Talk:Political appointments of the first Trump administration/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Formatting

Can someone fix the table of cabinet members so you can add people?? Also the table underneath cabinet members says "cabinet-level officials" and that's not true. I would either label this as executive office of the president/non-cabinet officials, or inner circle.Dod editor (talk) 17:16, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

To edit the cabinet-members, click Template:Cabinet of Donald Trump, then click edit. (And if the page is protected at the time, you may need to click submit-edit-request rather than simply making your change.) As to your other question, there are official members of the Cabinet, and there are quasi-official Cabinet-level roles, and then there are Other Important People, see explanation at Cabinet of Donald Trump#Possible_candidates_for_Cabinet-level_officials. Basically, if you have one of the fancy brass-nameplated-chairs in this room, then you are either one of the fifteen statutorily-enacted Cabinet officials, or you are one of the POTUS-recognized Cabinet-level officials. The inner circle is wider, and includes people like Steve Bannon who is the "co-equal" of Reince Priebus per Trump transition team press releases, but who unlike Priebus won't be getting one of the brass-nameplated-chairs ("Cabinet-level"). 47.222.203.135 (talk) 10:35, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Pending Edits

Wilbur Ross was named Commerce Secretary. Photo link to the right (when table is fixed) Wilbur Ross. Dod editor (talk) 17:16, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

 Done 47.222.203.135 (talk) 10:35, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Pence is not an "appointment"

Unlike all the other figures on this list, Pence is not a (predicted) "appointment" of Trump. The Vice-President is elected, not appointed. Once elected to the Vice-Presidency, he cannot (unlike any of the genuine "appointments") be dismissed by Trump; he can be removed only by impeachment. Even Pence's initial selection as the Republican VP candidate was technically by the delegates of the Republican National Convention, although in practice they were ratifying a choice effectively made by Trump. Grover cleveland (talk) 22:51, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Under "Vice President", it says Elected November 8, 2016... they've already clarified that. Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 23:13, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Grover cleveland, I independently made a change to better reflect the special nature of the veep-slot,[1] but it was mass-reverted for unrelated reasons later. I will leave a note at Template_talk:Cabinet of Donald Trump later, but if somebody would like to fix things up before I get around to it, please feel free. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 10:35, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Ambassador to Israel

Hello, I'm a new registered Wikipedia user, although I've already edited many articles before. Today I edited the "ambassador to Israel" appointed by Donald Trump. Unfortunately, because I'm a new user, I cannot upload the ambassador's-elect picture. I've found a good image of the ambassador-elect, David Friedman, on the Israeli "Channel 7" website. Note that the article is in HEBREW. Article: "http://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/335762". Picture: "http://a7.org/pictures/733/733732.jpg". An English article about the appointment verifying his picture: "http://nypost.com/2016/12/15/trump-reveals-his-pick-for-ambassador-to-israel/". Please somebody upload his image instead of me. Thanks. (It's a free work from a published source). Message posted at 02:45, 16 December 2016 by Unknown.user.45

Wikipedia is, fortunately or unfortunately, extremely strict about copyright issues. The photo you link to at a7.org (which is credited to "Kasowitz's Creditors' Rights and Bankruptcy Practice Group" in the inn.co.il news-article) was used with permission from Friedman's employer, as you can see by checking the similar portrait-photo here on his employer's website,[2] which is a black-and-white version of the same headshot. Wikipedia does NOT have such permission, obviously. Although in *rare* cases where a proprietary copyrighted photo is the only option, and likely to only ever *be* the likely option, english-wikipedia permits uploads of copyrighted material under fair use laws that govern the USA. Because of his status as ambassador-designate, it is pretty much guaranteed that a libre-licenced photo of Friedman will be uploaded, sometime in the next six months (ambassadorships are usually confirmed by early summer but tend not to happen during January of a newly-inaugurated potus since cabinet-roles get confirmed first). Does this make sense? Because the mission is to build a libre-license encyclopedia, including the photos, wikipedia policies are pretty strict about such things. If you find a photo that is libre-licensed (CCBYSA or public domain or similar), you can use the steps outlined at WP:UPLOAD to get the thing online. As it says at the top, however: "Please ensure you understand copyright and the Image use policy before proceeding." If you attempt to upload the a7.org picture, it will just be deleted later, by one of the many "copyright wiki cops" that checks up on such things. You can hunt for a libre-license image at flickr.com by going into their search-page, typing in david friedman, and then changing the search-options from AnyLicense to instead search for CommercialUseAndModsAllowed. Sorry that wikipedia is a pain about some things, and thanks much for adding the info about Friedman becoming the ambassador-designate, it is appreciated. If you have other questions, you can try WP:HELPDESK and WP:TEAHOUSE, or just leave a note somewhere, as you did this time (just be aware that not *all* talkpages are very active... if you get no prompt reply, always feel free to ask again elsewhere, or just WP:BEBOLD and WP:SOFIXIT.) Happy editing, 47.222.203.135 (talk) 14:12, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Paragraph

@Zbase4: The paragraph is decent. The sources aren't optimal, but they're good enough. If you want to rewrite it, sure, but it's not so bad that it needs to be removed. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 01:24, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

This paragraph within the analysis of Donald Trump's political appointments [3] is not written from a neutral point of view and does not provide a reader with a balanced non-partisan view point, as it uses sources which are left-wing and liberal (Vox, Huffington Post, etc) without using any sources that can be considered conservative. This paragraph should be removed from the analysis subsection until it is rewritten or until better sources are provided to make sure that this paragraph fits neutral point of view as the paragraph in current form can be considered unfairly partisan. Zbase4 (talk) 01:30, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@Zbase4: Considering that paragraph was about criticism, the sources are obviously not going to be Trump-supporting, as if they were, it wouldn't be criticism. It's also due weight. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 01:37, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@ThePlatypusofDoom: I have tried to rewrite the paragraph into a more balanced NPOV and I have removed Huffington Post as well as Vox Populi as sources. I have also decided to shorten the paragraph down to a few sentences and removed weasel words such as "kleptocracy" from the paragraph. I also removed the New York Times source as the content of the New York Times article is just listing the various nominees Donald Trump has appointed and does not belong within this paragraph. At the same time, I have also improved the references of the reliable sources which are listed at the end of the paragraph so that it is easier for a reader to understand the source content. Zbase4 (talk) 01:54, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@Zbase4: I'd rather include those sources, (to have a little more criticism, as there's a lot of it, and the paragraph may need expanding due to the very large amounts of criticism) but it's decent. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 02:02, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@ThePlatypusofDoom: I have added a quote from a Democratic Senator criticizing Donald Trump's cabinet, which was in the USA Today article, however I believe that it is unnecessary to use sources such as Huffington Post within this paragraph as these sources are left-wing and partisan and there are plenty of mainstream sources such as the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC News, and the Wall Street Journal etc. which have given criticism to Donald Trump's nominations and political appointments that it is unnecessary to use sources such as the Huffington Post. Zbase4 (talk) 02:08, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@Zbase4: That's an improvement, it looks good. Nice job with writing the paragraph! ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 02:11, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Ambassador Positions

I understand the purpose of having ambassadorships on this page but I am afraid that the list will become too unwieldily once all positions are filled. I recommend removing all ambassador positions from this page and either form a new page or update Ambassadors of the United States as positions are confirmed. As for the possible candidates, just update each person's individual page as time passes. Anyone else have thoughts on this? Classicwiki (talk) 17:31, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

@Classicwiki: I have now decided to add more potential ambassador picks for other Asian and European countries which were not listed previously onto this page. I would agree with removing the specific ambassador positions from this page and forming a new page for ambassador appointments if you believe that having all of the ambassadors listed under the positions for the state department makes the article too long. I do believe that it is important to list the various ambassadors that have been appointed by Donald Trump to key countries such as Italy, the UK, Russia, or China within this article.

Perhaps I should create a page such as List of Ambassadors appointed by Donald Trump? This page would cover all ambassador positions which are listed under Ambassadors of the United States and therefore I would be able to remove most of the ambassador positions which are listed within this article (especially the FSOs) and leave a list of only the 10-15 most important ambassador positions, greatly shortening the length of the article. Zbase4 (talk) 09:29, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

@Zbase4: As the New York Times put it, "President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition staff has issued a blanket edict requiring politically appointed ambassadors to leave their overseas posts by Inauguration Day." There will be vacancies in a large number of diplomatic missions come January 20th/21st. Therefore the List of Ambassadors appointed by Donald Trump might be jumping the gun because that list will eventually mirror Ambassadors of the United States. I recommend removing all ambassador positions from this page, and simply creating a new, temporary section in Ambassadors of the United States noting Trump's appointments. If you think ambassador positions should remain on this page, I recommend a combination of countries from the G8, G20, BRICS, plus a few other hotspots like Israel. I am sure whatever action you take will be fine and I will not reverse any of those changes.

@Classicwiki: I removed the ambassador positions that I felt were unnecessary and left only those countries which are part of the G20 and ambassadorships which may be considered as the important political appointments such as Ambassador to Cuba or Ambassador to Spain. I feel as if this is a good balance between shortening the article length and keeping important ambassador appointments listed on this page. Zbase4 (talk) 00:22, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Cutoff point for important staff positions

A large number of minor White House positions were recently added, following two reports by Matthew Nussbaum in Politico. This article should not turn into a directory of White House staff. The header clearly says "Announced high-level positions". Judging which position is "high-level" may be subjective, but clearly the personal assistant to Reince Priebus is not one. I would first remove all people who are red links except if their position has an article. Pinging contributor Zbase4 for input. — JFG ^talk 05:34, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

@JFG: I believe that the Deputy Press Secretaries and Special Assistants to the President should qualify as being high level executive positions under any definition of high-level executive staffers and therefore these positions should be listed within the article and I believe that people such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and Madeleine Westerhout absolutely should be included within this article and likely even meet the criteria for having their own Wikipedia articles (See Eric Schultz and Steve Ricchetti among others). I fully agree with you that the personal assistant to Reince Priebus does not qualify to be listed as a high level position therefore I have removed it and other unnecessary positions from this article, however I believe that the remaining positions which are listed should be kept. Zbase4 (talk) 05:46, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Sounds good. I removed some positions that have neither an article nor a nominee. — JFG ^talk 06:01, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

As an aside, I decided to keep Helen Aguirre Ferré listed on this article as Director of Media Affairs because she has received a higher amount of media coverage Politico Miami Herald than other low-level staffers and the fact that she has her own Wikipedia article even though I am not sure how important her role will be in the White House. Zbase4 (talk) 05:54, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF)

The current director is France Cordova, appointed in March 2014. The statutory authority for the NSF is for a six-year appointment, so she should be good until 2020. As far as I'm aware, although she's a presidential appointee who must be confirmed by the Senate, she can't be removed; is that correct? Or is just by convention that the DirNSF is not removed?

https://www.nsf.gov/od/nsf-director-list/nsf-directors.jsp

Rdviii (talk) 13:16, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

I also was wondering about some of these, e.g. CDC. My understanding is that, based on looking into the fed chair question, whether or not a statutory appointee like Cordova will hold onto their position, depends 100% on whether or not the potus wishes to expend political capital kicking that person out early. Because one party has nominal control (though not filibuster-proof control) of the presidency/house/senate, it is quite possible for Cordova to have the March-2014-through-sometime-in-2020 timespan statutorily shortened by the passage of new legislation. That is more difficult than the potus simply being able to tell Cordova they are being replaced, obviously, but not outside the realm of possibility that the president might tell congress that Cordova needs to be replaced.

For an example of how such a thing would work in the 'positive' sense, see the confirmation-process of James Mattis as SecDef. Because his appointment needed a statutory waiver, in addition to the advice and consent of the Senate, there was a House vote on whether to permit Mattis to be confirmed as SecDef (which is not the usual case but due to special circumstances was needed this time around). Cordova's tenure as NSF director could be altered in a similar fashion, by attaching a change-in-timespan legislative rider to an omnibus bill... but only if the president and both congressional bodies want to see that happen. I have not investigated the details of the NSF situation, but as I understand it that is how all statutes work: the potus is required by the constitution to 'faithfully execute' the law. The only exception is, if the congress has overstepped their bounds and passed a statute that is itself unconstitutional, as some argued the Mattis-related-statute was (since the statute attempted to abrogate a constitutional power of the executive branch with a condition). Trump and Mattis opted not to test the constitutionality of the statute, and simply passed a rider instead.

...so at the end of the day, as far as how to deal with the NSF-row in mainspace, suggest that we list Cordova as the 'de facto appointee' for NSF director, but note that Cordova is a carryover-appointee from the Obama admin, just as we have Yellin as fed chair until 2018 as a carryover-appointee. But we should further note, in an additional WP:EXPLNOTE, that it is conceivable that Yellin/Cordova/etc and other statutory-carryover-appointees *could* be replaced by the repub-controlled senate+house+presidency, if they decided to expend the political capital to do so. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 19:52, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Merge with Formation of Donald Trump's Cabinet

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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significant overlap. Pandroid (talk) 19:52, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I disagree that there is significant overlap. Political appointments of Donald Trump is an already large article and deletes candidate for positions when they are selected. When there are future vacancies in the Cabinet of Donald Trump I think the Formation of Donald Trump's Cabinet will be updated accordingly for the next set of candidates. Additionally, Formation of Donald Trump's Cabinet will soon be home to detailed roll call votes of cabinet appointments like the ones in the Confirmations of Barack Obama's Cabinet. Please see Talk:Cabinet of Donald Trump#proposal to reorganize sections for the purpose of the Formation of Donald Trump's Cabinet. Classicwiki (talk) 21:14, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose – Articles are long enough as they stand. Besides, one is talking about the process of forming the Cabinet, whereas the other one is listing a much wider range of positions and appointments. — JFG ^talk 22:54, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - Two articles would create a monster-long article together. -- Kndimov (talk) 04:59, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
• WP:TOOBIG to merge, although I agree there is conceptual overlap (every potential-cabinet-nominee is also by definition a potential-donald-trump-political-nominee). See the discussion above about keeping the ambassadors out of this article. I would personally prefer that we have the *current* cabinet at Cabinet of Donald Trump, rather than repeating all the pictures and row-details in every related article. Similarly, I support the discussion above about *not* listing every single ambassadorship, here in this article. As for the cabinet-contenders and the cabinet-confirmation-hearing-votes, although technically there is significant overlap with the other ~1000 high-level political appointees which need Senate confirmation, in practice aka in the WP:SOURCES the cabinet-level nominees get a lot of ink, whereas the deputy assistant undersecretary gets passing mention. So at the end of the day, we need to have the Formation of Donald Trump's Cabinet be a standalone article because of WP:SIZERULE, and we also need to try and keep ambassadorships in their own article for the same reason. This article becomes the place where Other Important Positions get listed, but there are enough of those that we need to worry about elbow-room and pageload times. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 19:23, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Per JFG. Calibrador (talk) 03:40, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Per JFG. But relatedly I do worry about "deletes candidate for positions when they are selected", Classicwiki, and similar issues. Do all the cites and detail migrate? After Senate confirmation? But DOD Sec. Mattis so far remains; and I would prefer him to stay. MAYBE when the dust settles some a 'picking through' could be done but now seems too soon. A sort of related deletion was here; all the 'candidates floated' for the position were removed after Heather Wilson was chosen. What was deleted was good, at least partly well-cited, material. I don't like the idea of losing that part of the history particularly before confirmation but even after. Swliv (talk) 17:15, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

'Speculation' about future appointments

The whole, substantial section of the article dealing with all the names that have been discussed for unfilled positions in the administration has been deleted, citing WP:NOTSPECULATION. The 'Not speculation' policy talks of 'verifiable' speculation as being acceptable. It also talks of the policy not being a ban on all discussion of future (and hence inherently uncertain or speculative) events. It seems to me that the primary constraints imposed by the policy are to assure that the opinions -- or speculations -- that are registered are independent of the editor and are from some well-documented record. I believe that the overwhelming predominance if not the totality of the deleted section met those constraints. In short, I believe this deletion should be reverted. Cheers. Swliv (talk) 02:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I have decided to add this section back into this article per your argument and because I believe this section to be informative, however I do have doubts that this section passes WP:NOTSPECULATION. Zbase4 (talk) 22:54, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

It was me who deleted this section. I understand that the section is not based upon the speculation of the editors but from reliable sources. However the candidates for the roles have been deleted when the nominees have been announced, which means that the section is not fulfilling a historical record of high profile candidates as reported by the media, but rather a speculative section of who could possibly fulfil the role. To me it is seems to be the equivalent of saying in a sports article who would win the match based off of media predictions, or listing all the actors who are auditioning for a role. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 12:06, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Status of Flynn?

Multiple news organizations are now reporting that Michael Flynn has resigned as National Security Advisor. The question now is whether Flynn remains on the list or not. (FYI, I have just removed him). Will this list constitute all of Trump's initial appointments or will it constitute all of the enduring appointments? The lede states that this list will be updated until an official cabinet is announced. To me, this seems to imply that it should be continuously updated with the newest office occupants, or lack thereof. Thoughts? Ergo Sum 04:43, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I think that this should list all appointments, but it should be mentioned that Flynn resigned/soft fired. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 10:03, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I've restored Flynn with a grey background, and the table now has a "Term ended" column. My preference is that we include people who actually served whose term of service ended, but not people who never served because they withdrew before confirmation (e.g., Puzder). Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 03:47, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Chris Liddell+

I noted the disagreement over Liddell's participation at the White House here, in part. I found this article -- "A Sense of Dread’ for Civil Servants Shaken by Trump Transition" By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and ERIC LICHTBLAU FEB. 11, 2017 -- which involves Liddell seemingly clearly at work for the White House; among other stories from Google>News on the appointment. From it and absent fuller opposing argument, I would favor inclusion of him in this article. I was surprised to see Giuliani and Icahn also excluded. I know Giuliani's may seem a "small informal" role but he was quite central to the 7-nation immigration ban as I understand it. I don't see the big benefit from drawing a tight boundary around this 'moving target' article about an inherently transitional subject that excludes him. Maybe lines for inclusion/exclusion could be better enunciated here, Zbase4 and Ollie035. Cheers. Swliv (talk) 03:48, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree with including them as they are politicial appointments that have gained significant media attention. There are no parameters or criteria that political appointees have to meet to be on this page. As the creator of this page, I understand that this page was to seperate Cabinet appointees from other political appointees, as there were a whole lot of non-Cabinet appointees, some which have not made it on to this page, on the Cabinet article. I'm quite happy to proceed with adding Liddell, Giuliani, and Icahn back on this page, but if Zbase4 wants to raise their position, I will hold fire. Thank you for your constructive approach to this issue, Swliv. Cheers, Ollie035 (talk) 06:47, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Vote on Scott Pruitt

Zbase4: I'd moved on, found and really wanted to book this reversion to your deletion of my edit -- Edit summary: Undid revision 766046692 by Zbase4 (talk) removed without explanation; McCaskill dropped completely; why NOT have a cite on ONE of the votes (and the supporters of one appointee for that matter) -- but since I'd just made the effort here with you on Liddell I overcame the temptation. I favor restoring the vote data and citation. I don't believe it creates a precedent which need be followed or retrofit on all other votes. I would be willing to consider going without the party/state identifications though I favor having it, also. All best. Swliv (talk) 04:59, 18 February 2017 (UTC) Any chance you were aiming at 'McCain' (who wasn't listed) when you mistakenly removed 'McCaskill'? Sen's McCain and Donnelly were (as nicely delineated in the for-the-moment-removed citation) the two missing completely from the vote. Swliv (talk) 05:18, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I fixed the minor issue with McCaskill. There really is no need to include the vote totals within this article as they can be found on the Senate Votes page, for anyone interested and do not really need to be listed here. I'd be in favor of removing the dissenting votes from this article as well since I think that is also unnecessary, however because it had already been added to the confirmations of several of the nominees (Mattis, Kelly, Haley) by other editors, I decided to simply keep the format in line for other cabinet appointees (Pompeo, Price etc). There is no need to include every single vote on a Cabinet appointee within this article as the votes are already conveniently listed in a table in Formation of Donald Trump's cabinet. This article is largely supposed to be a list of important non-Cabinet positions such as deputy secretaries, ambassadors, or high-level White House appointees who do not need Senate confirmations and I do not see the reason to include the votes cast by the Senate upon cabinet or cabinet level nominees such as Scott Pruitt. I would prefer to get rid of the Dissenting votes format entirely as it is used on this page as the confirmation votes are already listed elsewhere on Wikipedia, can be easily found on the Senate website for anyone interested, and do not really meet Wikipedia's standards of notability. Is it really important within this article to list the votes of every senator for all of the 693 appointees which will eventually face confirmation hearings? Zbase4 (talk) 18:09, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Background Colors

Should we have a light background color for appointees that do not require confirmation (and are therefore in office) and nominees to the position that do require confirmation (and are therefore not in office yet)? Right now both have no background color at all.

user:mnw2000 05:54, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

RFC - Address significant content overlap

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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We have three articles with significant content overlap: 1) Political appointments of Donald Trump, 2) Formation of Donald Trump's Cabinet, 3) Cabinet of Donald Trump.

• Is this necessary? Pandroid (talk) 17:12, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

• Well technically, we have more than that; see also Ambassadors of the United States, Cabinet of the United States, and maybe even List of economic advisors to Donald Trump. The reason to have the three you mentioned, I tried to explain above, but in short, we need Cabinet of Donald Trump because although it is somewhat duplicative (the child-article) of the broad overview at Cabinet of the United States in 2017, that will NOT be the case in 2037 when Trump is no longer POTUS. Thus is makes sense to have Cabinet of Barack Obama *while* Obama was potus, and it makes sense to have Cabinet of Donald Trump while he is potus. The detailed history of nominations and Senate votes, is more than can comfortably fit into Cabinet of Donald Trump, and most readers don't care about such details -- but for readers interested in political factions and executive branch demographics and such, just recently Formation of Donald Trump's Cabinet was created to hold those volumnious details, as a WP:SPINOFF from Cabinet of Donald Trump. Political appointments of Donald Trump, this article we are on the talkpage of, is for the other non-cabinet level roles (couple dozen cabinet-level people in charge of a couple *thousand* underlings). Wikipedia does not need to list the name of EVERY political appointee, roughly ~4k people, but the high-level appointees *outside* the official cabinet-level-rank and also ambassador-level-rank, do need to be listed somewhere... hence Political appointments of Donald Trump, which can also serve as a place for broad analysis of Trump's executive branch personnel demographics/salaries/efficiency/etc, when such studies are published a few years from now. So although there is overlap, these topics are large enough per WP:SIZERULE and covered enough per WP:GNG to have dedicated articles. If you have a particular suggestion, for how to cover the topics in a different article-structure, please propose it! Some of these articles are busting at the seams, and e.g. WP:LSC might be a good rule for keeping this article manageable? 47.222.203.135 (talk) 19:33, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Political appointments of Donald Trump & Formation of Donald Trump's Cabinet are lists that overlap, at the very least they should be renamed so they conform with WP:MOS. Also, Formation of Donald Trump's Cabinet declares itself as "speculative," since when are we writing articles based on speculation? Pandroid (talk) 20:07, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

List of Donald Trump political appointments aka List of political appointments of Donald Trump used to *be* the pagename, if memory serves, but it was shortened from seven words to five, at some point. Disagree that Formation of Donald Trump's Cabinet is a list... it is in fact at least two lists, List of potential Donald Trump cabinet members who received WP:SOURCE'd speculation (it is not *our* WP:CRYSTAL as wikipedians it is well-sourced public-sphere discussion and/or outcry regarding high-level members of the Trump administration and their selection). More recently, we are also adding List of rollcall U.S. Senate votes for Trump nominees. I personally would have preferred to call the 'formation of' article something like 'history of' because it is more than just the December 2016 material, it will be ongoing throughout Trump's term(s) in office, as turnover at the cabinet-level occurs. Obama replaced roughly a dozen people in eight years, for instance. No objection to reasonable renames, or to splitting into three list-icle titles (list of potential trump cabinet nominees, list of trump confirmation rollcalls, list of sub-cabinet-level trump appointees), if the MOS insists it be thataway. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 18:27, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

• No, it's not necessary. Cabinet of Donald Trump makes sense as it follows what we've done for past presidents but the other two are RECENTISM-based lists and both should be deleted. Chris Troutman (talk) 04:37, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• It is true that wikipedia deleted the interesting material related to the history of Obama's cabinet, including the formation-process. That was a mistake in my book. Disagree that the historical information about which specific names received media attention for high-ranking roles in an incoming potus administration, is non-encyclopedic listcruft. Because they are nominees-with-confirmation, rather than campaigns-with-fifty-state-by-state-party-votes-then-party-nominations-then-elections, we have less material in Formation of Donald Trump's Cabinet than we have in the spinoffs of the USPE, 2016 which discuss the presidential campaigns and the primaries&caucuses, but this is similar material in a metaphorical sense. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 18:27, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

• Decidedly not necessary: redundant, and beyond a point, even a kind of cruft. Merge into "Cabinet of Donald Trump" or, if there are enough notable appointments to things that are not the cabinet, "Political appointments made by Donald Trump". Vanamonde (talk) 07:16, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

• Not good - I'll suggest keep only Cabinet of Donald Trump. The Formation of Donald Trump's Cabinet is mostly a dupe (long run of photos and names) and conceptually is part of the article Cabinet of Donald Trump so should just be one article. The Political appointments of Donald Trump is just excessive - showing hundreds more that are mostly blank lines that does not seem to have a good focus for them to appear as an article instead of category or list, and runs on just naming all the positions for no reason. It's just not notable enough to have it's own article per WP:GNG, appears excessively long as an article and runs on to include too many unknowns that are not WP:NOTEWORTHY. Markbassett (talk) 01:41, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
• Good relative to Political appointments of Donald Trump. It's part of a big ongoing process and I think most ambassadors or Senate-confirmed and somewhere below Senate-confirmed are noteworthy. This is the article that's gathering them as far as I've been concerned. I've weighed in above #Merge with Formation of Donald Trump's Cabinet about not wanting to lose info of historical interest in the article and hope that piecemeal trimming will not be done. I agree that the size is large and if splitting it is appropriate I'd agree with that; take out the ambassadors, for example; in that and in general I agree with some of what 47.222.203.135 wrote above. I've now come to appreciate, also, what I've seen, glimpsing, in #meta discussion below here, too. Good to TRY to look ahead and figure what we want but consolidation (and deletion) at this point (including some 47.222.203.135 was addressing like not having a historical interest in cabinets after their term) seems premature if not wrong. Also, Markbassett, I don't see in a quick scan 'hundreds' of blank lines; maybe 100. And they will certainly be in discussion in coming weeks and months. If some seem clearly too minor, they can be deleted with explanation but in general I'd disagree with the gist of that comment. As to developing a category, that could clearly help long term I think but I couldn't see it replacing this article in the near future. Related: Shouldn't the "It has been suggested ..." flag on the article come off if that Merge discussion above is dead? I favor doing so. I don't want wasted overlap but I also don't like having been drawn in to a dead discussion. Isn't there a way to close it on this page too? And: Is this RfC still a live discussion or has 'meta' taken over? Seems this one is still live (as, I have to say, did Merge above). Maybe I don't appreciate some external pressure beyond size on these multiple articles. Is there a lot of duplicate updating being required? Probably some at least. I'm pretty much 'in the trenches', haven't looked at all three, will try to. Meanwhile, this as a front-end article in the political process that's underway and seems worthwhile and, as I said, good. Cheers. Swliv (talk) 18:06, 1 February 2017 (UTC) ps I do know there's some hurried Bare urls citation-ing going on, not too surprisingly in the context of this discussion; lot happening; lots of maybe new editors. I try to chip away at it as I come to the article for substantive edits as today two of the 11] or so Bare urls fixed. Cheers. Swliv (talk) 18:19, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Swliv - No, hundreds is correct -- there are about 380 rows here so far with about 200 blank. But wait -- there are many more. To complete the list will be a total of over a thousand appointments having Senate confirmation.{{cite web | url = https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41872.pdf | title = Presidential Appointments | publisher = Congressional Research Service}} And the article also is including the appointees that are not subject to confirmation, which is over three thousand more.{{cite web | url = http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/thepresidentandcabinet/a/Presidential-Appointments-No-Senate-Required.htm | title = Presidential Appointments: No Senate Required}} So -- other than the ones duplicated in cabinet positions that could be simply pointed out, how many are actually 'notable' in the sense of appear in press ? Who will maintain a list as 5,000 people shift jobs or otherwise leave ? There are just too many political appointees to look at them all,{{cite web | url = http://prospect.org/article/there-are-too-many-political-appointees | title = There are too many political appointees}} so again I suggest reduce down to just just the cabinet and put any few major or notably controversial appointments there as well. Markbassett (talk) 03:44, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Markbassett, I can't confirm your data. Via a search of the open-for-editing page using the search criteria -- data-sort-value="<! -- I found 130 blank lines. By a manual count I then found 92 named and 133 open for 225 total. Those are still rough numbers but pretty close to solid and obviously at big variance with your figures. Within the totals, 44 of the 133 open in that count are at State; and about 35 of those openings are for ambassadors. That says that there's already been significant editing of the ambassador list; it's not all countries, just ones deemed significant. I'm still open to breaking the ambassadors' section out somehow. But at the total scale I've given here I think the page could also survive fine as is.

You've also gone way beyond the current scope of this article -- the 1000; the 4000 -- to make your argument and I in part opened the way for that by addressing "Senate-confirmed and somewhere below Senate-confirmed" as my gut feel of notability. Beyond the many ambassadors I was not counting in my assessment I'm also not arguing, now, to broaden the article to the 'rest of the 1000' much less, I guess, any comprehensive group within the 3000 balance. I am, again, now discussing this article in its current scale only.

The discussion on this Talk page and in this Rfc is also about two other articles, Cabinet and Formation of the Cabinet. From my vantage I'm glad to leave those two articles to work out, as it were, their relationship -- while this article continues as is. There is some overlap to the Cabinet here, obviously, but it also takes the government-formation to another important level within the framework of that Cabinet. Once this article is filled most of the focus would move to the respective departments and agencies but in the meantime it seems a worthwhile place to present the centralized scope and reality of the enterprise. I know a number of the White House appointees, for instance, don't have articles of their own as yet. I'm not sure how that -- or other of the next-level appointees in the departments and agencies -- will unfold but for now I'm not convinced they are non-notable. If, in the coming several months this article continues to have many lines unfilled, it would likely be due to editor disinterest rather than lack of significant Administration and Congressional activity and I'd be gladly willing to look again at the issue you raise. Over a longer period if many of the names are still red links, also, I'd be glad to look again. Swliv (talk) 13:27, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Swliv - oops. You're right, somehow in doing pgdn estimate I got ~ 100 extra. But this still leaves us with the scope concern though -- if the lead description "This is a list of political appointments " was not right, then it is feasible to do... but what IS the article and so why do it ??? At the moment most of the names are in the Cabinet of Donald Trump, the Executive Office of the President, and Ambassadors of the United States but it does not include judicial such as are in List of federal judges appointed by Barack Obama ; and it includes the Chief Usher but not most of the Intelligence community chiefs ... so I'm not getting what the intended pattern is and what the intended cutoff level is. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 04:19, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

p.s. And the whitehouse.gov site has a page for these ... but not been populated. Markbassett (talk) 04:22, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Markbassett, I find the current article worthwhile. I could see relocating ambassadors and removing (a) Cabinet and (b) blank lines no one's bothered to fill at some point some months from now. Swliv (talk) 23:07, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

meta discussion

• Procedural note: This is a premature RfC given the ongoing talk page discussion on the same question. OP started a discussion about merging articles, quickly received 4 opinions opposing the merge, then proceeded the next day to open this RfC, which adds unnecessary process to a valid content discussion that does not look hard to resolve. In addition, the RfC only asks a vague "is this necessary?" question and does not specify what is proposed, which makes it hard to discuss constructively. I respectfully suggest that OP cancel the RfC per WP:RFCEND. — JFG ^talk 08:10, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

• Procedural note: and I would respectfully ask that you AGF and refrain from misrepresenting facts, the merge proposal did not "quickly receive 4 opinions," please look at the edit history, there were two responses. The RFC was opened, in good faith, in reference to a broader question concerning three overlapping articles, it's an entirely separate query. Pandroid (talk) 17:40, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry. I see now that you opened the RfC after your initial suggestion received two negative comments, and the further two Oppose statements came on the next day; my mistake for not checking the dates clearly. This doesn't change my contention that opening an RfC almost immediately after opening a regular talk page discussion, while undoubtedly done in good faith, is an inefficient use of process. — JFG ^talk 17:38, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Sometimes wikipedia takes a long time, yes, and the spending of that time&effort might not be maximally profitable in terms of talkpage-efficiencies, sure, but WP:TIND and WP:NONPROFIT, eh? Discussion is going fine, RfC to draw wider attention is also just fine, and if I recall correctly JFG, you yourself originally were thinking that the potential-nominee-tables would need deletion. It might be they *do* need IAR removal despite being very well-sourced. Or it might be that splitting the rollcall lists away from the potential nominee lists makes sense. This is as good a place as any to discuss such 'structural/theological' things, and more eyeballs will only help us achieve lasting consensus. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 18:37, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I once suggested deleting them, and I'm happy with letting the forked list exist. Merging them back is a legitimate proposal but did not get much support yet. No problem with getting more contributors to weigh in. — JFG ^talk 18:42, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

• I think this RfC should be withdrawn and restated since it is difficult to respond to because it makes no specific content proposal. What are the consequences if the consensus is yes or no? Does yes mean that the three articles will be merged, and into which article? --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 20:12, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

• Well, could restate, but people who have offered a view have approached in an in if/then fashion, they are not simply saying y/n, I'm assuming this is how most would approach it? or no? Pandroid (talk) 20:54, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

I can't speak for others, but I certainly am not going to participate in a discussion in which my opinion might be used to make changes that I do not support. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 21:07, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

well, if you think it's necessary, say why, if you think it's unnecessary, say why and suggest a solution? Pandroid (talk) 21:30, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Jon Huntsman

Hi, Can someone please add Jon Huntsman Jr as ambassador to Russia to the list? <ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/08/jon-huntsman-united-states-ambassador-russia/98929512/|title=Trump to name Jon Huntsman as next U.S. ambassador to Russia, officials say|work=[[USA Today]]|date=March 8, 2017}}</ref>. I don't have time right now. Thanks Benwitt (talk) 01:06, 9 March 2017 (UTC)Benwitt

 Done by someone sometime; I'll add the above link. Swliv (talk) 17:35, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Mr. anonymous IP thinks he can dictate this page.

Once again, WAIT until someone is nominated to a position before you add it. The page looks cluttered otherwise. I got thanked for removing those empty spaces, I will NOT have a anonymous IP come in and ruin my contribution.

Blakebs talk 5:43PM (CST)

First, I am the person who made the changes. Second, insulting others is not something I accept. Thirdly, it's ironic that you say that I am the one who want to dictate this page when it's you who made the changes without consensus on this page. You say that we should wait until someone is nominated to a position before adding it. I agree with that. However, that is not what you did. What you did is a list of people who served under Obama (acting) and you added them to the list that we had before. This is the political appointments of Donald Trump, not the who is in those jobs until Trump nominates someone page. If your goal is to improve this page, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Other independent agencies and Independent intelligence agencies should be the norm.

Nicodes2 (talk) 00:58, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Additions

I'm hoping someone more adept at list formatting can make these additions to this page:

• Jay Patrick Murray, Alternate Representative of the United States of America for Special Political Affairs in the United Nations source Y
• Neil Chatterjee, Member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission source Y
• Robert Powelson, Member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission source Y
• James J. Sullivan, member of Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission source
• Elizabeth Erin Walsh, Assistant Secretary and Director General of the United States and Foreign Commercial Service, Department of Commerce source Y

Thank you! Marquardtika (talk) 21:34, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Massive expansion

Blakebs has recently added massive amounts of material to this article. (I have in mind especially the Air Staff section and the FBI section.) Where are these names coming from? Nothing is sourced. Have any of these people actually been appointed by Trump, or are they holdovers from the Obama administration? I assume the latter, but no indication is given. Are they just nominees waiting for confirmation, or are they already in office? Are they serving in an acting capacity, or are they true appointees who did not need Senate confirmation? What's the story? I'm inclined to just delete a lot of this en masse because it's not sourced, it's incredibly unclear, and it's detracting from the primary utility of the article (i.e., "political appointees of Donald Trump"), but I'd like to give you or someone else a chance to clear it up and straighten it out first. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 00:05, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

In general, I think anyone not appointed by Trump shouldn't be on this page. It is titled "Political appointments of Donald Trump", after all. It is not supposed to represent everyone serving in the federal government at this time, but those individuals appointed by him. So I see no reason why any holdovers from the Obama administration should be included here, unless Trump has re-appointed them. Marquardtika (talk) 02:45, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

I actually completely agree with this as I have indicated before. I do not see any need to include any holdovers from the Obama administration anywhere on this page. The only exceptions, i would think, would be those who have been appointed by Trump in some capacity, whether to a new position or to their old position again (although we would need good sourcing that Trump had actually deliberately kept them, rather than simply failed so far to replace them). I might even extend this to people whom Trump has designated to serve in an acting capacity until his own nominee is confirmed, but I could go either way on that one. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 11:25, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

I support removing all individuals on this list who haven't been appointed directly by Trump or designated as serving in an acting capacity by Trump. Marquardtika (talk) 15:57, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

They come from the official FBI website. Some of the people I added are part of the line of succession of the FBI; that makes them relevant. Also any director Donald Trump appoints could conceivably replace any of these people. Blakebs (talk) 10:33, 22 May, 2017 (CST)

Then Blakebs should provide a citation for each name, like the other editors working on this page have done. And, no, actually being part of the line of succession of the FBI does not make them relevant to "Political appointments of Donal Trump." This is not a list of everyone serving in the federal government, it's a list of Trump's political appointments. And if you're saying that these people are appointed by the FBI Director rather than by the President then they definitely do not belong on this list at all. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 11:25, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Air Staff is the second major component of the Air Force as indicated on the Department of the Air Force page, therefore it needed to be broken up. I don't want to have an endless list of people with no rhyme or reason, there needs to be some type of order. Blakebs (talk) 10:36, 22 May, 2017 (CST)

Blakebs, I think you're missing the point. Nobody objects to subsections as subsections. What we're questioning is whether the content of those subsections is encyclopedic in content, value, sourcing, etc. Even with rhyme and reason, an endless list would be no good. But the rhyme and reason for this particular article is that the people included in the list are all "Political appointments of Donald Trump." If the people you have been adding are not "political appointments of Donald Trump," then they need to be removed. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 11:25, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Photos

Do we need a photo of any or all of the appointments? It just seems entirely unnecessary to me?

I mean, the whole article is "unnecessary" in some sense, but photos are common in political lists like this, at least on English Wikipedia, and I don't think they're doing any harm. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 11:54, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Should there be generals?

Should we add a generals section under Department of Defense? --Skim

No. These would be akin to FSO ambassador appointments, which we are not including (as opposed to the political ambassador appointments). Unless Trump finds a way to reward a supporter politically with a General Officer appointment, these are not political appointments in the sense of this article. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 17:31, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Some proposed changes

Out of date/incomplete: List of appointments is not up to date. Incorrect: Certain individuals (ex. Comey and McCabe) were not Trump appointees. Some are holdovers appointed by another president, others have multi-Presidential terms, and others are interim placeholders caused by a vacancy. All three cases are not "Political appointments by Donald Trump."

Some citations: http://www.afsa.org/list-ambassadorial-appointments (watch out for the year!) https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-administration-appointee-tracker/database/

2604:2000:EE84:CF00:ADF6:CAD0:CB6A:4A9E (talk) 18:15, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

 Note: I've removed the edit request template because this isn't a conflict of interest edit request. Other editors monitoring the article and the talk page may implement the changes, but you are also free to do so. st170e 15:46, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Federal Election Commissioners

An IP editor keeps trying to add FEC commissioners to the article. There are five incumbent commissioners and one vacancy. None of the currently serving commissioners were appointed by Donald Trump. They do not fit within the purview of this article as "Political appointments by Donald Trump." This article is not a comprehensive listing of people serving in federal executive branch office, so it's fine if there are incumbent executive branch officers who are not included in this article, even in certain cases (like the five incumbent FEC commissioners) officers who are in office by presidential appointment (with or without Senate confirmation, as long as the President they were appointed by is not Donald Trump). This should not be controversial. I will continue to try to keep these inappropriate additions to this article out of it. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 18:32, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

New Section for Holdover Appointees

I have created a new section in the article for holdover appointees. Perhaps this will serve as a reasonable solution to the long-running disagreement among editors of this article regarding what to do with holdover appointees. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 20:22, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Who counts as a holdover?

There seems to be some confusion about what the term "holdover" means. In the context of this article, anyone still holding an office which would normally be listed in this article (i.e., a political appointment in the Executive branch) but who was appointed by a previous president rather than by Trump is a holdover. Appointment is a particular process which often requires senate confirmation. Merely announcing that you're allowing someone to keep their job, i.e., not making them resign it and not (at least at this time) nominating someone else to replace them, does not make that person your appointment. They're still a holdover. Perhaps we should make a distinction between different statuses of holdovers with shading or something. There could be one color for holdovers who Trump has specifically publicly stated he wants to keep on the job (like McGurk), and a different color for those who are just kind of there and somewhat unnoticed (like the FEC commissioners). LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 10:17, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

This is not an idiosyncratic use of the term "holdover". The New York Times refers to people like McGurk (explicitly) as "Obama holdovers" in the Trump administration ("Meet the Obama Holdovers Who Survived Trump's Sweep"). LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 10:21, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

This holdover section is not working. They should be on the main list. Leave the appointing president section, but put them back on the main list. Nicodes2 (talk) 13:32, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

What do you mean it's not working? It seems to be working just fine to me. Several other editors have expressed their enthusiasm for the new section to me, and nobody else (as of yet) is complaining about it. So what about it isn't working? Moreover, if we get rid of this section, then the right answer is to delete the people currently in it from the article completely because they are not political appointments by Donald Trump. You can't seriously be suggesting that we move them back to the main list and add a column to the main list for everyone to indicate which president appointed everyone in an article of Donald Trump's political appointments. Keeping them anywhere in the article is already a concession because they don't fit within the scope of the article title. If you want an article which lists all incumbent political appointees in the federal government then you need to go create that article somewhere else (or go through the standard process to suggest a page-move of this article to that name) because that's not what this article is. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 17:30, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

I agree with LacrimosaDiesIlla's edits. This article is titled "Political appointments by Donald Trump." It is meant to document appointments made by Trump--not government officials who he's "inherited" from prior presidencies or hasn't gotten around to re-appointing or replacing. Marquardtika (talk) 17:32, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

My problem is not whit the holdover. The holdover should be at the end of each department. For example, Collins should be at the end of the Department of Health and Human Services. My problem is that we have to go down the page to see those holdovers. Nicodes2 (talk) 21:18, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Honestly it sounds like your problem is with the article. This article is not the right place to see all political appointees in any given federal department in one place, but that could be done in the articles for those departments (or in new articles, like "Political appointees in the Department of Defense" and so on). With regard to this article, holdovers simply are not political appointments by Donald Trump, and it is confusing and misleading to mix them in with the people Trump has actually appointed. Why do the holdovers need to be included with the Trump appointees in each department? Would it help if the holdover section was also organized by department? LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 00:29, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Maybe we need an article titled something like "High-level United States government officials" or "Federal government officials in the U.S.", etc. We could also have smaller break-off pages or even templates listing the current personnel in each department. I think that would be helpful, but agree that it's out of scope for this page. This page is for Trump appointees, but somewhere in there it began being used as a directory/repository for all federal government officials. Marquardtika (talk) 12:41, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

I think we probably do. At least, it seems like there would be a lot of enthusiasm for editing and maintaining such an article or series of articles. Personally, I have no interest in working on such pages, but I would absolutely support other editors creating them and keeping them up to date. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 14:22, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Reports To Column

How about adding a column that shows who each appointee reports to? There is much speculation as to who reports to who these days. We know the that the new COS Kelly reports to POTUS but who does all the others report to. Does Bannon report to POTUS or COS Kelly?

user:mnw2000 12:39, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think this article is the place for that information. It would make sense to me in articles like "Current officials in the Department of Justice" (which I don't think is something we have, but is something which we could have), which could include people appointed by previous presidents, as well as non-presidentially-appointed positions (career positions, civil service positions, sometimes presidential appointees get to make appointments (not just hires) of their own), etc.). Who reports to who seems like information that belongs somewhere where the primary concern is organizational structure. The primary concern of this article is Trump's appointment power, which is something rather different. The other concern that I have is that you seem to have admitted that there is very little good information on this question ("there is much speculation"). We cannot include a column full of speculative information, and I don't think we should include a column which will be largely blank for lack of good information. That would not improve the article. So, unless you can find reliable sources, I think the answer is just no. But also, I think that information would be better in a different article (or series of articles). LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 13:32, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Trimming of announced offices from article

I reverted the removal of the new Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator and appointee Vishal Amin from this article. Amin and the predecessor Daniel Marti do not yet have Wiki articles and the office does not yet have an article. But the inaugural occupant of the congressionally mandated office, Victoria Espinel (2009-13), has an article with a substantial review of the office's start-up and her years there.

I first, also, reverted the removal of three as-yet-unfilled positions here. I did that reversion mostly on the basis that one of the positions addresses historically black colleges and universities. This article -- ["After White House courts HBCUs, budget disappoints school leaders" March 17 Washington Post -- addresses the subject and, hence I'd say, the White House position. On the basis of continued profile of HBCUs I opposed trimming those positions at this point at least.

My general comment of the three-position reversion was "think it's too early; there may be trimming but rather not piecemeal". I'm glad to discuss it further now. For now I generally oppose trimming positions. Cheers. Swliv (talk) 19:44, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

The article has sustained substantial removal of unfilled sub-cabinet offices, here; other major removals I haven't looked at in the same series of edits; no Edit summaries and termed 'minor'; which I'm just noting for the record for the time being. One observer is pleased with the actions, terming them 'bold' and saying the page 'was cumbersome and unwieldy'. I can't fully disagree with that assessment but also expect I and others will miss the removed material as we progress through the formation of the Administration. I would encourage discussion and more effort at consensus on the issue. Swliv (talk) 04:37, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

After looking at another of the removals I took my effort to encourage discussion to the editor's Talk page. Swliv (talk) 05:41, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

This can be solved if some sort of simplified template could be utilized in order to quickly add back any positions when they are filled. The current table is far too cumbersome to edit. (Blakebs talk 8:52, May 6, 2017 (CST))

This can be solved by removing all the acting (those are not Trump political appointments). Nicodes2 (talk) 01:11, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not a specialist. I haven't found the table too cumbersome to edit -- regularly but not heavily. The idea of a simplified template goes over my head: Are we looking to shrink the size of the whole article? Shrink it now but comfortable if it grows back as positions are eventually filled? I've seen the proposal below. If it's really the best way forward I'll try to take a look. Meanwhile, I know I participated in this kind of discussion back in January above and my feelings are the same: If the article would be better sub-divided to bring its parts down to more manageable sizes I am open to the idea in concept. The time feels better now than it did then.

As to the big, I see, 'Acting' component, that's new to me. One observation: By this point in the Administration any official who is 'acting' -- either by appointment prior to Jan. 20 to the present position or by 'moving up' from lower-level positions after the resignations or firings of more-senior carryovers -- is pretty much an appointment (until a 'real one' comes along). I'd address this volume of positions in the same context as the overall volume issue just above here: If the article is too big it can be split up. I certainly don't think it would be useful to remove all the 64 or so senior positions currently covered by 'Acting's.

Thanks for the responses. Swliv (talk) 19:06, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

I support deleting the acting positions. They are not "political appointments of Donald Trump" within the scope of the term "political appointments" as it is used in the lede and in the linked article, and keeping them on the grounds that by now each of them has become "pretty much an appointment" hardly seems consistent with WP:NPOV or WP:OR. As for the proposal below, I saw it and had no idea what it meant. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 19:34, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

I support leaving the acting positions. My phrase above 'pretty much an appointment' was casual. To be more specific: So many months into the administration, the acting office holders are operating in the administration and executing its policies under threat of removal if they don't. While they are not officially political appointments I think they fit within the generic description and don't harm the article in the period until or if official appointments are made. Swliv (talk) 21:30, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Does that mean you support deleting them from the article once political appointments replace them? LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 22:16, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

I support deleting the acting positions. These are roughly 1,200 positions that require Senate confirmation. Are we going to include all the acting positions? Deleting them from the article once political appointments is the right choice (if we can't deleting them all) . For example, the Secretary of Air force has been confirmed by the Senate. Why Lisa Disbrow (who was the acting Secretary of the Air force) is still on this list? 24.230.227.115 (talk) 14:37, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't log in when I wrote my post. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicodes2 (talk • contribs) 18:05, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

I support leaving the acting positions. Heather Wilson hasn't been sworn in yet. But I think that we should leave the acting positions and some of the unfilled positions, because it's misleading if we don't. I think that this page should serve as a place to track all of the positions in the US government that Trump has filled and not filled, and where we stand on some of these appointments. We were at that place a week or two ago, then someone started deleting all the unfilled positions for some unexplained reason. I support returning to that place, as hard as it may be, but until we can, let's start with leaving some acting positions on. Sbb618 (talk) 15:54, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

There is nothing misleading about not including people who weren't appointed by Donald Trump in an article titled "Political appointments of Donald Trump." This article is not called "all positions in the United States federal government requiring political appointment by the President of the United States and the various people who have served in them since Donald Trump became President, whether he appointed them or not." That article (if it existed) would be the "place to track all of the positions in the US government that Trump has filled and not filled, and where we stand on some of these appointments." But not here. Wikipedia is not a repository for all information. WP:NOT LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 15:48, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

With more wholesale removals of unfilled positions the article is made considerably more difficult to update when those positions are filled. I don't see the driving motivation for it. If there are out-of-date names filling the positions the names can be removed leaving the positions open to be filled either by an acting or a nominated successor. I support leaving the unfilled positions. Swliv (talk) 18:13, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

In general, I'm more or less okay with leaving unfilled positions, but the ones I removed were added recently after this discussion was under way by someone who did not bother to participate in it, and who simply added a bunch of Obama appointees to the article in a very unsystematic way (a handful of random ambassadors chosen whimsically by the editor). I think the ambassadors are also somewhat of a special case because whether or not they end up being truly political appointments (as opposed to being filled by career FSO people) is something that can't really be known until we have a nominee. If someone would like to systematically add in all the ambassador positions which currently or usually have political appointments I would not object (or positions for which there is currently speculation about the possibility of a political appointment), but I do not like adding some of them here and there at random. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 19:01, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

You may have noticed that I didn't do anything about removing the large groups of unfilled positions added in other places in the article recently (like the Department of Agriculture). I just think the ambassadors need to be handled in a consistent and unified way; that's my most important point, whether that means including a bunch of unfilled positions or not including any of them. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 19:08, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

New Suggestion

I have a new suggestion which perhaps will help to bridge some of the distance between the two sides expressed in this debate. What if we add another background highlight color (maybe red) to the article specifically for holdover Obama appointees? This would more clearly indicate which people are holding appointed positions but who were not appointed by Trump and who can be expected to eventually be replaced by actual Trump nominees. Thoughts? LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 19:04, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Checking back on original subject

I'm wondering why this no-explanation removal of several Ag. & maybe other filled positions was done, Zbase4. It's just a one-off check but follows my general concerns expressed above from April.

As to suggested red-coloring of holdovers, I don't see it having been taken further and can't see it being particularly helpful or necessary now. Swliv (talk) 01:42, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, nobody ever responded to that suggestion, and in the mean time we found a different way to deal with holdovers, so consider the red shading of holdovers idea OBE (overcome by events). LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 03:04, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

If I don't leave an explanation on every edit I make on this article then I apologize, I've made dozens of edits on this article and tried to explain my reasoning for most of them, although sometimes I forget to do so. That edit was made because those positions were filled, therefore I felt there was no need to keep the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture in the Possible candidates for other high-level positions section.

I think this article is much too long, and a lot of information is duplicated and I would support trimming and removing parts of it. I see no reason to have the Confirmation process timeline section in this article as it doesn't cover every appointee and already a similar section for Cabinet appointees already exists on this article. I don't think Wikipedia should cover the committee votes for ambassador nominees as it likely doesn't meet Wikipedia's notability standards. I also don't think we need a Possible candidates for other high-level positions section for much longer as it has been 6 months since President Trump was inaugurated and many positions that have not been filled may not be filled according to President Trump himself. I think much of that section can be removed as for example there is already an ambassador to Mexico, a director of the consumer financial protection bureau or an archivist. Zbase4 (talk) 02:18, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I would support deleting the Confirmation process timeline if it's not going to be expanded and updated appropriately. (I actually think it would be helpful and useful if it were expanded to include every nominee who has been subjected to a vote by the full Senate which so far has been almost all of them, but there doesn't seem to be sufficient enthusiasm to keep it up.) I would also be fine with deleting the "Possible candidates" section. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 03:06, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

August 3, 2017

As Mitch McConnell so aptly put it, the Senate confirmed more nominees in today's session than it has since all other days of Trump's presidency so far. I've seen a lot of errors on the page, so I'm asking everyone to stop editing until tomorrow when the Congressional Record is released and all the confirmed nominees are listed. – JocularJellyfish ^Talk_Contribs 02:42, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

John P. Desrocher

Should we include the fact that he was confirmed as Ambassador to Algeria (I know he is a career diplomat).[4] Are there any other appointed positions we forgot to mark as confirmed? --1990'sguy (talk) 01:28, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

No, we should not include him. The working consensus has been not to include any career FSO appointments. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 15:40, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Should their be all the ambassadors?

Hi, I am wondering if whether or not all the countries the U.S has ambassadors to should be listed here. --Skim

This has been discussed before. There's a section about ambassadors earlier on this talk page. I think the working (somewhat implicit) consensus has been that only non-career-FSO ambassador nominees will be included (basically, the truly political appointments will be included, but not the ones that are just a final stop in a career working for the State Department). But I could see an argument for including all of them. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 16:46, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

I should add that another part of the working consensus had been that only ambassadorships for which Trump had at least nominated someone were being included, so ambassadors appointed by Obama would not just be listed willy-nilly in this article because they are not "political appointments of Donald Trump." LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 17:44, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

I think on this Question the User was asking to put all of the ambassadors. Trump did not Appoint himself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 21:06, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Number of Trump's nominees have been confirmed

The Sorce we have on the Page is Wrong the sorce on the page was last Updated Aug. 4 at 2:42 p.m. And I counted all the Green and the Others on the other page And I got 119 and accorting to the Sorce 117 and Mark Buzby is Reported out favorably accorting to the source on the page and accorting to the Senate he is confirmed so I think the Sorce thats on the page now and the https://www.senate.gov/legislative/nom_confc.htm needs to be looked at becouse one of them has to be right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 20:16, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

When you say "The Source" what are you talking about? Both the Senate and the Washington Post agree that Buzby has been confirmed. There is no disagreement in the sources I can find, and obviously if he's been confirmed, that is the more recent event and the one this page should reflect. Also, the Senate has been adjourned since August 3, so they haven't done any work since then, so a source that was last updated on August 4 is presumably perfectly up-to-date, so I'm not sure what your point about when it was last updated is supposed to be. Finally, how many time do you need to be told that the statement about the total number of Trump nominees for key positions who have been confirmed is a sourced claim? That means it needs to reflect what the source says, as opposed to reflecting one editor's interpretation of information that is presented on the page for this article. Please stop being disruptive, and please stop making the same arguments over and over again after multiple editors have responded to them. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 20:32, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Recognizing that I may be in violation of WP:3RR I am walking away from this article for the rest of the weekend. Cheers! LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 20:36, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

The Sorce we have on the Page is Wrong the sorce on the page was last Updated Aug. 4 at 2:42 p.m. And I counted all the Green and the Others on the other page And I got 119 and accorting to the Sorce 117 and Mark Buzby is Reported out favorably accorting to the source on the page and accorting to the Senate he is confirmed so I think the Sorce thats on the page now and the https://www.senate.gov/legislative/nom_confc.htm needs to be looked at becouse one of them has to be right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 20:55, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

The WaPo source shows Buzby as confirmed. There was a typo in the WaPo source, as that while it shows that Buzby was confirmed on August 3, it places immediately below this the fact that he was reported out favorably the day prior. The order was wrong in the article, but Buzby clearly, even in the WaPo source, was confirmed on August 3. --1990'sguy (talk) 21:31, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

United States Ambassador to South Sudan/Number of Trump's nominees have been confirmed

Yesterday 8/3/17 President Trump and the White House named Thomas J. Hushek to be United States Ambassador to South Sudan https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog I counted the Number of Trump's nominees have been confirmed and the number I got is 119 all on this page and on the List of federal judges appointed by Donald Trump page. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 03:12, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Hushek is a career diplomat, and we don't count career diplomats in this article. This article is about *political* appointments. Also, we should go by what the WaPo article says. Besides, it's the article we're citing for the numbers. The article may just have a different criteria from us as to which positions are "key." --1990'sguy (talk) 03:32, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Look the page is called Political appointments by Donald Trump and he appointed him to be United States Ambassador to South Sudan. and Count all the green and the others on the other page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 03:37, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

This has been discussed before, at least twice. See the discussion "Should their be all the ambassadors?" above. It seems so far that about everyone except you believes that career diplomats (and unlike what one of your edit summaries stated, Huntsman is not a career diplomat -- he is a Republican Party politician who was nominated to two ambassadorships). The Washington Post article makes the same distinction. --1990'sguy (talk) 04:11, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Also, regarding the changing of the number of Trump nominees confirmed, we should stick to what the WaPo article says. Even it differentiates between career diplomats and political appointees, and it only counts "key" positions in its tally of the number of officials that have been confirmed. Determining the number by manually counting the green in the article would violate WP:OR. --1990'sguy (talk) 04:15, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

1990'sguy is correct on both points: (1) Hushek should not be included on this page because the working consensus has been not to include career FSO appointments because they are not truly political appointments (they are appointments but not "political" ones in the sense of this article: we also don't include military appointments . . .), and (2) the number that we give for confirmed Trump nominees should match our source, which in this case is WaPo. If someone finds another reliable source outside Wikipedia with a count on confirmed Trump nominees, I would (probably) be in favor of including that information also, whether it agreed with the WaPo number or differed from it, but I am not in favor of manually tallying the green nominees on our own page. Let readers do that themselves if they're interested in that statistic. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 15:44, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

You do not understand The President named him to be a United States Ambassador to South Sudan. just keep it for a wile and let other people voice there oppions if the other Users say he can't be on there I will take him off. tomrrow 12:00pm noon Eastern standerd time. If other Users say he can stay he can stay. If you have any Isue please email me at Bobbybattaglia@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 04:54, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Hushek is a career diplomats. (From the White House site) :Thomas J. Hushek to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America the Republic of South Sudan. Mr. Hushek, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Minister-Counselor, has served as an American diplomat since 1988. He is currently the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary (Acting Assistant Secretary) in the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations at the Department of State. A three-time Deputy Chief of Mission and senior official at the State Department, he has extensive experience in management and communications, coordination of humanitarian programs, and crisis management. Mr. Hushek has served at eight U.S. Missions overseas. He earned a M.I.A. from Colombia University and a B.A from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He speaks Russian and Persian (Dari). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicodes2 (talk • contribs) 14:18, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Presidents can appoint career diplomats or CFO's President Obama nominated Susan D. Page to be the 2nd U.S. Ambassador to South Sudan and she was a career diplomat or CFO. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 15:06, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I am changeing the time. I know People are still wakeing up and did not look at there coumputer yet so I am going to take him off at 10:00pm tonight eastern time. So more people can comment on this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 15:18, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I am removing Hushek now because he doesn't belong on this page. If a consensus develops in favor of including him, you can always add him back later. And then presumably we will need to add a whole bunch of other career FSO appointments also (a number of career FSO Trump ambassadors to various parts of Africa, for example have already been confirmed, I believe . . .). LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 15:46, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

We got to Have the CFO's President Trump and the White House Names and for the Holdover section we should have a link to the Big list to all of the ambassaders here's a link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambassadors_of_the_United_States Presidents can appoint career diplomats or CFO's President Obama nominated Susan D. Page to be the 2nd U.S. Ambassador to South Sudan and she was a career diplomat or CFO I think this Idea will work. so everyone can be happy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 19:50, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

No, we don't have to have them. They are not political appointments within the meaning of the word "political" as it is used in this article. We do not need to do what you are suggesting, and it will not make everyone happy. You have made your point, and the other active editors here have repeatedly disagreed with you and asked you to abide by the working consensus that has been in place on this page for months. Your continued efforts to edit this page in violation of that consensus, absent the appearance of other editors who agree with you or your ability to change the minds of other editors here, is a form of disruptive editing. Please stop being disruptive. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 19:57, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Presidents can appoint career diplomats or CFO's President Obama nominated Susan D. Page to be the 2nd U.S. Ambassador to South Sudan and she was a career diplomat or CFO And Jon Huntsman Jr. is a career diplomat or CFO also becuse He was United States Ambassador to China, and United States Ambassador to Singapore. So he should not be on there ether. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 20:52, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Huntsman is not a career diplomat, and you're repeating the same points. Huntsman is a Republican Party policitian who was rewarded these ambassadorships for the same reasons that many GOP donors are being rewarded ambassadorships. Holding more than one ambassadorship does not make one a career diplomat. If you compare Huntsman to a career diplomat, you can tell a clear difference. Career diplomats devote, at least, most of their adult life to full-time diplomatic service. Huntsman is also a (high-profile) politician and businessman, according to his WP profile. --1990'sguy (talk) 21:33, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

There's only 14 FSO's what did these FSO's did to you right now they might be looking on this page and thinking. Were am I? So if you don't want to hert there feelings you should do the right thing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 01:15, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

I am done with you for now if you want to cotinue email me at Bobbybattaglia@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 01:24, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

There's only 14 FSO's what did these FSO's did to you right now they might be looking on this page and thinking. Were am I? So if you don't want to hert there feelings you should do the right thing. I am done I am leaving Just want to let you and some of the other Users that aggree and disaggree with you That you are hearting these people and there family's Becuse you won't give them a chance to be on the Page. Shame on you. If you want to apollagice email me at Bobbybattaglia@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 01:51, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Stop adding career diplomats or CFO. Nicodes2 (talk) 02:33, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Career diplomats: should they be included?

The consensus is clear, based on prior talk page discussions, that we should not include career diplomats in this article. Even the WaPo source cited at the top differentiates between career diplomats and other appointees. --1990'sguy (talk) 03:24, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

There's only 14 FSO's or career diplomats right now they might be watching the page and asking them selfs were am I? Or There kids would say (Daddy were are you? Why are you not on this page?) (Well Billy there are a lot of Haters who hate Daddy.) Do you all Want to be that person Who wipes away a Daddy's Dream of Being on Wikipedia? I do not. Shame on Some of you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 03:45, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

We don't care what they think, or what their kids think. That's not at all a good reason to change an article. Earthscent (talk) 10:42, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

@Anarchyte: As the admin who protected this article, would you please undo the IP's edit? It is clear when looking on the talk page (see here, along with the sections above entitled "Trimming of announced offices from article", "Should their be all the ambassadors?", and "United States Ambassador to South Sudan/Number of Trump's nominees have been confirmed." A single IP editor, who, BTW, has thrown several personal attacks and trolled me, is consistently disregarding the consensus. --1990'sguy (talk) 18:00, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

@1990'sguy: Apologies, didn't see this message. It's been automatically unprotected now anyhow. Please, both of you, don't restart the edit war. Anarchyte (work | talk) 07:31, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Other presidents appointments

i think we should do similiar pages for other president sof the usa — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.176.167.125 (talk) 17:41, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. I encourage you to start such articles. --1990'sguy (talk) 20:17, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, go for it. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 12:37, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Looking over Ambassadors

Some of the ambassador picks have been formally nominated by President Trump to their posts. Can someone move the ambassadors listed under Possible candidates for other high-level positions to the subsection of Ambassadors of the United States. --TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 03:38, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

If you know of specific candidates who have been nominated and aren't listed in the correct subsection, then you should either move them yourself, or if you can't do that, then please make a specific request for help on particular names. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 12:42, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

I can move them for you. --Skim 19:40, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

There is already an independent article Ambassadors of the United States with candidates and announcement dates listed. It seem double work to maintain this list in two places. Rhadow (talk) 18:13, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Andrew Hemming

Is there any reason why Andrew Hemming, who recently resigned his position, is not listed in this article at all?[5] --1990'sguy (talk) 17:03, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Maybe some Users forgot to add him. If you Want to add him go ahead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 18:35, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Acting officials within the departments

Is it really necessary to include every. single. acting. official. in. every. department? They're not that important, and most aren't even "appointed" by Trump. It's just adding more of a cluster to this page. Thoughts? If no one responds within a week, I'll go ahead and remove them. Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 21:24, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

@Corkythehornetfan: I agree with removing acting officials, especially those not appointed by Trump. Marquardtika (talk) 22:48, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

I only support removing the acting appointments that were not political. Some acting officials, such as Stephen Vaughn and Thomas Homan, clearly were political appointments. --1990'sguy (talk) 16:44, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

@1990'sguy: I completely agree with you on those like Vaughn or Homan. I'm talking more about people such as Nancy Rooney or any other Acting Assistant (or Deputy) Secretaries who were/are current Associate Assist. Secretaries... if that makes sense. Basically, take a look at the Dept. of Commerce section where almost every acting assist. secretary is listed with the nominee underneath. Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 21:37, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes, those acting appointments should be removed. Thanks for the clarification. --1990'sguy (talk) 21:42, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

I agree with everyone on this one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 03:55, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

• Comment – Marquardtika, 1990'sguy and IP, I have gone ahead and removed them. If I removed some that are politically appointed (I don't think I did), then please re-add them. Thanks, Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 02:13, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Should a different shade of grey be used for appointees that are not fired or quit such as Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was promoted from Deputy? The current color used "Denotes appointees who have left office or offices which have been disbanded". This doesn't really apply for appointees that remain but are promoted.

user:mnw2000 15:21, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Being promoted is one way of leaving office. "Leaving office" is a neutral term and doesn't imply that anyone was unhappy. There's no need for another shade of gray. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 16:48, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Page Name at the end of his term in 2021

Trump's 1st term ends January 20th 2021. If he get's a 2nd term I think we should name this Page Political appointments by Donald Trump 1st term and then we can start a new page with all the People he already has in the White House with him and then if someone die's, Quits, or got Fired we can grey them and we can call the page Political appointments by Donald Trump 2nd term. Just throing this out there before 2020. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 23:47, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, that's a long way away right now, and who knows whether Trump will complete his first term or be elected to a second, and this article may not even exist by then, but if all of those things happen, then I'm going to put myself on the record as opposing the idea of creating a separate article for his second term. That's nonsensical and will inevitably end up with insane amounts of duplication or at least frustration as people try to copy all of the "holdover" appointees from Trump's first term into his second term article: it's not like anyone's appointment will expire at the end of Trump's first term. One article on this topic seems like plenty. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 16:51, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Sow down! Stop. 300K characters

This article is no longer encyclopedic. It is an encyclopedia on its own.
(1) OGE definition of a political appointee is one nominated by the White House or an agency head.
(2) An alternate definition is WH proper and appointment requiring Senate confirmation (which we have effectively done)
(3) The possible appointments are in many cases speculation, which an examination of the references show.
(4) At least delegate the ambassadorial appointments to Ambassadors of the United States. Rhadow (talk) 17:07, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

To be clear, the article is not "Political appointments during the Donald Trump presidency"; it's "Political appointments by Donald Trump," so it doesn't matter if other people can also make political appointments, those appointments would not fit here per the article title. It's not so much that we've "effectively" altered the definition, it's that we've limited our scope. But also, I would favor getting rid of the possible appointments section; I think it served a useful purpose during the transition and the early weeks/months when many prominent positions were unfilled, but now it's tedious and tiresome and not encyclopedic at all. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 16:53, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Remove "Confirmation process timeline" section?

Should we delete the "Confirmation process timeline" section? Not only is it extremely out of date and incomplete, but it mostly repeats information further up in the article, and deleting the section would save space. --1990'sguy (talk) 02:29, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

If no one is interested in updating and keeping it more complete, then I agree that it needs to go. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 16:55, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

I think we should change it up a little it should look like this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Donald_Trump#Confirmation_process_timeline Insted of Removeing it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 00:06, 3 September 2017‎ (UTC)

It doesn't matter what format it is. If it's not going to be more complete and stay updated, it needs to be removed. And if we're not going to add any information to the timeline you're pointing to, then there's no need to duplicate that timeline (which only includes Cabinet nominees) in this article. People interested in the timeline of Cabinet confirmations can find it where it already is. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 16:55, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Brian Brooks

I'm seeing no sources about Brian Brooks being nominated to be Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. I tried to remove his name from the table but I kept messing up the formatting. Can someone either provide a source or remove his name? Thanks. Marquardtika (talk) 16:28, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Done. The White House does not report nominating him or even intending to. The Senate has no record of his nomination, and the Washington Post (purportedly our main source for the article as a whole) has no listing for him. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 17:07, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Marquardtika (talk) 17:45, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

idea

I have an Idea to how we can save space. Now for the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security we should make a page called Military appointments by Donald Trump. Becuse the President can make Military appointments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Homeland_Security

And I think we should make a page called Ambassador appointments by Donald Trump so we can add the CFO's to that one becuse this one here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambassadors_of_the_United_States is all the Ambassadors and If we all come togaver to make another page so we can add the CFO's too that will be great. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 15:45, 3 September 2017‎ (UTC)

These ideas only save space in this article. What you're proposing actually multiplies the total amount of space dedicated to these topics. And I'm not sure "Military appointments" is appropriate to refer to civilian positions in the Department of Defense (which all of the DoD appointments currently on this page certainly are), and I'm quite sure it's inappropriate to refer to appointments in DHS. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 16:56, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Welcome Back I haven't saw your edits in a wile. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 04:02, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

United States Secretary of Homeland Security under Possible candidates

I think the Possible candidates for United States Secretary of Homeland Security should be on this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_of_Donald_Trump%27s_Cabinet And the John Kelly from that page the one that's have a check mark should be light grey. And for this page we should remove it from this section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 16:46, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Well, possible candidates have been removed from this page now, so probably not. If you have comments about how the other page should be edited, you should make them over there. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 20:03, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Terminology for Confirmation Process

There are several discrete and identifiable stages in the Senate confirmation process, unfortunately we are using a variety of terminology and being inconsistent about it. These are the possible stages: (1) Announcement, (2) Nomination, (3) Referral, (4) Hearing, (5) Reporting, and (6) Confirmation. Only the first, fourth, and sixth of these have consistent terminology on this page. Steps two and three are virtually simultaneous because as soon as the Senate receives a Nomination (i.e., "Sent to the Senate") it passes the nomination on to the appropriate Committee (i.e., "Referred to Committee). I think we should treat that as a single stage and insist on labeling it consistently one way or the other. The fifth step is variously described on our page as "Reported out favorably" or "Awaiting vote" or "Awaiting Senate action" but these are all equivalent: once the nomination has been reported out by the Committee, it is awaiting action by the full Senate, and the action it is awaiting is a vote, so I think we need to make a choice on how to describe this step and then stick to it. In general, I would suggest that we add a description of these stages to the Key section of the article with whatever terminology we want to use and then insist on consistent usage in accordance with that description. Thoughts, questions, objections? LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 15:37, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Technically the "Announcement" phase should not be shaded linen because those designees are not awaiting Senate confirmation (which is what linen purportedly denotes), as much as they are awaiting the Presidential action of nomination. I would favor either creating a new color for announced candidates or just removing all such references from the article. (But since the White House does formally announce the names of candidates it intends to nominate before it nominates them, I'm fine with including them in the article since I think that is more concrete and real than simple speculation.) As far as the actual use of the linen shading, I would restrict it to three stages and eliminate all mention of committees: (1) "Nomination sent to Senate" (for when the President has formally nominated someone), (2) "Hearing held", and (3) "Awaiting confirmation vote" (for when the nomination has been favorably reported out by the relevant committee). I am interested to know what other editors think. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 15:43, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

As far as I know, the main terminology of this article all comes from the Washington Post page referenced at the top. That page uses "Announced", "Referred to *relevant committee*", "Hearing held", "Reported out favorably", and "Confirmed". I could not confirm if they used "Nominated" or not. Sbb618 (talk) 17:08, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure how deliberately or consciously various editors are following the reporting of that one Washington Post page. There are certainly other sources (primary and secondary) for the information in this article, and I do not think we are under any obligation to simply mirror what is being reported by WaPo. Certainly if that is what we are trying to do, we need to say so much more clearly and directly, both for the benefit of our readers and for the benefit of the editors. All of that said, the Washington Post has five basic categories for nominees (referred to as "statuses"), which would correspond more or less to our colors: Announced (or "Awaiting nomination", we don't have a separate color for this), Nominated (or "Awaiting confirmation", which is our linen), Confirmed (our light green), Failed (our coral), and Confirmed and Resigned (our dark grey). If we are trying to follow WaPo's lead on this, then we need a new color coding for designees who have been announced but not yet actually nominated. Once announced, the WaPo tracks the progress of each nomination in four stages: "Appointment announced", "Referred to appropriate committee(s)", "Hearing held" OR "Reported out favorably", and "Confirmed". (I looked at a bunch of examples, and for each nominee WaPo seems to indicate EITHER that a hearing was held OR that the nomination was reported out favorably, but never both, and without any apparent rhyme or reason about which of the two to include: this kind of inconsistency is one reason why I would not favor trying to follow WaPo too closely.) Based on that, I would be happy to use language that matches the WaPo (and thus eschew "Sent to Senate", "Awaiting vote", etc.). However, I like the way that WaPo does not privilege the current stage over prior stages (i.e., it continues to list and date all of these stages for each nominee as the nomination proceeds), and I think we should either follow their example by listing all of the stages, or avoid listing any. Perhaps since tracking all of the stages for each nominee is such an intensive task and one which we may not be properly equipped to handle in such a way that this page both maintains an encyclopedic standard and avoids the trap of recentism, it would be better to just drop the extra details, leave nominees who have not yet been confirmed as simply "Upon Senate confirmation" (which is the only information actually relevant under the heading "Term Start Date") with no further specification, and refer our readers to WaPo and other sources if they are interested in more detailed information about the progress of any particular nominee. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 19:53, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Do any other sources follow the reporting of the WaPo? If not then I think we may consider other options. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:59, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Just Want to let everyone know the the White House does (1) Announcement, (2) Nomination https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/nominations-and-appointments

The US Senate does (3) Referral, (4) Hearing, (5) Reporting, and (6) Confirmation https://www.senate.gov/legislative/nom_confc.htm

And the washington post does (1) Announcement, (2) Nomination, (3) Referral, (4) Hearing, (5) Reporting, and (6) Confirmation. in Tracking wise. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-administration-appointee-tracker/database/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 13:04, 18 September 2017‎ (UTC)

Things that need to be updated

I am on the washington post page as I clicked on Some of the names some of them are Waiting for the Full Senate like Ryan Douglas Nelson Solicitor of the Interior the last thing that was up Dated was (Sent to Senate; 08/02/17) and now on the washington post page it reads (Reported out favorably) (Awaiting Senate action; 08/19/17)

Here is the list who needs to be updated

(Reported out favorably) (Awaiting Senate action;

Ryan Douglas Nelson: Solicitor of the Interior

Stephen B. King: Ambassador to the Czech Republic

K. T. McFarland: Ambassador to Singapore

Doug Manchester: Ambassador to the Bahamas

Robert Charrow: General Counsel of Health and Human Services

Matthew Bassett: Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services (Legislation)

Brett Giroir: Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services (Health)

Paul Compton: General Counsel of Housing and Urban Development

Steven Bradbury: General Counsel of Transportation

Ronald Batory: Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration

Joseph Balash: Assistant Secretary of the Interior (Land and Minerals Management)

Joseph Otting: Comptroller of the Currency

J. Steven Dowd: United States Director of the African Development Bank

Dawn DeBerry Stump: Commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Ajit Pai: Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission

Randy Quarles : FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM

Henry Kerner: Special Counsel of the Office of Special Counsel — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 16:54, 27 September 2017‎ (UTC)

Please learn to sign your posts on talk pages. Just type the four tildes at the end of your comment like this: ~~~~ LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 22:15, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Separately, and to reply to the substance here, this is exactly why I support dropping any attempt to track each nomination as it happens. We are not equipped for that, we're not keeping up with it, and it is not Wikipedia's place to do so. Let WaPo track the nominations, all we need to do is put the names up and shade them when they get confirmed. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 22:17, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Ok How is this for the end of my comment? 96.36.68.29 (talk) 00:48, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Perfect. Looks like you figured it out. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 02:10, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Proposals for Things to Remove

Both the timeline section and the possible candidates section have been proposed for removal from the article. I think it's time to do something about that. Is anyone defending keeping them here? Also, if we want to cut down on the size of the article, there are at least three large groups of appointments that could be constructively moved elsewhere: Ambassadors (often discussed), U.S. Attorneys (eventually there will be 90+ of these), and U.S. Marshals (same as USA's, Trump's just been slower getting around to nominating them). Getting those appointments off this page could help keep its size in check. Thoughts? LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 17:28, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm on board with moving the U.S. Attorneys. Should we start a new page and/or template that lists them all? Alternatively, perhaps we could list them at United States Attorney, maybe alongside the section entitled "List of current U.S. Attorneys' offices." We could do something similar with the U.S. Marshals. I think the possible candidates section should go, too. It's speculative and not particularly useful. Marquardtika (talk) 17:49, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

I would probably go for a new page that lists them all, although I would also be fine with (and might prefer) two pages, one for "Current United States Attorneys" (which would include those who are acting USAs) and one for "United States Attorneys appointed by Donald Trump" (which would leave a lot of positions vacant at the moment and would include all USAs appointed throughout his term, even if he ends up appointing several people to the same position). The latter article would be sensibly linked to from this one and would obviate the need for listing those appointments here. I would recommend doing the same thing for the US Marshals and the Ambassadors. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 23:13, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

I agree with both of you. Let's move the USAs to a separate page, and get rid of the timeline and possible candidates. Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 23:27, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

@Corkythehornetfan: I'm removing the timeline and the possible candidates sections. Are you in favor of moving the USAs to "List of current United States Attorneys" or "List of United States Attorneys appointed by Donald Trump" or both? Personally, I favor having both articles because eventually (say, during the next presidency) they will be sufficiently distinct to both be separately useful, but I'd like some other editors to chime in one way or the other. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 17:34, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

I'd support both. If we do that, only the one for Trump would need to be listed above like the federal judges. Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 17:45, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. @Marquardtika:: Your thoughts? LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 19:28, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

I agree that creating both pages is a good idea. Marquardtika (talk) 19:39, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Alright, let's take them one at a time then . . . LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 19:49, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Okay, so I've created United States Attorneys appointed by Donald Trump. What do you think? LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 20:02, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Nice, thanks for getting that up so quickly. Looking good to me. I'm going to keep plugging away at creating pages for U.S. Attorney nominees so we can reduce the number of red links on that page. Is the next step to remove the U.S Attorneys from this page? Marquardtika (talk) 21:01, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

I have removed the US Attorneys from this page and added a link to the separate article for them. I redivided the one enormous table into separate tables for each department in order to provide an appropriate place for the link, but I think that will also help with the editing of the information in general. Are we ready to pursue the same approach to the US Marshals and the Ambassadors, or should we wait to see how other editors react to what's already been done? LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 01:51, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

I say go for it-I don't see any opposition to the previous changes, so I think it makes sense to also remove the US Marshals & Ambassadors. Marquardtika (talk) 19:08, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

I would oppose removing the ambassadors listed on this page as long as the ambassadors listed are limited to political appointees. Ambassadors (especially to important countries such as Russia or China or organizations such as the UN or NATO) are an important position and are much different from the 93 US Attorneys and US Marshall's which only cover small states and regions. I think you can remove some of the positions included in the "other independent agencies" section as even though these positions may be listed by the Washington Post nominations tracker, the head of the Delta Regional Authority or the Farm Credit Administration should not be high-profile enough to be listed on this page, in contrast to the Ambassador to China or the Ambassador to the United Kingdom. This page should not be a staff directory for people working in the Trump administration but should only include high-level political appointees that are either confirmed by the Senate or are the heads or important deputies of a White House Office. Zbase4 (talk) 04:37, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

I strongly oppose removing any positions included in the "other independent agencies" section. There is not reason for that. This is a list of political appointment by Trump, those are political appointment. Nicodes2 (talk) 13:23, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think it's our place to pick and choose among the various political appointments. The distinction we've been trying to make with ambassadors is already tenuous and a number of editors have raised fair objections to it. If we moved the ambassadors to a new page (which I fully support), I would include all ambassadors appointed by Trump on it, but I would include an extra column to distinguish between those who were career FSOs and those who were not. In general, I think moving a lot of the information from this page to somewhere else is a good idea (I would probably support separate pages for Trump's appointments in each department if there were support for it). The only ambassador I would leave on this page would be UN Ambassador, since that position has cabinet rank. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 17:01, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

All of the ambassadors are already listed on the page Ambassadors of the United States, there is no need to duplicate this type of information in another article. Any new article such as Ambassadors of the United States appointed by Donald Trump would be simply listing only the ambassadors appointed after January 20, 2017, which would eventually be all of them. Career FSOs are not appointed by Trump, they are chosen by the State Department and therefore career FSOs should not be included in this article or any other article listing political appointments by Trump because Career FSOs are NOT political appointments. Political appointees should be included in this article as they are chosen directly by Trump to fulfill a key role in his administration, for example Trump directly chose Terry Branstad as Ambassador to China, while he did not have any input on choosing Todd Haskell as the Ambassador to the Republic of the Congo. Zbase4 (talk) 21:46, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

You're wrong on two points. (1) An article of Ambassadors appointed by Donald Trump would eventually include (presumably) multiple people appointed to the same ambassadorship as ambassadors turn over during the Trump administration and would thus be distinguished from an article which only lists current ambassadors. Similarly, in the future, when some other president has replaced all of Trump's ambassadors the content of Ambassadors of the United States and Ambassadors of the United States appointed by Donald Trump would obviously be very different. So the duplication is only temporary, but also necessary if we would like Wikipedia to maintain accurate information both about who the current ambassadors are (will continue changing as long as the US has ambassadors) and about who Trump appoints as ambassadors. And obviously we are already interested in both of these things since the former page already exists and this article is already keeping track of Trump ambassador appointments. (2) All ambassadors are officially nominated and appointed by the President, whether they are career FSOs or not. Trump may be more directly involved in the selection of ambassadors like Terry Branstad, but formally all ambassadors are equally appointed by the President (this is actually in the Constitution). And while the distinction you are making between non-career-FSO ambassadors and career-FSO ambassadors is the one that has been used to justify excluding the former from this article, it has previously been pointed out by other editors that under the terminology used by official government agencies, both types are equally to be considered "political appointments", your (and my) desired usage of the term "political" in this context notwithstanding. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 05:26, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

I would support moving the appointees in the section Executive Office of the President to a new article, as it seems as though that is not only the largest and most unwieldy section, but it would also distinguish this article as dealing with the high-level cabinet agency appointments rather than the high turnover rate which exists in Trump's White House staff. For example, Trump has already changed his NSA, Chief of Staff, Chief Strategist, deputy NSA, communications director (thrice), and his Press Secretary, while Trump has so far made very few staff changes to his Cabinet and sub-Cabinet Senate appointments. Zbase4 (talk) 21:46, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

That would certainly be one section that would seem to benefit very much by being moved at least mostly to its own page. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 05:26, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

I was trying to remove the 0's to try to save space under the Term Start Section When It reads 09/08/17 and trying to make it 9/8/17 or 6/19/17 and stuff like that 96.36.68.29 (talk) 15:15, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Withdrawals

Two nominations withdrawn by president on September 28, per Washington Post tracker: Ryan Dean Newman and David Ehrhart. Marquardtika (talk) 16:01, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Pamela Patenaude

I am writing this here so more people see it. Pam Patenaude has a new official photo[6] (the one currently shown was who Bush Administration photo), and I won't have the time or interest to go through the trouble of uploading it and dealing with copyright rules. --1990'sguy (talk) 01:31, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

More official photos

Mark S. Inch also has an official photo (and once again, I will not upload it, at least right now, due to time and lack of desire to deal with copyright law): [7] --1990'sguy (talk) 14:11, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

@1990'sguy: I've updated the pictures. Since I tend to do most of the uploading pictures here, feel free to drop by my talk page if see one that needs updated. Corky ^{Buzz by the Hornet's Nest} 16:28, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Emblem of the United Nations

I think we should put the Emblem of the United Nations to the United Nations staff that are part of the State Department here are the following jobs Jay Patrick Murray - Alternate Representative to the United Nations Carlos Trujillo - Representative to the United Nations General Assembly Kelley Eckels Currie - Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council Nikki Haley - Ambassador to the United Nations Becuse this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emblem_of_the_United_Nations.svg is the simble of the United Nations I know they are State Department Jobs if any one want to support me on this or not go a head.96.36.68.29 (talk) 14:28, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

I disagree with this proposed change because the nominees in question work for the United States -- they are the U.S.'s representatives to the United Nations (they don't work for the UN, they work for the U.S.). Since they are State Department nominees, they should have the seal of the organization they work for. --1990'sguy (talk) 20:34, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

RfC: Should we include career diplomats?

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The consensus seems to be not to include career diplomats. The two !votes for full inclusion were not considered, as they were not based on policy. However DrFleischman (talk · contribs) makes an excellent point in referencing WP:LISTCRITERIA. Presently, it appears that the criteria stated in the list lead would allow at least some career diplomats to be included. I confess that I am personally too ignorant of the subject matter to determine how inclusive the criteria are, but they should be clarified to reflect the consensus here. How best to achieve this clarification is left as an exercise for the reader! :) Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 13:57, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

---

Question: Should we include nominations of FSOs and career diplomats in this article? --1990'sguy (talk) 23:17, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Options:

• Support including career diplomats
• Oppose including career diplomats

Comments

• Oppose inclusion: First, I have not seen a talk page discussion here where there was a consensus to include FSOs. Several discussions, such as here, along with the sections above entitled "Trimming of announced offices from article", "Should their be all the ambassadors?", and "United States Ambassador to South Sudan/Number of Trump's nominees have been confirmed," all suggest a consensus against including FSOs. Also, FSO nominations are not political appointments, and most of them are for ambassadorships. The Washington Post article that we cite at the top of the article also differentiates between FSO nominations and political appointments. --1990'sguy (talk) 23:17, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose inclusion: They're not political appointments, so definitely not. Earthscent (talk) 01:06, 8 August 2017 (UTC).

• Support Inclusion: They are Political appointments of (Donald J. Trump). I Support what the IP's statement they should be included. Some of the Users on here should respect them as any other appointee. They are Government Employees you know. Like what John McCain seid Quote (We are not getting done my friends! We are not Done!) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:40c:8203:e702:b8e9:89b3:97eb:9b95 (talk) 23:00, 7 August 2017‎ (UTC)

What are you talking about? That argument doesn't make any sense. If you want to convince people of your position, try something else. Earthscent (talk) 10:26, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

No IP user had made any statement in this RfC prior to you, so what statement are you purporting to support? LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 12:35, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose inclusion: Look, the word "political" in the title implies that this article is going to do something narrower and more specific than simply list all "Appointments by Donald Trump". Pointing out that career FSO appointments are appointments doesn't prove they're political and thus merit inclusion in this article. There are at least three important categories of appointments that are not included here: (1) judges, which are definitely political, but which have their own article, (2) military officers, which are not political appointments in the sense of this article, but career service promotions (by the way, there have been dozens and dozens of these already in the Trump administration), and (3) career FSO appointments, which also fail to be political appointments in the sense of this article and are more like the military's career service promotions. I believe there are other more or less similar branches of executive service which technically require presidential appointment for what are basically career promotions, and we don't want those here either. As I have said before, unless and until Trump finds a way to reward a supporter with an appointment to a Generalship, those don't need to be included, and likewise, people who have made a career of serving in the foreign service and cap that off with an ambassadorship don't need to be included here either (but they would obviously belong in other articles like "Ambassadors of the United States"). LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 12:33, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support inclusion (partially). The inclusion criteria are quite explicit: This is a list of political appointments made by the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump. When you click on the link, you are sent to Political appointments in the United States which is based on the OGE definition of "political appointee" and explicitly includes ambassadors and other FSOs. Does this include all "career diplomats"? Of course not because most career diplomats aren't appointed. I don't know if there's any distinction between appointed career diplomats and appointed FSOs. My main point, however, is that if our selection criteria are to refer to Political appointments in the United States then we should apply that standard. Otherwise we must come up with new, unambiguous selection criteria. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 19:26, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support inclusion (partial) - agree with the above, any political appointment by President Trump fits. Markbassett (talk) 23:34, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose per others opposing. Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 20:59, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

• Comment: Rhadow's comment in the section above makes a lot of sense, so I will make note of it here. There is no reason to duplicate the list of ambassadors in two articles. This article should be limited to the political ambassador nominees. --1990'sguy (talk) 02:21, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose inclusion: The Executive Branch is responsible for some 4,000 appointments, a thousand of which require Senate approval. This article would be way too long with all of them. As to diplomats, the Executive, though its arm the State Department, appoints all of them, even if the Ambassador to Budakan is a career diplomat who has been there since the Carter Administration. The Ambassadorship to the Court of St James goes to the highest bidder. As a matter of best practice, I recommend that all of the ambassadors be stricken from this list, with a
  Main article: Ambassadors of the United States
  inserted. Rhadow (talk) 20:40, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

• Some hahas before the discussion continues -- OGE definition: "For purposes of this discussion, the term "political appointee" refers broadly to any employee who is appointed by the President, the Vice President, or agency head."
  "If you have a job in your department that can't be done by a Democrat, abolish the job," Andrew Jackson allegedly said. Rhadow (talk) 23:09, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support inclusion - I think the Only CFO's President Trump appointed so far and there is only 14 of them Should be added. To some of the Oppose Users. What if you are a CFO and no one puts your name or Picture on a page how would that make you fell? It would make me sad. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.36.68.29 (talk) 19:55, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

96.36.68.29 Names and photos of Career FSOs can as easily go on Ambassadors of the United States. This page is already 300K characters. Rhadow (talk) 20:01, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

That CFOs might want their name and picture on Wikipedia is not a legitimate reason add them. There are many people who don't meet Wikipedia's criteria for notability who I'm sure wish that they had their own article, for example. --1990'sguy (talk) 20:56, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose- I've been convinced simply because the length will be enormous. This list is already getting a bit sloppy. A separate list seems more than adequate. Avilan01 (talk) 18:28, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.