President Donald Trump removed the two remaining Democratic members of the Election Assistance Commission on Friday, invoking the Supreme Court's recent Trump v. Slaughter decision to assert his authority over the independent federal panel. The commission's sole Republican member resigned the same day, leaving the agency that certifies voting systems and distributes election grants to states with zero sitting commissioners ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
The fired commissioners, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, both selected by congressional Democrats, received termination notices effective immediately. Christy McCormick, the panel's Republican member, submitted her resignation. A fourth commissioner, Republican Donald Palmer, had already departed voluntarily earlier this year.
The White House framed the move as a matter of election security, telling the Associated Press that the president acted to ensure the integrity of federal elections. Breitbart News reported the administration's position that the EAC had failed to address non-citizen voting, a concern that has animated conservative election-reform efforts for years and one the commission showed little urgency in confronting.
The legal foundation for Trump's action is the Supreme Court's 6, 3 ruling in Trump v. Slaughter, handed down June 29. The decision affirmed that a sitting president may fire officials at independent agencies without cause, a dramatic expansion of executive authority over bodies Congress designed to operate at arm's length from the White House.
Trump himself described the ruling's significance in an exclusive Oval Office interview with Breitbart News last month. He said the Slaughter decision "more than made up" for the Court's separate ruling upholding birthright citizenship, which he found disappointing. The New York Post reported that Trump called the decision "the Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years."
The White House statement to the AP laid out the administration's reasoning 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 language, "not totally aligned", tells you what the administration thinks the EAC was doing with its time. The commission is responsible for certifying voting systems, distributing federal election grants, and maintaining national voter registration forms. Critics on the right have long argued the agency treated non-citizen voting as a theoretical problem rather than an operational one, even as states struggled with outdated voter rolls and verification gaps.
The firings drew immediate condemnation from Democratic leaders. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the move a direct assault on election oversight. The Washington Examiner reported Schumer's statement:
"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."
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia also demanded answers. "Removing every remaining commissioner just months before the 2026 midterm elections is an extraordinary step that demands an immediate explanation," Warner said.
Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, offered a different angle of criticism: "Donald Trump wants to eliminate oversight of his administration's oversight, and that's what this is about." Duncan's framing, though, misses the central question: oversight of what, exactly? If the EAC spent years declining to act on non-citizen voting while collecting federal dollars and rubber-stamping the status quo, the case for shaking up its membership is not hard to make.
Trump's broader pattern of exercising personnel authority over independent agencies is by now well established. The administration has moved to remove officials across the federal government when it determined they were not advancing the president's policy agenda.
The EAC firings did not happen in isolation. Earlier this year, Trump fired Federal Election Commission Chair Ellen Weintraub, a longtime Democratic appointee who publicly contested the legality of her removal. Fox News reported that Weintraub responded on social media, writing: "There's a legal way to replace FEC commissioners, this isn't it. I've been lucky to serve the American people & stir up some good trouble along the way. That's not changing anytime soon."
Weintraub's defiance captured the posture of a certain class of Washington appointee, officials who treat their seats as permanent entitlements rather than positions of public trust subject to the elected executive's direction. The Slaughter ruling changed that calculus in law, not just in rhetoric.
Trump has also issued an executive order requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, though Just The News reported that a federal judge blocked that order. The EAC firings can be read as a parallel approach: if the courts slow-walk the policy, clear out the personnel who refused to enforce it in the first place.
The administration's willingness to use the Slaughter ruling aggressively is not limited to election bodies. As we have previously reported, the White House views the decision as a green light to reshape independent agencies whose leadership it considers unresponsive to presidential direction.
The Election Assistance Commission was created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, in the wake of the Florida recount debacle. Its mandate includes testing and certifying voting equipment, distributing federal election-security grants, and maintaining the national voter registration form used under the National Voter Registration Act.
That last function is where the non-citizen voting question comes in. The national registration form asks applicants to affirm their citizenship under penalty of perjury, but does not require documentary proof. States that have tried to add citizenship verification requirements to registration have faced legal challenges, and the EAC has not pushed to update the form or tighten its standards.
For conservatives, the commission's inaction on this front is not a bureaucratic oversight. It is a policy choice, one that leaves a gap in election integrity that the agency was specifically positioned to close. The White House's characterization of commissioners as "not totally aligned" with election security reads, in this context, as a diplomatic understatement.
The timing matters, too. With midterm elections approaching, the EAC's grant-distribution and certification functions will need to continue. Whether the administration plans to appoint new commissioners, and how quickly, remains an open question. The commission cannot operate without a quorum, and leaving the body empty for an extended period would create its own set of problems for state and local election officials who depend on EAC guidance and funding.
Democrats will frame this as an authoritarian power grab. That is the predictable response to any assertion of executive authority they do not control. But the Slaughter ruling was a 6, 3 decision, not a party-line executive order. The Supreme Court examined the constitutional question and concluded that presidents have the power to remove officials at independent agencies. Trump is exercising that power.
The harder question is whether the administration will use this moment to install commissioners who will actually address the non-citizen voting issue, tighten registration standards, and ensure the EAC fulfills its statutory mission rather than coasting on institutional inertia. The firings are the easy part. The follow-through is what matters.
Trump has urged Congress to pass the Save America Act, which would impose stricter voting requirements. Whether that legislation moves or stalls, the president has made clear he intends to use every tool the courts have given him to reshape the federal election infrastructure.
The pattern is consistent across agencies. Officials who treat independent commissions as lifetime appointments, immune from presidential accountability, are discovering that the legal landscape has changed beneath them. The consequences of misalignment with the public's expectations, whether in a federal agency or a local school district, tend to arrive eventually.
Washington's permanent class spent years insulating itself from accountability. The Slaughter ruling handed the president a key to the door. What he does with it will define whether this is a serious reform effort or just a headline. The EAC's empty chairs are waiting for an answer.
