Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

6. Department of State · Minor

Install State Department appointees in roles pending Senate confirmation

Done

173 6. Department of State

“Notwithstanding the challenges and slowness of the modern U.S. Senate confirmation process, the next President can exert leverage on the Senate if he or she is willing to place State Department appointees directly into those roles, pending confirmation.”

What has happened

  1. Done

    The pending-confirmation placement ran its course: Namdar was confirmed by the Senate on 2025-12-18 and took office as Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs on 2025-12-22, having led a bureau in the interim.

  2. Done

    The Department used the “Senior Bureau Official” device to put appointees in charge of bureaus whose statutory head is Senate-confirmed, before confirmation. Mora Namdar served as Senior Bureau Official for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs from 2025-05-19 to 2025-12-01 — running the bureau normally led by a Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary — and was then nominated and confirmed for a different Senate-confirmed post, Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs, on 2025-12-18 (sworn 2025-12-22). Spencer Chretien was Senior Bureau Official for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration over 2025-2026. Both biographies are the Department's own record and are dated. This is the practice the Quote asks for; nothing announces it as a policy, so it is evidenced by the placements themselves.

Research log

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

Research notes

  • Instrument: there is no published directive announcing this practice, so it is evidenced by the Department’s own dated biographies of the officials placed. state.gov can be read, and its sitemaps list every biography page.
  • Negative search: no Federal Register document, whitehouse.gov presidential action or State press release in the window announces a policy of installing appointees pending confirmation.
  • Related: #461 (non-confirmed senior posts), #463 (Day-One replacement of leadership).
  • Why the same biography is done here and only partial on #463 (settled on review, 2026-09-01): the Namdar placement reads in opposite directions for the two Quotes. This ask is that the President be willing to put appointees into Senate-confirmed roles ahead of confirmation, and the placement is that act, done twice and once carried through to confirmation. #463 asks that no one in a leadership position on the morning of 20 January hold it at the end of the day, and the same placement is evidence against it: the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs had no politically appointed head until May 2025.
Action
appoint
Object
State Department appointees awaiting Senate confirmation
ID
460