Trump Just Took a Hatchet to the FEC

When Democrats and the liberal media finally realize this, you can bet they’ll start spreading the ‘Trump is trying to steal the election’ narratives. Anything this man does is met with apocalyptic reactions from his detractors, which is both extremely annoying and somewhat entertaining. Tonight’s latest move: Trump has fired two Democrats from the federal Election Assistance Commission. A third member, a Republican, had already resigned (via NOTUS):

The White House fired two Democratic Election Assistance Commission members Thursday afternoon, completely vacating the federal agency in charge of election management guidelines after the remaining Republican member resigned.

[…]

“Trump couldn’t rig the elections through the SAVE Act, so he’s now moving unilaterally to subvert the 2026 elections starting with sacking the bipartisan EAC commissioners,” said Tim Lim, a Democratic strategist working on election administration issues. “Between the FBI surging into Fulton County and today’s action, it’s clear Donald Trump is determined to stop a free and fair election this November.”

[…]

Congress established the small federal agency through the Help America Vote Act after the tightly contested 2000 presidential election in order to provide best practices to state and municipal election officials, as well as to develop specifications for testing and certifying voting systems. The four-person, bipartisan panel issues voluntary guidance and holds no enforcement authority.

Republicans have tried — unsuccessfully — to eliminate the agency, the size of which former President Joe Biden doubled during his term. It now has just 65 employees after a wave of Trump cuts.

Other election officials and lawmakers have criticized the agency for not adequately advancing election security measures in the past, though the commission’s membership has been in flux throughout its existence. The EAC was without a quorum for years — frozen in its abilities to update voting guidance — until the Senate confirmed new commissioners in 2019.

Thursday’s firings could endanger the government’s ability to make bipartisan election-related recommendations ahead of the midterms, particularly as Trump moves to aggressively reshape the way the country votes.

It seems Trump is quickly using the Slaughter ruling, which gave him broad power to fire independent government officials, to his advantage. And I don’t mean that negatively. The ruling exempted the Federal Reserve, but the main issue in that case was the firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, whom the Supreme Court said could be dismissed by the president without cause. 

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