

Arden became known as one of the youngest world leaders, serving as prime minister at 37 years old.

She gave birth while in office and was re-elected to a second term due to her “go hard and go early” approach to the pandemic, helping to control and lower the number of infections in the country, attracting praise from other countries battling infections.

WNBA star Brittney Griner was freed in a prisoner swap for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer, concluding the whirlwind of delicate negotiations between Russia and the United States.

The United Arab Emirates facilitated the release. According to BBC news, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman shares a relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and assisted in co-ordinating swaps of hundreds of prisoners held by Russia and Ukraine.

The big story

Griner was imprisoned for months in Russian prisons and was sentenced to 9 years after she was found with vape cartridges of cannabis oil in her luggage in February.

Bout was sentenced to 25 years in US prisons for conspiracy to kill Americans and has become known as the ‘Merchant of Death’ because he was a gun runner and ran fleets of Soviet-era cargo planes to Africa. He provided support to terrorist organizations and  inspired the film, “Lord of War.”

What President Biden says

“She’s safe. She’s on a plane,” Biden said in brief remarks at the White House Thursday morning. “She’s on her way home. After months of being unjustly detained in Russia, held under intolerable circumstances, Brittney will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones and she should have been there all along. This is a day we’ve worked toward for a long time. We never stopped pushing for her release.”

President Vladimir Putin ups the ante and threatens more missile attacks on Ukraine after Russia hit Kyiv with an intense barrage of strikes.

“It was not possible to leave [Ukrainian attacks] unanswered. If attempts at terrorist attacks continue, the response from Russia will be severe and correspond to the level of threat,” Putin said on Monday at a televised meeting of his Security Council.

“Let there be no doubt about it.” 

The big story

Ukraine blasted a key bridge to the Crimean Peninsula over the weekend which is marked as Putin’s flagship project.

Putin launched attacks on Ukraine in February fearing that its neighbor Ukraine was leaning toward Western ideals and was a constant threat to Russia’s existence. 

Why it matters

It marks a dangerous new escalation since the war started. The world fears Putin may resort to nuclear weapons.

What Ukraine President Zelensky says

On his Telegram channel, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, “They are trying to destroy us and wipe us off the face of the Earth.” He urged Ukrainians to stay in bomb shelters as air-raid alerts echoed in every region of the country.

“Unfortunately there are dead and wounded.”