Project 2025's Office of Presidential Personnel: Wiring the Executive Branch for Loyalty, Not Merit
Pages 64–66 of Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership lay out a blueprint for the Office of Presidential Personnel (PPO) that explicitly centers political loyalty over statutory merit principles. The text calls on PPO to staff 'approximately 3,000 political jobs' with 'dedicated conservatives,' to develop 'plans (for example, Schedule F)' as a programmatic workforce tool, to serve as a 'personnel link between conservative organizations and the executive branch,' and to treat political billets as a credentialing pipeline for 'the conservative movement.' Each of these functions directly conflicts with the merit-system protections codified in the Pendleton Act (1883) and the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, and collectively they operationalize what scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt identify in 'How Democracies Die' as the institutional loyalty-substitution move common to democratic backsliding.
The text does not describe better management of a large, complex bureaucracy. It describes the systematic conversion of a merit-based civil service into a partisan workforce, using four interlocking mechanisms that each weaken a named statutory or constitutional safeguard:
1. SCHEDULE F AS A PROGRAMMATIC WORKFORCE TOOL. PPO is explicitly directed to 'identify programmatic political workforce needs early and develop plans (for example, Schedule F).' Schedule F — the executive order first issued in 2020 and revoked by President Biden in 2021 — would reclassify tens of thousands of career positions as at-will political appointments, stripping employees of the removal protections established by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C. § 2301, Merit System Principles) and the Veterans' Preference Act. The Brennan Center for Justice has documented that Schedule F would reach career scientists, enforcement staff, and agency lawyers — precisely the experts whose independence protects regulatory and law-enforcement decisions from political capture. Who loses: career employees in policy-sensitive roles, whistleblowers who currently enjoy statutory job-security protections, and the public that depends on non-partisan regulatory enforcement.
2. LOYALTY SCREENING AS FORMAL VETTING. PPO is tasked with 'conducting political background checks' alongside security clearance reviews. Mixing political-loyalty screening with fitness assessments violates the prohibition on partisan discrimination in federal employment under the Civil Service Reform Act (5 U.S.C. § 2302, Prohibited Personnel Practices), which bars adverse action based on political affiliation for competitive-service positions. The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly found that merit-system violations undermine agency performance and public trust. Who loses: qualified applicants and current employees who do not pass an ideological test, and agencies that lose subject-matter expertise.
3. SERVING AS A PIPELINE FOR 'THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT.' The text explicitly describes entry-level political appointments as the 'farm team for the conservative movement' and instructs PPO to serve as 'a personnel link between conservative organizations and the executive branch.' This is the institutional inversion Protect Democracy's Authoritarian Playbook identifies: replacing independent civil servants with 'lackeys and compliant allies.' Federalist No. 70 (Hamilton) argues that energy in the executive requires accountability; an executive staffed by movement operatives is accountable to the movement, not to the public or to Congress. Who loses: the public, which loses the neutral expertise that Partnership for Public Service documents as essential to implementing large-scale legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the CHIPS and Science Act.
4. TREATING THE FEDERAL VACANCIES REFORM ACT AS A CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION TO BE EXPLOITED. The text notes that 'whatever one's view of the constitutionality of various civil service rules (for example, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998) might be, it is necessary to ensure robust cadres of political staff just below senior levels in the event of unexpected vacancies.' The Federal Vacancies Reform Act (5 U.S.C. §§ 3345–3349d) is Congress's primary mechanism for limiting the President's ability to install unconfirmed acting officers and thereby bypass Senate confirmation — the Article II, Section 2 'Advice and Consent' requirement. Seeding sub-cabinet layers with loyalists is precisely the workaround the Act was designed to prevent. Who loses: the Senate's constitutional confirmation power, and the public's ability to hold accountable officials who were never confirmed.
DEMOCRATICALLY ACCOUNTABLE ALTERNATIVES. The right response to a bloated or poorly managed federal workforce is not ideological purging; it is: — Codifying Schedule F prohibitions in statute (as proposed in the Saving the Civil Service Act) so that no future executive order can reclassify career positions; — Amending the Civil Service Reform Act to strengthen the prohibition on political-affiliation screening and give the Merit Systems Protection Board clearer authority to void tainted appointments; — Reinforcing Senate confirmation norms and closing Federal Vacancies Reform Act loopholes through legislation, as recommended by Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith in 'After Trump'; — Requiring OPM to publish annual transparency reports on Schedule C and other political appointment counts, so Congress can exercise its Article I oversight function; — Investing in the Partnership for Public Service's workforce-development model, which treats career expertise as an asset rather than an obstacle.
The core constitutional point: the President is not the owner of the federal workforce; Congress created and funds the civil service under Article I. A PPO that treats 'personnel is policy' as license to subordinate two million career employees to ideological loyalty tests is not merely bad management — it is an assault on the statutory and constitutional architecture that separates professional public administration from authoritarian patronage.
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 2: Executive Office of the President (pp 64-66)"— 31 — White House Office for Policy). Regardless of the person to whom the OLA reports, however, the office exercises a certain autonomy on behalf of the President and the Chief of Staff in directly influencing congressional leaders of both major political parties. The OLA often must function as the mediator among the parties and find common ground to facilitate the successful enactment of the President’s agenda. As is the case with many White House offices (but especially the Office of Com- munications), the OLA must ensure that congressional leaders receive one unified message. If other actors within the White House maintain their own relationships with congressional leaders and staffers, it may appear that the President’s agenda is fractured and lacks consensus. This dynamic has caused real problems for many Presidents in the past. Internally, OLA staffers need to be involved in policy discussions, budget reviews, and other important meetings. They must also provide advice to policy staffers regarding whether certain ideas are politically feasible. Externally, OLA staffers have to communicate continuously with congressional offices of both parties in both the Hous…"