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

17. Department of Justice · Minor

Merge the Offices of Legislative Affairs and Public Affairs into one office

Not started

570 17. Department of Justice

“Additionally, given the interplay of function between the Office of Legislative Affairs (OLA) and the Office of Public Affairs, as well as the fact that the Assistant Attorney General for the OLA is a Senate-confirmed position, the two offices should be folded into one for more efficiency and proper coordination. Under an Office of Public and Legislative Affairs, the Assistant Attorney General’s portfolio would encompass both, with one Director/Deputy for Public Affairs and one Director/Deputy for Legislative Affairs.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The Office of Legislative Affairs and the Office of Public Affairs remain separate offices with separate heads; no Office of Public and Legislative Affairs exists. Searched the Federal Register Corpus for every Justice Department rule, proposed rule and notice in the window, the whitehouse.gov presidential-actions Corpus, the congress.gov bills and nominations Corpus, and all 2,087 headquarters press releases fetched from the department's own press API for the window. Merging them would require an amendment to 28 CFR part 0, which was amended three times in the window for other components and never for these two.

Research log

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

Research notes

The Executive Secretariat rule is attached to show the instrument in use elsewhere. One negative search covered the whole cluster of management and organization asks, #1579, #1580, #1584, #1585 and #1587.

Action
create
Object
Office of Public and Legislative Affairs
ID
1585