Institutions

The institutions are five officials the President appoints but does not fully control. They are the Federal Reserve Chair, the FBI Director, the head of the intelligence community, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Surgeon General. Each has an age, a competence score, a loyalty score, an ideology score, and, if the post has a fixed term, a countdown to when that term expires. The five appear together in their own panel on the dashboard, separate from the cabinet.

The posts

Every era offers the same five seats, with small differences between eras. The intelligence post is the Director of National Intelligence in the modern era and the CIA Director in earlier eras. The FBI Director serves a ten-year term in the modern era and in the 1990s, and has no fixed term before that.

• Federal Reserve Chair: a four-year term, confirmed by the Senate, and cannot be fired while Checks and Balances is on.
• FBI Director: confirmed by the Senate except in the earliest eras.
• Director of National Intelligence or CIA Director: the modern post is always Senate-confirmed; the CIA Director is confirmed from the 1970s onward.
• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: a two-year term, confirmed by the Senate.
• Surgeon General: a four-year term, confirmed by the Senate.

Named presidencies such as Kennedy, Nixon or Trump start with their real officeholders in these posts. A custom presidency, or a scenario without its own roster, reuses the roster of the closest named preset.

Ageing, terms and death

Each month every filled post ages. When a termed post reaches its expiry the official leaves and the seat falls vacant. The dashboard card shows a countdown bar that turns amber inside the last six months of a term and red inside the last three. An elderly official, from the age of 70, can also die in office, and the chance of this rises further from the age of 80. Only one vacancy is announced in any month.

Firing

A Fire button appears on any card whose post can be fired. It asks for confirmation first, and the confirmation names the points of approval it will cost, warning that the loss will be significant or, for the costliest posts, extremely damaging. Firing takes those points off approval and leaves the seat vacant. The Federal Reserve Chair has no Fire button while Checks and Balances is switched on; with the toggle off, the Chair can be fired like anyone else. Writing an order to fire, disband or shut down one of these posts directly into the policy box works the same as pressing the button, and naming a replacement in the same order appoints that person on the spot.

Appointment

A vacant card carries an Appoint button, which offers a choice of five generated candidates. The same pool stays available for several months before it is refreshed. Choosing a candidate for a Senate-confirmed post sends the pick to a Senate vote; confirmation is easier with a friendly Senate and harder the further the nominee sits from the political centre. A post that needs no confirmation is filled the moment it is chosen. Once Congress has been dissolved (see Special actions), every seat fills by decree instead, with no vote at all.

What the scores affect

In an ordinary game, the competence, loyalty and ideology scores shown on each card make no difference to play. The exception is the Designated Survivor scenario, where a filled Director of National Intelligence, FBI Director and Joint Chiefs post speed up the hunt for the attackers, and an empty FBI Director or intelligence post raises the threat level.