Fill all top political appointee positions from the outset

Partially done

Printed page 82 3. Central Personnel Agencies

“Any new Administration would be wise to learn that it will need a full cadre of sound political appointees from the beginning if it expects to direct this enormous federal bureaucracy.”

What has happened

Aug 7, 2026 Partially done
A large cadre, assembled slowly. The Senate had confirmed 603 civilian nominees by 2026-08-07, and nominations were transmitted continuously from January 2025 onward, so the administration plainly set out to staff the government with its own people. But "from the beginning" is the part of the Quote that did not hold: 113 nominations lapsed at the end of the first session and had to be resubmitted, 69 were withdrawn, and the central posts of this very chapter went long unfilled — the OPM Director was not confirmed until 2025-07-09, the FLRA General Counsel until 2026-08-07, and the Federal Service Impasses Panel had no members at all until 2026-07-09.
- U.S. Senate Roll Call Vote 225, 119th Congress — confirmation of Charlton Allen as General Counsel of the Federal Labor Relations Authority
  Primary Congress Aug 7, 2026
- Nominations Sent to the Senate
  Primary Executive branch Aug 7, 2026

Research log

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

Research notes

Researched 2026-08-27.

Same evidence as #12 (Chapter 1), which states the ask in the Mandate’s own numbers; this Quote is the general form of it.

From Senate nominations in congress.gov (119th Congress, retrieved 2026-08-28): 603 civilian nominations confirmed in the window, 416 in 2025 and 187 in 2026, out of 2,077 nomination records; 1,034 confirmations by voice vote and 588 by roll call. 113 nominations were returned to the President under Senate Rule XXXI at the end of the first session and 69 were withdrawn. The individual congress.gov nomination pages could not be read, so they are leads, not Evidence.

Two cases in this chapter show what “from the beginning” did not mean in practice: the FLRA General Counsel post was vacant for nineteen months (#129), and the Federal Service Impasses Panel had no members for eighteen (#130). The OPM Director himself — the official this chapter is about — was not confirmed until 2025-07-09; OPM was run by an acting director for the first six months, including when it issued the Merit Hiring Plan.

Action: appoint
Object: top political appointee positions in the executive branch
ID: 131