Editing President of the United States (section)

=== Administrative powers ===

Presidents make [[Political appointments in the United States|political appointments]]. An incoming president may make up to 4,000 upon taking office, 1,200 of which must be [[Advice and consent#United States|confirmed by the U.S. Senate]]. [[Ambassador]]s, members of the [[Cabinet of the United States|Cabinet]], and various [[Officer of the United States|officers]], are among the positions filled by presidential appointment with Senate confirmation.<ref>{{cite web| title=Presidentially Appointed Positions| date=April 14, 2021| url=https://presidentialtransition.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2020/12/Presidentially-Appointed-Positions.pdf| publisher=[[Partnership for Public Service]]| location=Washington, D.C.| access-date=March 7, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite news| title=Biden Political Appointee Tracker| url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2020/biden-appointee-tracker/| newspaper=The Washington Post| access-date=March 7, 2023}}</ref>

The power of a president to fire executive officials has long been a contentious political issue. Generally, a president may remove executive officials at will.<ref>See ''Shurtleff v. United States'', {{ussc|189|311|1903}}; ''[[Myers v. United States]]'', {{ussc|272|52|1926}}.</ref> However, Congress can curtail and constrain a president's authority to fire commissioners of independent regulatory agencies and certain inferior executive officers by [[statute]].<ref>See ''[[Humphrey's Executor v. United States]]'', {{ussc|295|602|1935}} and ''[[Morrison v. Olson]]'', {{ussc|487|654|1988}}, respectively.</ref>

To manage the growing federal bureaucracy, presidents have gradually surrounded themselves with many layers of staff, who were eventually organized into the [[Executive Office of the President of the United States]]. Within the Executive Office, the president's innermost layer of aides, and their assistants, are located in the [[White House Office]].

The president also possesses the power to manage operations of the federal government by issuing various [[Presidential directive|types of directives]], such as [[Presidential proclamation (United States)|presidential proclamation]] and [[executive order]]s. When the president is lawfully exercising one of the constitutionally conferred presidential responsibilities, the scope of this power is broad.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.heritage.org/the-constitution/report/executive-summary-the-use-and-abuse-executive-orders-and-other-presidential |title=Executive Summary: The Use and Abuse of Executive Orders and Other Presidential Directives |last=Gaziano |first=Todd |date=February 21, 2001 |publisher=The Heritage Foundation |location=Washington, D.C. |access-date=January 23, 2018}}</ref> Even so, these directives are subject to [[Judicial review in the United States|judicial review]] by U.S. federal courts, which can find them to be unconstitutional. Congress can overturn an executive order through legislation.