President Donald Trump fired the two remaining Democratic members of the Election Assistance Commission on Friday, leaving the bipartisan federal panel with zero sitting commissioners just four months before the 2026 midterm elections. The White House pointed to the Supreme Court’s recent Trump v. Slaughter ruling as the legal basis for the removals, and to the commission’s failure to act on non-citizen voting as the reason.
Democratic commissioners Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland were removed the same day Republican commissioner Christy McCormick resigned, Breitbart News reported. A fourth member, former Republican commissioner Donald Palmer, had already left his post voluntarily earlier this year. The result: an agency created by Congress in 2002 to oversee voting system certification and maintain the national voter registration form now has no one at the helm.
The White House made no apology for the sweep. In a statement issued to the Associated Press, a White House official laid out the administration’s position plainly:
“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 Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so.”
That statement captures the two-part logic behind the move: legal authority from the Supreme Court, and a policy judgment that the EAC was not doing its job on election integrity.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Trump v. Slaughter, handed down June 29, reshaped the relationship between the presidency and the constellation of independent federal agencies that operate across Washington. The ruling overturned longstanding precedents that had restricted presidents from firing officials at independent agencies without cause, the AP reported.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, framed the principle in direct terms. As the New York Post reported, Roberts wrote:
“Neither Congress nor the courts may saddle [the president] with those with whom he cannot work.”
For Trump, the decision carried personal significance. In an exclusive Oval Office interview with Breitbart News last month, Trump indicated that the Slaughter ruling “more than made up” for what he considered a disappointing Supreme Court decision upholding birthright citizenship. The new personnel authority gave the president a concrete tool, and he wasted little time using it.
The EAC was not the only arena where the administration has pressed executive power to its limits. A federal judge recently halted a DOJ anti-weaponization fund in a separate clash over the boundaries of executive action.
The Election Assistance Commission was established after the chaotic 2000 presidential election to bring order to America’s decentralized voting infrastructure. It distributes federal grants to states, oversees the testing and certification of voting systems, and maintains the national voter registration forms that every state relies on, the Washington Times reported.
That last function, the voter registration form, sits at the center of the dispute. The administration accused the commission of dragging its feet on addressing non-citizen voting ahead of the approaching midterms. The specific actions or inactions that triggered the president’s frustration have not been detailed publicly, but the White House statement made clear the administration viewed the commission’s posture as incompatible with election security.
Trump has separately urged Congress to pass the “Save America Act,” which addresses what he has called a voting “double standard.” The legislative push and the EAC firings share a common thread: the administration’s view that existing institutions have not taken the non-citizen voting issue seriously enough.
That broader pattern, Democrats creating commissions to target the president while the president dismantles commissions he views as obstacles, captures the current state of Washington’s institutional warfare.
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer called the firings a direct threat to election integrity, though his framing was the mirror image of the White House’s. The Washington Times quoted Schumer:
“Firing every remaining member of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission months before the midterms is a brazen attempt to seize control of our elections before a single vote is cast.”
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia demanded “an immediate explanation,” calling the removal of every remaining commissioner “an extraordinary step” just months before voters head to the polls. Senator Alex Padilla and Representative Joe Morelle issued a joint statement accusing Trump of trying to “dismantle yet another independent guardrail of our democracy designed to keep elections fair and secure.”
Even some Republicans expressed discomfort. Former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan told the Washington Examiner that “Donald Trump wants to eliminate oversight of his administration’s oversight, and that’s what this is about.”
Duncan, of course, has been a persistent Trump critic. His framing tracks with the broader Democratic argument rather than with the administration’s stated rationale about non-citizen voting.
With all four commissioner seats now empty, the EAC faces an uncertain operational future. The agency’s staff presumably remains in place, but the absence of any commissioners raises immediate questions about its ability to certify voting systems, approve grants, or update registration forms ahead of November. None of the available reporting addresses whether the administration has nominated replacements or outlined a timeline for doing so.
The Democratic response has focused almost entirely on the timing, four months before the midterms, and on the principle of independent agency autonomy. What Democrats have not engaged with is the underlying policy complaint: that the commission was not adequately addressing the risk of non-citizens appearing on voter rolls.
That evasion is telling. The left’s preferred framing treats any mention of non-citizen voting as an attack on democracy itself, rather than as a legitimate administrative concern. But if the EAC’s job includes maintaining the integrity of national voter registration forms, then the question of who appears on those forms is not a fringe concern. It is the commission’s core mandate.
The pattern is familiar. Democrats have shown far more energy pouring dark money into redistricting fights and challenging the administration’s personnel decisions than engaging with the substance of election security. When the president acts to enforce the rules, they call it a power grab. When the commission fails to enforce the rules, they call it independence.
The Slaughter decision gives the administration firm legal footing. A 6-3 majority is not a razor-thin margin, and Roberts’s language, that the president cannot be saddled with officials “with whom he cannot work”, is broad enough to cover exactly this kind of personnel action. The White House cited it explicitly, and no legal challenge to the EAC firings has been reported.
That does not mean the move is without political risk. The midterms are approaching, and Democrats will use the empty commission as a talking point about election sabotage. The administration will need to move quickly to fill the seats, or explain why the agency can function without commissioners, to avoid handing opponents a narrative weapon.
The broader clash over executive authority and independent agencies is playing out across multiple fronts. A recent D.C. Circuit ruling blocking a Trump policy on transgender troops underscored how courts and agencies remain contested terrain between the administration and its opponents.
But on the EAC specifically, the legal question appears settled. The political question is whether the administration can turn a cleared board into a reformed one before November.
The EAC was never supposed to be a partisan battleground. It was created to help states run clean, functional elections after the hanging-chad debacle of 2000. Its mission was practical: test voting machines, distribute grants, maintain registration forms.
Somewhere along the way, the commission became another Washington body more interested in preserving its own autonomy than in fulfilling its mandate. When the president, backed by a clear Supreme Court majority, concluded that the commission was failing to address a real problem, he acted.
The removed commissioners have not publicly responded to or contested their dismissals. Their silence, for now, speaks for itself.
Democrats can call it a power grab. But when an agency tasked with election integrity won’t address who belongs on the voter rolls, the real question isn’t why the president acted. It’s why the commission didn’t.
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