Why do several Trump administration officials have multiple jobs?

But Rubio isn’t the only multijob man in Trump’s inner circle.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins was previously the temporary head of both the Office of Government Ethics and the Office of Special Counsel.

Project 2025 architect Russell Vought is both the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

FBI Director Kash Patel was also serving as the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives until April, when Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll relieved Patel, picking up his own secondary gig in the process.

Most recently, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was appointed the acting librarian of Congress in mid-May.

In a statement to the Globe, a senior State Department official said, “Secretary Rubio is honored to be part of President Trump’s Administration and to implement the President’s America First agenda in any way he can.”

An Army spokesperson said Driscoll is being “incredibly deliberate to make sure these two things are being kept separate,” adding that the only overlap occurs when Driscoll’s respective security teams plan safety logistics. “Optics matter. Perceptions matter. We take it very seriously.”

The Department of Justice, National Archives, Office of Management and Budget, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives did not return requests for comment.

All this job juggling has some experts concerned. Given the time-consuming nature of high level government roles, they warn that attempting to run more than one agency is not only irresponsible, but practically impossible.

“It’s a little bit like asking an NBA center to play point guard. . . . It’s possible to find someone with both skills, but very unlikely,” said Max Stier, chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit focused on federal government management issues. “These jobs are crazy hard and even if they were good at both, they can’t do both at the same time.”

Still, the Trump administration’s deployment of personnel is legal under a law called the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998. It allows the president exclusive power to fill government vacancies on a temporary basis for 210 days after the onset of the vacancy, or up to 300 days if the vacancy occurs during the president’s first 60 days in office.

Past this point, the president must submit a nomination to the Senate to permanently fill the position. If that nominee isn’t confirmed, the president can either reinstall the temporary appointee (as long as that person isn’t the rejected nominee) or choose someone new for an additional 210 days. That process can repeat, but after two failed attempts, temporary appointments are no longer permitted and the post must remain entirely vacant until the Senate confirms a nominee.

According to Anne Joseph O’Connell, a Stanford law professor who specializes in administrative law and the federal bureaucracy, vacancy laws are necessary to keep the government functioning while permanent replacements are being identified and installed. But O’Connell believes what the administration is doing is less about practicality and more about control.

“Why you pick Rubio or why you pick Vought to carry on a second or third job is a fealty,” she said. “You think that these people will do the bidding of the White House.”

Not everyone is ringing the alarm bells.

The Trump administration, for its part, is defending the legitimacy of the president’s appointments.

“President Trump has assembled a team of highly qualified and experienced America First patriots who are delivering historic results for the administration,” said White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields in a statement to the Globe that did not explain why the administration has yet to fill the posts permanently or when it would.

Some Republicans in the Senate are also confident in the abilities of the multijob men.

Louisiana Senator John Kennedy quipped that “you could probably add three or four more [jobs] to Rubio’s portfolio and he could do it.”

Thom Tillis of North Carolina doesn’t “mind dual-hatting if it’s helping supplement the leader,” he said, “but there should be clarity. I think early in DOGE, there was a lack of clarity about who was running the agencies, and that caused problems for some of the newly confirmed Cabinet members. . . . One person has to be responsible for an agency, otherwise nobody is.”

The workload associated with the roles has Stier questioning whether the acting chiefs are leading sections of the government in name only, effectively leaving an underling in charge.

“It’s the substitute teacher effect, which is that they don’t have complete authority,” Stier said. “Decision-making is slowed down, the tough decisions aren’t made, and, frequently, you’re going to see much poorer performance from those agencies.”

All of that, he said, amounts to “a mismanagement of our government.” Senate Democrats said they largely agreed with that sentiment.

“There’s no way they can do these jobs adequately in providing leadership,” said Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. “The turmoil, chaos, and confusion are bound to affect the rank and file in these agencies, and the entire [agency’s] performance.”

For Elizabeth Warren, who was instrumental in creating the consumer bureau, turning the agency over to Vought is an affront.

“Managing an 1,100-person agency that is overseeing a multitrillion-dollar consumer credit industry is a real full-time job if you care about making sure that people don’t get cheated,” she said. “Obviously, that’s not the Trump administration’s interest.”

Vought has already made moves to dampen the bureau’s power, ordering hundreds of employees to stop their work shortly after taking the reins of the agency in February. But turmoil is nothing new for the bureau.

During the first Trump administration, Mick Mulvaney, like Vought, temporarily served as head of the agency while simultaneously leading the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney, a vocal critic of the consumer bureau when he was serving in Congress, used multiple tactics to weaken the agency while in charge.

“The last time around Trump and his allies did everything they could to break the CFPB, and it didn’t work. In fact, it came back stronger than ever,” Warren said. “This time, they’re using new tools to try to break it, but I’m not giving up.”

If the law is followed, the Senate will eventually vote on permanent nominees to the positions currently filled by people with other jobs. The question is, how soon will the votes happen?

Tillis, for his part, emphasized the importance of Senate confirmation “particularly when you’re talking about any agencies that involve law enforcement and federal, state, and local cooperation.”

Kennedy, meanwhile, said the Senate’s role is “obviously important” to the confirmation process, but blamed his Democratic colleagues for causing delays with filibusters.

Even so, O’Connell said, the current Trump administration has been faster about getting Cabinet secretaries confirmed compared to the first Trump term because “the White House has decided that loyalty matters most” and “they have a Senate who has almost entirely acquiesced.”

Tal Kopan of the Globe staff contributed reporting to this story.

Julian E.J. Sorapuru can be reached at julian.sorapuru@globe.com. Follow him on X @JulianSorapuru.