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

3. Central Personnel Agencies · Minor

Reactivate the Federal Service Impasses Panel

Done

82 3. Central Personnel Agencies

“All were revoked by the Biden Administration and should be reinstated by the next Administration, to include the immediate appointment of the FLRA General Counsel and reactivation of the Impasses Panel.”

What has happened

  1. Done

    The Panel has members again. The President appointed a full slate of eight — Mark Carter as Chair, with seven members — on 2026-07-09, and all eight were sworn in between 21 and 27 July; the FLRA Chairman announced that the Panel "now has a full complement of members and can resume its important work." That is the reactivation the Quote asks for. Two facts belong beside it: the appointments came eighteen months into the term, not immediately, and the Panel's own decision docket shows nothing issued since 2025-01-15, so a reconstituted Panel has not yet resolved an impasse — unsurprising when the labor-relations exclusion orders have removed most of the workforce from the bargaining that produces them.

Research log

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

Research notes

Researched 2026-08-27.

The Federal Service Impasses Panel imposes contract terms when bargaining and mediation fail; its members are presidential appointees who serve without Senate confirmation, so the only thing needed to reactivate it is an appointment.

  • FLRA press release, 2026-07-28, read in full: “on July 9, 2026 President Donald J. Trump appointed a full slate of eight Members to the Federal Service Impasses Panel” — Mark Carter as Chair, with Thomas Beck, Molly Conway, Michael Greason, David Mansdoerfer, Frank Ricci, Joseph Santoro and Vincent Vernuccio. “All eight members were sworn into office between July 21 and July 27.” FLRA Chairman Colleen Kiko: “I am pleased that the Panel now has a full complement of members and can resume its important work.”
  • The FLRA’s Panel biographies page (fetched 2026-08-27) carries the members’ biographies, confirming the current membership.
  • The FLRA’s Panel decisions page (fetched 2026-08-27): 1,071 decisions on file, and the most recent is 2024 FSIP 079, issued 2025-01-15. The Panel has issued no decision since five days before the inauguration.

So the Panel was reconstituted eighteen months in and has not yet decided a case. Note also that EO 14251 and EO 14343 remove roughly two-thirds of the workforce from the bargaining that generates impasses in the first place.

Action
reinstate
Object
Federal Service Impasses Panel
ID
130