Monitoring democratic institutions through public records
Executive Actions — Week of Sep 15, 2025
Tracking presidential actions and new regulations. Government actions that bypass normal legislative or regulatory processes, concentrate decision-making authority, or expand executive power beyond established norms.
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This week, two government actions stood out for potentially shifting power over personnel decisions — one involving local judges in Washington, D.C., and the other involving senior federal employees across the government.
The House of Representatives advanced the District of Columbia Judicial Nominations Reform Act, a bill that would eliminate the commission that currently screens and recommends candidates for D.C.'s local courts, giving the President sole power to nominate judges for those positions. This might matter because D.C.'s local courts handle ordinary cases — traffic tickets, housing disputes, family matters — and D.C. residents have no voting member of Congress to influence who sits on their benches. The screening commission has existed since 1973 to keep local judicial appointments merit-based rather than purely political.
The most likely alternative explanation is straightforward: Congress has constitutional authority over D.C., and supporters argue this simply brings D.C. judicial appointments in line with how federal judges are already chosen. The bill followed normal legislative procedure with floor debate. It also remains uncertain whether the Senate would take it up.
Separately, the Office of Personnel Management finalized a rule titled Assuring Responsive and Accountable Federal Executive Management, which allows agencies to impose caps on how many senior executives can receive top performance ratings. The government's own data shows 96% of senior executives currently receive the highest ratings, so addressing rating inflation is a legitimate goal. The concern is that this tool could also be used to force low ratings on career officials for political reasons rather than performance reasons, particularly given other recent actions targeting civil service protections.
Limitations: This analysis covers publicly available documents and reflects AI-assisted review, not a definitive finding of fact. The small number of documents reviewed in detail limits the strength of conclusions about broader patterns.