TheWhite House Presidential Personnel Office (PPO), sometimes written asOffice of Presidential Personnel, is the part of theWhite House Office tasked with vetting new appointees.[1][2] Its offices are on the first floor of theEisenhower Executive Office Building inWashington, D.C.[2] The PPO is one of the offices most responsible for assessing candidates to work at or for theWhite House.[3]
The office is responsible for approximately 4,000political appointment positions, of which 1,600 require Senate confirmation.[4] The White House Presidential Office recruits candidates to serve in departments and agencies throughout the Executive Branch. It presents candidates forpresidential appointments with Senate confirmation (PAS) to the Senate after they have been approved by the president of the United States.[5] The mission of the office is to provide the president with the best applicants possible for presidency-appointed positions. Lastly, it also provides policy guidance for federal department and agency heads on conduct for political activities.[6]
The White House Personnel Office (WHPO) was created byFrederick V. Malek in 1971 to standardize the White House's hiring process.[7][8] In 1974, PresidentGerald Ford renamed the WHPO to the Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) and restructured it to focus more on presidential appointments, relying more on department heads to secure non-presidential appointments in their departments.[7][6]
On January 4, 2017, PresidentDonald Trump namedJohnny DeStefano Director of PPO in the incoming Trump administration.[9] On January 30, 2017, DeStefano wrote a letter to Acting Attorney GeneralSally Yates informing her ofher dismissal.[10] DeStefano left the position on May 24, 2019.[11]
In 2018, the PPO was made up of about 30 members, about one-third of its usual staff. The professionalism of the PPO under President Trump was challenged, withThe Washington Post reporting that the office was staffed with largely-inexperienced personnel.[2][12] As of July 2021, the PPO under President Biden returned to its usual staffing numbers, with about 80 people in the office.[13]
In January 2020, Trump appointedJohn McEntee Director of PPO,[14] reporting directly to Trump, who tasked him with identifying and removingpolitical appointees and career officials deemed insufficiently loyal to the Trump administration.[15][16][17][18][19] On October 21, 2020, two weeks before the 2020 elections, President Trump signed an executive order creating a newSchedule F category within theexcepted service for employees “in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making and policy-advocating positions”. He also instructed agencies to identify and transfercompetitive service employees that meet that description into the new job classification, an initiative that could strip hundreds of thousands of federal workers of their civil service protections and effectively make them at-will employees. Reviews by agencies are due at the PPO by January 19, 2021, a day before the end of the Trump presidency.[20]
^"Board of Directors".Clinton Foundation.Archived from the original on May 4, 2019. RetrievedJuly 30, 2018.In 1993, Bruce was also director of the Office of Presidential Personnel where he supervised the selection and approval of political appointees in the Cabinet departments and to Presidential boards and commissions.
^Epstein, Jennifer (June 25, 2013)."Personnel chief Nancy Hogan to leave the White House".Politico.Archived from the original on July 30, 2018. RetrievedJuly 30, 2018.Hogan briefly served as chief of staff for White House personnel in early 2009, before taking the lead in the office in July 2009.
