Political appointments have expanded into uncharted territory in the federal government.
The second Trump administration has inserted political staff into management offices responsible for budgets, technology and procurement, functions that have historically been performed by career employees. And institutions whose effectiveness depends on their political independence—Inspector General offices, independent boards and commissions, and the IRS—now have non-Senate-confirmed political appointments with no modern precedent.
These trends reveal that the politicization of federal leadership is not simply intensifying—it is spreading. In each case, political appointees are displacing or crowding out career officials whose expertise, continuity and institutional knowledge have been the foundation of effective agency operations and mission delivery.
The question is not only how many political appointees there are—it is where they are, what functions they perform and whether those functions should be executed by political appointees at all.
A new political footprint
Since at least 2009, a broad set of federal agencies operated without any non-Senate-confirmed political appointees—not by accident, but because their core functions depend on expertise and independence, qualities that additional political staffing would undermine rather than enhance.
That is no longer the case. Sixteen agencies and subagencies that had zero non-Senate-confirmed appointments between 2009 and 2024 had at least one as of March 2026.
The list spans the breadth of the federal government: the IRS, the National Archives, the U.S. Marine Corps, the National Cemetery Administration and multiple offices within the Department of Veterans Affairs, among other agencies.
While the raw numbers of appointees are small, this is a significant precedent.
The politicization of management functions
Political appointments have surged into the administrative machinery of government. Budget offices, IT offices, acquisitions and operations functions now hold unprecedented numbers of non-Senate-confirmed appointments.
Managing federal budgets, technology infrastructure and procurement requires expertise and continuity that political appointees are unlikely to provide for structural reasons: Unlike career officials, non-Senate-confirmed appointments are not designed around competitive merit-based processes intended to ensure long-term managerial expertise and continuity.
And unlike the career officials they displace, these political appointees are unlikely to serve long enough to witness the consequences of the budget decisions they make, the technology investments they oversee or the procurement contracts they negotiate.
Political appointments in management functions also raise concerns about undue influence over decisions that should be made on the merits—including the awarding of contracts and the allocation of federal resources in ways that serve political rather than programmatic ends.
Politicization where independence is the point
The most consequential new political appointments are those in agencies and offices whose effectiveness squarely depends on being insulated from political direction.
Inspectors general
The Offices of the Inspector General at the departments of Labor and Housing and Urban Development now have two non-Senate-confirmed political appointees. Since at least 2009, no other inspector general office had any non-Senate-confirmed appointees. This shift is particularly striking given the administration’s broader efforts to remove inspectors general and undermine the offices they work in.
Inspectors general exist to provide independent oversight of executive branch agencies. Their credibility depends on operating free from the direction of the very officials they oversee. A political appointee within an IG office, outside of the Senate-confirmed inspector general, does not merely break a historical norm—it introduces a structural conflict of interest into an institution whose effectiveness depends on independence.
Independent boards and commissions
The Federal Labor Relations Authority and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission now have non-Senate-confirmed appointees for the first time, at three and two, respectively.
Congress designed these bodies to operate independently from presidential direction, adjudicating federal labor disputes and regulating nuclear safety based on law and technical expertise. The administration has already moved to consolidate control over these bodies by stacking them with partisan loyalists.
Non-senate-confirmed political appointments below the Senate-confirmed level raise questions that go beyond norms—they undermine the independence Congress designed these institutions to have.
The Internal Revenue Service
The IRS now has non-Senate-confirmed political appointees for the first time.
Tax administration occupies a unique place in American government. Its legitimacy depends not only on impartial enforcement, but on the public’s confidence that enforcement decisions are free from political influence. Political direction over an agency that determines who gets audited and how tax law is applied is not simply a management question—it is a question about the integrity of tax enforcement itself.
Reports from earlier this year of political appointees improperly handling and sharing people’s private data also highlight the risks of inserting more political appointees into functions that have access to sensitive private information.
Science, national security and law enforcement agencies
As documented in the first and second installments of this series, various science, law enforcement and national security agencies have also seen non-Senate-confirmed appointees grow to unprecedented levels. Examples include the National Institutes of Health, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Marine Corps.
The consequences are already visible: grant proposals vetted for ideologically disfavored terms, medical research spending falling behind prior years and direct political intervention in scientific publications.
In addition, the premise that investigative, enforcement and military functions should operate free from political staffing below the Senate-confirmed level has eroded.
Questions the data demands
Across the agencies mentioned in this post, the available data leaves a critical question unanswered: What roles are these non-Senate-confirmed appointees actually performing?
Under current law, the Office of Personnel Management is only required to update position-level appointment data once per year through its PLUM reporting. The most recent data reflects positions as of last June.
Whatever has changed since then—in agencies receiving their first political appointments, in management offices, in inspector general offices and independent commissions—is not visible to the public or to Congress.
This lack of transparency is not unique to this administration. But it is more consequential when political appointments are reaching new corners of the federal government.
This administration has expanded political appointments into agencies and offices where they have not existed in at least 15 years. As a result, appointees are performing functions for which no clear policy-directing rationale applies and where the consequences of politicization may be slow to emerge and difficult to trace.
This trend raises questions that aggregate numbers alone cannot answer: questions about what non-Senate-confirmed political appointments are for, what kinds of roles and functions they should perform, and where the line should be between the president’s legitimate interest in directing agency policy and the institutional independence that effective government requires.
Moreover, how does inserting into these functions political appointees who are subject to less standardized, transparent selection and performance review processes affect the effectiveness and accountability of government?
Finally, how might expanding political appointments into functions Americans expect to be impartial and administrative—including those with access to personal data and sensitive government systems—affect already low levels of public trust in our federal institutions?
These are questions worth answering before the politicization of federal leadership expands further.
This piece is the third in a series examining agency-level trends in federal leadership, building on our recent report on the politicization of federal leadership government-wide.
Author: Chris Piper