Staff Communications with a director, two deputies, and a Press Secretary

Partially done

Printed page 29 1. White House Office

“Leadership within the Office of Communications should include a Communications Director (who is a direct report to the Chief of Staff), a Deputy Communications Director, a Deputy Director for Strategic Communications, and a Press Secretary.”

What has happened

Jul 1, 2026 Partially done
Three of the four named posts exist. The Annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel as of 2026-07-01 lists Steven Cheung as Assistant to the President and Director of Communications, Kaelan K. Dorr as Deputy Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy Communications Director and Head of Digital Strategy, and Karoline C. Leavitt as Assistant to the President and Press Secretary. There is no Deputy Director for Strategic Communications, and the function does not sit under another title: the string "strategic communications" appears in neither the 2025 nor the 2026 report, and the three posts whose titles do carry the word "strategic" belong to other offices (Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Implementation and Trip Director; Associate Director for Strategic Initiatives; Director of Strategic Engagement for the National Energy Dominance Council). Dorr's 2026 title has grown a second portfolio since 2025 — Head of Digital Strategy — but digital strategy is a channel, not the strategic-communications deputyship the Quote names, and he remains the office's only deputy director. Partial rather than done because the Quote names a four-post structure and one post is absent, and partial rather than attempted because three are filled, not merely proposed.
- Annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel, as of July 1, 2026
  Primary Executive branch Jul 1, 2026
- Annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel, as of July 1, 2025
  Primary Executive branch Jul 1, 2025

Research log

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

Research notes

Researched 2026-08-27, in one search that covered all of Chapter 1’s White House staffing asks.

The Quote names four posts. Against the 2026 report:

Asked for	In the report
Communications Director	CHEUNG, STEVEN — Assistant to the President and Director of Communications
Deputy Communications Director	DORR, KAELAN K. — Deputy Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy Communications Director and Head of Digital Strategy
Deputy Director for Strategic Communications	absent — no such title in the 2025 or 2026 report
Press Secretary	LEAVITT, KAROLINE C. — Assistant to the President and Press Secretary

The Quote also asks that the Communications Director be “a direct report to the Chief of Staff”. The report lists titles and salaries, not reporting lines, so that half is unsourced either way and is not what the partial rests on.

Reviewed 2026-09-06. The open question was whether the strategic-communications function sits under another title, naming “Principal Deputy Communications Director and Head of Digital Strategy” as the closest candidate. Both reports were re-fetched and read in full (2026: 8 pages, 507 personnel lines; 2025: as of 2025-07-01) and every position title was enumerated. Findings:

A search of the 2026 report for “strategic” returns three titles, none of them a communications post: Christopher J. Ambrosini (Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Implementation and Trip Director), Jaxon L. Croy (Associate Director for Strategic Initiatives) and Ashley A. Hebert (Director of Strategic Engagement for the National Energy Dominance Council). “Strategic communications” returns nothing in either year.
A search of the 2026 report for “communicat” returns fourteen posts. Besides Cheung, Dorr and Leavitt they are subject-matter or junior posts — Assistant Communications Director, Communications Advisor, Congressional Communications Director, Cabinet Communications Director, Policy Communications Director, National Security Communications Advisor, Director of Communications for the First Lady, two Communications Coordinators, a Congressional Communications Coordinator and a Legal Communications Manager. None is a second deputy directorship.
The one real change since 2025 is Dorr’s title, which was “Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Communications Director” in the 2025 report and adds “Principal” and “and Head of Digital Strategy” in the 2026 one. That is the same single deputyship with a broader remit, not the second deputy the Quote asks for.

The partial therefore stands on a complete read of the instrument rather than on a keyword miss.

Action: appoint
Object: Office of Communications leadership team
ID: 10