Increase the number of political appointees at the State Department

Not started

Printed page 173 6. Department of State

“Given the department’s size, the next Administration should also increase the number of political appointees to manage it.”

What has happened

May 1, 2026 Not started
The Department's own budget documents do not count political appointees, and neither does anything else on the record. The FY 2027 Congressional Budget Justification Appendix 1 — the position table the earlier pass named as what would settle this, opened in full on 2026-09-06 — reports U.S. Direct Hire positions in exactly two categories, Civil Service and Foreign Service (17,236 on board in the FY 2027 Request: 6,134 CS and 11,102 FS), with no political or non-career line anywhere in its 21,000 lines. The only non-career appointments it discusses are Limited Non-Career Appointments, which are Foreign Service limited appointments and not political appointees, and the Request moves against them: $646,000 to convert three LNA positions to permanent Civil Service billets. Moved nearby, not toward the ask. The Department's June 2026 report to Congress on the FY 2025 personnel reduction describes the same reorganization in narrative and gives no appointee figure either. Cluster A negative search in the chapter log: no Federal Register document, presidential action, or State press release announces an increase; the 2024 Plum Book is the last published position inventory and no in-window edition exists. Government-wide reporting that non-confirmed political appointees are at a 40-year high is not broken out by agency and so does not evidence this State-specific ask; it is recorded as a lead below.
- Department of State, FY 2027 Congressional Budget Justification Appendix 1 (Diplomatic Engagement), "U.S. Direct Hire Positions: On Board Employment by Fund Sources" — Civil Service and Foreign Service only, no political appointee line (PDF revised 2026-05-01; the document carries no cover date of its own, so it is dated at its revision date and is approximate)
  Primary Executive branch May 1, 2026
- Department of State report to Congress, The Reduction of Department of State Personnel During Fiscal Year 2025 — a Civil Service and Foreign Service reduction, with no count of political appointees
  Primary Executive branch Jun 2, 2026

Research log

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

Research notes

Leads (not Evidence — government-wide figures, not the State Department):
- Government Executive, “As the number of political appointees surge and career SES ranks shrink, one nonprofit warns of ‘institutional consequences’”, 2026-03-30, https://www.govexec.com/management/2026/03/number-political-appointees-surge-and-career-ses-ranks-shrink-one-nonprofit-warns-institutional-consequences/412496/ — read; career SES fell from 8,127 to 5,837 by January 2026, non-career SES at 11.7% of the SES.
- Federal News Network, “Political appointments surging, career SES workforce shrinking under Trump 2.0”, 2026-04-02, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2026/04/political-appointments-surging-career-ses-workforce-shrinking-under-trump-2-0/ — read; 1,835 Schedule C appointees government-wide at the end of 2025. Neither names the State Department. If a State-specific count appears (an OPM release, or a Plum Book), this item can move.
The Congressional Budget Justification has now been tried rather than left untried (2026-09-06). The CBJ is not in any of state.gov’s 85 sitemaps — it sits in the site’s uploads folder, which WordPress does not index — and state.gov/congressional-budget-justification/ does not exist. The index page is https://www.state.gov/plans-performance-budget; from it, “FY-2027-CBJ-A-1-5.1-508-compliant-for-posting-online.pdf” is the Diplomatic Engagement position appendix and was read in full. The FY 2027 main CBJ volume (“FY2027-Department-of-State-Congressional-Budget-Justification-Final-4.3.2026.pdf”, April 2026) refused every attempt to open it, twice, while Appendix 1 on the same site and in the same folder opens — the site refuses that one file, not everything. Appendix 1 is the volume that carries the position tables, so the missing volume does not weaken the finding.
OPM’s Senior Executive Service reference materials and its data index were also opened (opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/senior-executive-service/reference-materials/ and opm.gov/data/); neither publishes an agency-level career/non-career breakout as a document.

Action: expand
Object: Political appointee positions at the State Department
ID: 462