President Trump fired the two remaining Democratic members of the Election Assistance Commission on Thursday, leaving the independent federal board with no sitting commissioners less than four months before the 2026 midterm elections. The White House confirmed the removals to The Hill, citing a recent Supreme Court ruling as legal authority for the action.
The fired commissioners, Benjamin Hovland and Thomas Hicks, are both Democrats. Republican commissioner Christy McCormick resigned separately. A fourth seat on the commission was already vacant. The result: an agency created by Congress to help states run clean elections now has zero members and, by most legal readings, cannot act.
The move fits a broader pattern of personnel decisions across the executive branch, where the administration has moved to align independent boards and agencies with White House priorities on election integrity, national security, and government accountability.
A White House official pointed to what the administration calls "the Slaughter decision", a Supreme Court ruling issued last month that determined the president has the authority to remove members of the Federal Trade Commission. The official told reporters the decision "gives the President precedence" to act.
The White House framed the firings in direct terms. A spokesperson stated:
"The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America's elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted."
The official added that the administration "from the start has been working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse, and investing in a strong infrastructure to sustain that mission especially in the midterm elections."
The legal question of whether a ruling about the FTC applies with equal force to the EAC remains unresolved. The package does not indicate any court has ruled specifically on the EAC's status under the Slaughter framework. But the White House clearly believes the precedent extends to other independent commissions, and is acting on that belief.
The Election Assistance Commission was established in 2002 under the Help America Vote Act, the law Congress passed after the disputed 2000 presidential election exposed serious problems in how states administered voting. The EAC describes itself as "a bipartisan and independent board that helps voters participate in the process and helps officials carry out elections."
Among its responsibilities: the commission maintains the national mail voter registration form developed under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. It also distributes federal grants to states, oversees voting system testing, and sets standards for election administration, as AP News reported.
With all commissioners gone, the agency's operational future is unclear. Any new commissioners Trump appoints would require Senate confirmation. The administration has not announced nominees.
The firings follow a period of friction between the White House and the EAC. AP News reported that the commission had resisted the administration's push to require citizenship documentation on voter registration forms, a policy goal Trump has pursued as part of his broader election integrity agenda.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed that staffers would "fight this power grab at every turn." Schumer's use of "power grab" is his characterization; the underlying fact is that the president removed commissioners from an independent board using authority he says the Supreme Court granted him.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia said the move "should concern every American, regardless of party." Sen. Alex Padilla and Rep. Joe Morelle issued a joint statement claiming, as AP News reported, that "President Trump is trying to dismantle yet another independent guardrail of our democracy designed to keep elections fair and secure."
Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice warned that without bipartisan replacements confirmed by the Senate, "the agency cannot lawfully make any decisions that affect how Americans vote," Breitbart reported.
The Democratic objections follow a familiar script. Every time this administration has moved to reshape federal agencies, from the termination of National Science Board members to other personnel actions, the opposition frames the move as a threat to democracy itself.
The EAC firings do not exist in isolation. Trump has been highly critical of voting by mail and has moved to place limits on the process. Last month, Postmaster General David Steiner announced that the U.S. Postal Service will no longer deliver mail ballots in states that refuse to provide sensitive voter data to the federal government.
Which states are refusing, and what specific data the federal government is requesting, remain open questions. But the direction is clear: the administration wants tighter controls on mail voting and is willing to use multiple levers of executive power to get them.
The pattern extends well beyond election policy. The administration has pursued aggressive personnel changes across the federal bureaucracy, including DOJ terminations of prosecutors tied to enforcement actions the White House viewed as politically motivated.
Critics call it overreach. Supporters call it long overdue accountability. The tension between an elected president and the permanent bureaucracy is as old as the civil service itself, but rarely has a president moved this quickly to resolve it in his favor.
One practical consequence deserves attention. The EAC, by statute, is a four-member commission. With zero members, it cannot hold meetings, vote on policy, certify voting systems, or distribute grants. If Trump delays nominating replacements, or if Senate Democrats slow-walk confirmations, the agency could sit empty through the midterms.
That outcome would not necessarily harm election administration on the ground. States run their own elections. The EAC's role is advisory and administrative, not operational. But it would remove one layer of federal oversight that Democrats have relied on to shape voting rules from Washington.
Whether that is a loss or a gain depends entirely on whether you believe the EAC was a neutral umpire or another arm of the federal apparatus that consistently pushed to loosen voting safeguards.
The administration's willingness to use the Slaughter decision so broadly, applying an FTC ruling to an election commission, signals that other independent boards may face similar action. High-profile firings in the military have already drawn bipartisan scrutiny, and the legal boundaries of presidential removal power remain a live issue before the courts.
The EAC was created to fix problems exposed by hanging chads and butterfly ballots in Florida a quarter-century ago. In the years since, it became a Washington fixture, bipartisan in structure, but operating in a policy environment where "bipartisan" often meant both parties agreeing to make voter registration easier and mail voting more expansive.
Trump's position is straightforward: if commissioners are not aligned with his goal of tightening election security, he has the authority, and now the Supreme Court backing, to replace them. Democrats argue the commission's independence is the whole point.
New appointees, if nominated, would face Senate confirmation. That process will test whether the administration can find commissioners who satisfy both the White House's election integrity priorities and the Senate's appetite for bipartisan governance. The broader reshuffling of personnel across the executive branch, including new staff appointments in the vice president's office, suggests the administration is building a team built around loyalty to its agenda.
For now, the EAC sits empty. The midterms are approaching. And the question is not whether the president has the power to fire commissioners, the Supreme Court appears to have settled that. The question is whether anyone in Washington will use the vacancy to actually fix what the commission was supposed to do in the first place: make sure only legal votes count.
An agency with no members can't do much damage. Given the EAC's track record, that might be the best outcome voters could ask for.
