Independent regulatory commission. Five commissioners appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serving five-year terms. Not more than three commissioners may be members of the same political party.
Public records
Who controls a federal agency
Appointment, terms, and the partisan-balance limits Congress wrote into statute, for 25 federal agencies — each cited to the section of the U.S. Code it came from.
Part of Sift, a news-context project — but this page is public-records reference, and contains no AI-generated text. 25 of the 93 agencies Sift holds appear here: the ones whose governing law has been read and cited.
Why this matters
13 of these 25 agencies operate under a limit, written into their authorizing statute, on how many members may belong to one political party. The Federal Election Commission is the clearest case: six voting members, no more than three from either party, and no tie-breaking seat — so a party-line split is 3–3 and nothing carries. That is structural, not a matter of personality or of who is currently in office. Where a statute sets no such limit — the National Labor Relations Board, for instance — that absence is a fact about the agency too.
Independent regulatory commission. Five commissioners appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serving seven-year terms. Not more than three commissioners may be affiliated with the same political party.
Independent regulatory commission. Five members appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serving five-year terms. Not more than three members may be of the same political party.
Independent regulatory commission. Five commissioners appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serving five-year terms. No more than three commissioners may belong to the same political party.
Governed by a five-member Board of Directors: the Comptroller of the Currency and the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau serve ex officio, and three members are appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate for six-year terms. One appointed member must have State bank supervisory experience. Not more than three Board members may be of the same political party.
Independent regulatory commission. Six voting members appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, each serving a single six-year term, plus the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House as non-voting ex officio members. No more than three appointed members may be affiliated with the same political party.
Independent regulatory commission. Five members appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serving five-year terms. Not more than three members may be of the same political party.
Independent regulatory commission. Five commissioners appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serving five-year terms. Not more than three commissioners may be appointed from the same political party.
Independent regulatory commission. Five commissioners appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serving seven-year terms. Not more than three commissioners may be members of the same political party.
Governed by a three-member Board appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serving six-year terms. Not more than two Board members may be of the same political party.
Independent board of five members appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serving five-year terms. Not more than three members may be appointed from the same political party.
Independent regulatory commission. Five members appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serving five-year terms commencing July 1. Not more than three members may be of the same political party. The President designates one member as Chairman.
Independent regulatory commission. Five commissioners appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serving five-year terms. Not more than three may be members of the same political party, and appointments alternate between parties as nearly as practicable.
Within the Department of Health and Human Services. The Director is appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and also serves as Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. The Senate-confirmation requirement was added by Pub. L. 117-328 § 2101(a) (Dec. 29, 2022).
Independent bureau within the Federal Reserve System, headed by a single Director rather than a commission. The Director is appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate for a five-year term.
Established by Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1970 rather than by an authorizing statute; transmitted to Congress on July 9, 1970, and the agency began operations on December 2, 1970. Created as a free-standing agency rather than a unit of an existing department. The Administrator and Deputy Administrator are appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.
Within the Department of Justice. The Director is appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate and may not serve more than one ten-year term.
Board of Governors of seven members appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serving fourteen-year terms. At least one member must have experience working in or supervising community banks with under $10 billion in assets.
Within the Department of Health and Human Services. The Commissioner of Food and Drugs is appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.
Within the Department of the Treasury. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue is appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate for a five-year term.
Independent agency. Five members appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serving five-year terms. The statute sets no partisan-balance requirement.
Executive department. The Secretary of Defense is appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. A commissioned officer may not be appointed within seven years of leaving active duty below grade O-7, or within ten years at grade O-7 or above.
Executive department. The Attorney General is appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate and is the head of the Department of Justice.
Executive department, established by acts of Congress in 1789, headed by the Secretary of State.
Executive department. The Secretary of the Treasury is appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.
How this page was made
Each entry states only what the cited section says. Facts that change with an administration — who currently chairs an agency, its present composition, which president appointed the sitting majority — are deliberately absent: they go stale and there is no process here to refresh them. What remains is structural and durable.
No part of this page is AI-generated. These are statutory facts, quoted or summarized from the sections linked beside each one.
What is missing
The other 68 agencies Sift holds are omitted rather than summarized from memory. Each one appears here only once its governing statute has been read and cited — which is slower than filling the gaps from general knowledge, and is the point.