Despite chief of staff John Kelly’s vow to fill the depleted White House ranks by the end of the month, Donald Trump’s administration remains notably threadbare. Nervous aides are eyeing the exits, worried that the president’s extremism will leave a permanent stain on their résumés. Worse, a campaign that struggled to recruit top talent is finding it even more difficult to line up suitable replacements. “Kelly is eating bullets every day by himself and doesn't have a lot of help,” a source familiar with the hiring situation told CNN. “He needs reinforcements.”

The brain drain has resulted in a rash of interim directors, not to mention, as the Washington Post reported on Saturday, a 24-year-old recent college graduate assuming a handful of the duties of the deputy chief of staff for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is spearheading the response to the national opioid crisis. Prior to this role, Taylor Weyneth’s only professional experience has been his work on the Trump campaign. (For comparison, the last two deputy chiefs of staff were a lawyer and a senior government official.) Before that, his résumé—or, at least, the three completely different résumés he submitted when applying for his current position—indicates that he either did or did not receive an M.A. from Fordham in political science; that he volunteered for either more than 150 or more than 275 hours at a monastery in Queens; and that when he was in high school, he worked at his father’s health-product company until 2011—or 2013. (Weyneth did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.)

But even more Trumpian than Weyneth’s patchy background is the contrast between his level of experience and the gravity of the situation he’s supposed to help address. The O.N.D.C.P. is the only centralized office that can coordinate state and federal agencies on drug policies, and for years has been the heart of any unified attempt to tackle drug trafficking and addiction response. The national opioid crisis, the worst in generations, “requires an all-hands-on-deck approach,” said the O.N.D.C.P.’s former deputy chief of staff Regina LaBelle. (Prior to holding Weyneth’s current position, LaBelle was legal counsel to the Mayor of Seattle and taught in the government department of Seattle University.)

Wyneth’s rise coincides with the departure of at least seven appointees from the office, according to the Post, and may shed some light on why, three months after Trump declared the crisis a national emergency, his administration has still “not formally proposed any new resources or spending, typically the starting point for any emergency response,” according to Politico. It’s unclear whether there have been any efforts to replenish the Public Health Emergency Fund, which currently has just $57,000 in its coffers, or who is in charge of coordinating the response, beyond Chris Christie’s shiny television ads. “[Trump’s] thoughts and prayers have helped,” West Virginia’s public health commissioner Rahul Gupta told Politico. “But additional funding and resources would be more helpful.”