Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

1. White House Office · Minor

Have PPO conduct political background checks on potential appointees

Not started

32 1. White House Office

“Vetting potential political personnel by conducting political background checks and reviewing any clearance and fitness assessments by departments and agencies.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    No public record of political background checks by the Office of Presidential Personnel. The office itself is fully staffed — the 2026 personnel report shows a Director at Assistant to the President rank, a deputy director and six special assistants for Presidential Personnel — but nothing describing its vetting practice appears on any allowlisted source. The two adjacent presidential documents point the other way or elsewhere: the January 2025 clearance memorandum grants interim Top Secret clearances to EOP personnel for up to six months rather than adding scrutiny, and the March 2025 suitability and fitness memorandum and OPM's rules under it govern career employees, not appointees.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Researched 2026-08-27, with Chapter 1’s other White House asks.

  • The Office of Presidential Personnel is fully staffed (2026 report: Director at Assistant to the President rank, a deputy director and six special assistants for Presidential Personnel), so the office exists to do this. What is missing is any public record of the vetting practice the Quote describes.
  • Two nearby presidential documents were read and neither is this ask: the Memorandum of 2025-01-20 “To Resolve the Backlog of Security Clearances for Executive Office of the President Personnel” grants interim TS/SCI clearances to EOP staff for up to six months, which reduces pre-appointment vetting rather than adding a political check; and the Memorandum of 2025-03-20 “Strengthening the Suitability and Fitness of the Federal Workforce”, with OPM’s suitability and fitness rules that followed it, governs career civil servants, not political appointees.
  • Negative search: whitehouse.gov presidential actions and the Federal Register for “presidential personnel”, “vetting”, “background check” since 2025-01-20 — nothing on PPO’s own vetting.
Action
create
Object
political vetting of appointees by the Office of Presidential Personnel
ID
14