According to three PPO officials, granted anonymity by the Washington Examiner to discuss internal matters, Trump had extended 2,000 offers to possible hires as of Tuesday, with the administration beginning or completing onboarding for 1,600 of them. The remaining 400 are awaiting necessary security clearances and ethics information. 

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Those officials said additional offers have been prepared but cannot be extended until FBI background checks are completed and the Senate continues to work through its bottleneck of submitted nominees, which already sits north of 200 as of Tuesday.

For comparison, on April 21, 2021, then-President Joe Biden touted sending 233 nominations to the Senate and filling nearly 1,500 political appointments after his first 100 days in office. According to the National Academy of Public Administration, presidential administrations average filling just 35% of senior leadership roles by May 1 and just 80% by Congress’s August recess.

“If DOGE is White House tech support, think of us as customer service,” one PPO official suggested, saying the office maintains constant contact with candidates throughout the hiring process. The office has modeled its handling of prospective hires after the “sherpa” system, which pairs Cabinet nominees with party operatives to guide them through their Senate confirmations.

Trump has placed a strong emphasis on the role PPO will play in his second administration. The president said during a 2024 appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience that the “biggest mistake” of his first administration was hiring “bad people or disloyal people.”

Still, critics have raised concerns about qualifying standards the current administration is setting for new personnel, first and foremost, a so-called loyalty test for all candidates.

PPO officials discounted reports that administration hires must “pledge” their loyalties to Trump, but they confirmed “loyalty” is measured thoroughly throughout the candidate vetting process.

Those officials said any donations to or past work for Trump’s 2024 opponents or his political enemies automatically disqualifies candidates from the hiring pool. However, there does appear to be some degree of forgiveness allowed here, as Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin served as campaign communications director for Vivek Ramaswamy before he dropped out of the 2024 Republican primary and endorsed the president.

Furthermore, PPO officials examine published works, public and private social media posts, and, in the case of lawyers, past casework of possible hires before beginning the interview process. Candidates are then interviewed about eight times, and any found to be in a “gray area” are sent to PPO Director Sergio Gor or Deputy Director Trent Morse for their direct approval or disapproval.

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“Somehow, [loyalty] became a scary word,” one senior PPO official assessed.

“It’s no different than your typical hiring process,” that person continued, adding that they are set on hiring the “most qualified” personnel who fit the president’s “mission.”

PPO officials did stress that, as with private companies, personal and criminal history is taken into consideration and that candidates must complete FBI background checks prior to receiving an offer of employment.

The same PPO officials said their office is taking a more “hands-on approach” to staffing compared to Trump’s first term in office. That includes the president himself, who PPO officials say is reviewing two to three finalists handpicked by Gor. As with virtually every administration, there is a high priority on filling any national security-related positions as quickly as possible.

Appointees below the deputy director level must also be agreed upon by both the White House and department or agency leadership before being recommended to Trump, and Gor speaks to alternating halves of the Cabinet each day to maintain channels about new possible hires, according to PPO staff.

Gor spent seven years working for Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) before joining Trumpworld in 2020. During the Biden years, he ran Trump’s Right for America super PAC and co-founded the Winning Team Publishing imprint alongside Donald Trump Jr.

He told the Washington Examiner in a statement, “President Trump was given a mandate by the American people to implement his America First agenda, and we are focused on assembling an administration that is capable and fully committed to delivering on the president’s mandate.”

The Trump administration is also actively pursuing possible hires with and without past government experience. PPO is looking at the “best candidates” regardless of their backgrounds, one PPO official told the Washington Examiner. For many private sector hires, that means taking a pay cut. There are salary caps on all executive branch positions, and White House officials claimed they are hiring staff at the cheapest salaries possible, including some appointees who aren’t receiving compensation for their government work.

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“Obviously, there’s maximums that you can pay appointees, and very often before, we always just paid the maximum that you can,” one senior White House aide explained. “Now, it’s being a lot more tailored to looking at your previous salary history. So, if at your last four jobs, you’re making an average of [$110,000], you’re not going to get the max.”

White House aides maintain that the installation of Trump’s political appointees — including department and agency heads, chiefs of staff, press secretaries, and policy experts — is vitally important to implementing his agenda, especially as the president moves to initiate widespread firings of career federal employees.

The White House Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to all federal agencies last week telling them to prepare two-phased “Agency Reorganization Plans” for the White House by March 13 and April 14, respectively. Those plans should include outlines for “large-scale reductions” of the federal workforce to be implemented no later than September of this year.

Trump’s presidential appointees, meaning everyone PPO recommends the president to hire, will be exempt from those workforce downsizing plans.

“It’s cut and dry. We’ve got to get our people in the door,” a White House aide told the Washington Examiner.

Despite the progress PPO has made toward filling out the executive branch, little is known about the size of its staff.

Under the first Trump administration, PPO had a staff of about 30 people. Leadership Connect, a government tracking tool, lists just six out of 53 career and political positions filled as of Tuesday. However, the Washington Examiner confirmed that some employees working at PPO have yet to be publicly disclosed. 

Since 1995, every White House has been required to publish a complete list of all White House employees, including their salaries, but that list won’t be made public until June or July, when the report is typically published.

In addition to Gor and Morse, four special assistants to the president for personnel are publicly nested within PPO: McKenna Skeeters, Morgan DeWitt, Brand Kroeger, and Saurabh Sharma.

Sharma, in particular, has helped PPO set its historic pace. He founded American Moment in 2021, a group that put together a database of more than 1,500 young Republicans the group prevetted to step into junior or midlevel roles immediately in a second Trump administration.

Senior PPO officials confirmed to the Washington Examiner that they have leaned on American Moment’s database and other similar lists compiled by out-of-government supporters in identifying candidates.

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It does seem unlikely, however, that Trump will fill all 4,000 of the vacancies he faced heading into office.

PPO officials suggested to the Washington Examiner that, like the Department of Government Efficiency, they are also pursuing a mandate from the president to shrink the federal workforce. That means eliminating some positions and merging the responsibilities of others wherever possible.