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A-12 — Appointments, Acting Officials, and Senate Confirmation

Generalized Institutional Concern

Temporary-service, delegation, and informal-authority arrangements can weaken statutory appointment safeguards when timely accountability depends on discretionary congressional opposition. The institutional concern is not ordinary personnel disagreement: it is whether appointment structures permit difficult-to-repair individual or democratic harm before elections, confirmation, oversight, or litigation can provide an effective correction.

Active Issues

Prior Issue Numbers

These numbers were assigned during preliminary review but did not become separate proposals. They are listed only to explain gaps in the sequence.

  • APPT-002, APPT-003, APPT-007, APPT-008 — Merged into APPT-001.
  • APPT-005 — Confirmation-backstop evasion rerouted to APPT-001; independent-agency removal rerouted to REG-001; ordinary at-will removal held outside scope.
  • APPT-006 — Authority manipulation merged into APPT-001; misleading public terminology rerouted to FACT-009 in A-18.

Issue Boundaries

  • APPT-001 owns temporary-service, vacancy, delegation, succession, reporting, and enforcement mechanisms that can substitute for Senate confirmation or defeat an office-specific appointment backstop. It does not treat all acting service, delayed confirmation, or presidential removal as an institutional failure.

  • APPT-004 is limited to a potentially distinct gap involving a private person, adviser, special government employee, representative, or ambiguously designated official who exercises continuing governmental authority without sufficiently clear appointment status, duties, supervision, ethics coverage, records obligations, security review, or public accountability. It does not presume that an outsider, relative, political ally, special envoy, or temporary presidential agent is unqualified or unlawfully serving. HOR-028 and preliminary intake question INTAKE-GAP-004 are incorporated into this source-development lane. Promotion requires a legally supportable distinction among advice, representation, employment, and exercise of continuing significant federal authority.

  • Removal of an independent-agency officer or other officer possessing a constitutionally permissible tenure protection belongs primarily to REG-001. Removal used together with temporary service, delegation, or repeated succession manipulation to defeat confirmation or an appointment backstop belongs to APPT-001. Ordinary removal of an officer serving at the President's pleasure remains a political personnel decision.

  • Misleading public-facing terminology or institutional labels belong primarily to A-18 and FACT-009. Authority reassignment or relabeling belongs to APPT-001 only when it changes legal accountability or functions as confirmation evasion. Executive Order 14347 remains a FACT-009 source-development example. See Executive Order 14347, 90 Fed. Reg. 43893 (Sept. 10, 2025); 10 U.S.C. § 111.

Notes

The July 16, 2026 issue-admission review consolidated the eight provisional candidates into one active statutory proposal and one source-development candidate. The consolidation applies without regard to party: appointment safeguards should operate when either party controls the presidency and Congress, while preserving lawful temporary continuity and recognizing that an opposition Senate may delay or reject nominees.