President Donald Trump has ousted members of a bipartisan federal election commission that helps state and local election officials by distributing grants, testing voting systems and maintaining national voter registration forms. The White House confirmed the move Friday. The purge lands right where power likes it: inside the machinery that helps decide who gets counted, who gets access, and who has to fight the system just to register.
The president removed the Election Assistance Commission’s two Democratic members, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland. The panel’s Republican member, Christy McCormick, resigned, and former Republican commissioner Donald Palmer had already left his post voluntarily earlier this year. The changes were first reported by VoteBeat, a news outlet that covers elections and voting across the U.S. The commission’s balance didn’t just shift. It got stripped.
Who Holds the Levers
The White House said Trump had the right to remove the commissioners. “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,” the White House statement said. That’s the language of control dressed up as neutral administration, with the executive branch claiming the power to decide who gets to oversee the vote.
The Election Assistance Commission was created by Congress as part of the Help America Vote Act, a bipartisan law signed by Republican President George W. Bush in 2002. The act requires the commission to include two Democrats and two Republicans, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Hicks and McCormick were appointed by President Barack Obama. Trump appointed Hovland during his first presidency. The whole setup runs through the same narrow channels: presidents nominate, the Senate confirms, and the public gets told this is how democracy protects itself.
The White House did not say whether Trump planned to nominate new members immediately or leave the positions vacant. If the seats remain open, the commission could be unable to distribute new grants to state or local election offices and could face complications in overseeing testing and certification of voting systems around the country. That means the people at the bottom — local election offices, voters, and anyone depending on functioning systems — absorb the damage if the seats stay empty.
Who Pays for the Power Grab
Trump has repeatedly tried to reshape voting regulations, even though the U.S. Constitution gives control of elections to the states, not the president. Courts have blocked most of his two executive orders that sought to reshape voting. He has also launched an investigation of his 2020 loss, which he continues to falsely insist was due to fraud, and this week his administration threatened states if they did not try to purge what federal officials believe are noncitizens from their voter rolls. The pressure runs downward. The threats come from above.
David Becker, a former Department of Justice attorney who runs the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said the purge would not change how elections are run. “This doesn’t really change anything about how our elections will be run, and how states are successfully ensuring secure, convenient, safe elections,” Becker wrote on the social media site BlueSky Friday morning. His comment lands as a reminder that the state’s latest show of force may be more about control than administration.
On Capitol Hill, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, and Rep. Joe Morelle, D-New York, said Trump was politicizing the voting process. “President Trump is trying to dismantle yet another independent guardrail of our democracy designed to keep elections fair and secure,” they said. “Purging commissioners just months before the midterm elections and further gutting support for our state and local elections officials is a blatant part of his plan to politicize our elections and enable more unlawful and dangerous election interference.” Padilla is the ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee, and Morelle is ranking member of the House Administration Committee.
The lawmakers also said the Supreme Court’s conservative majority enabled Trump’s move with its decision to “upend decades of executive power to appease the President.” Staff at the Election Assistance Commission did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on the agency’s operations moving forward. Silence from the agency. Noise from the top.
The Rules Keep Moving
The White House statement did not give a specific reason for Trump’s action, but the commission had previously declined to change the national voter registration form to require documentation of an applicant’s U.S. citizenship, as Trump urged in a sweeping March 2025 executive order on U.S. elections. The form itself does not require citizenship documents, though voter registration materials from the agency say it is already illegal to falsely claim U.S. citizenship to vote.
A federal judge blocked that order, ruling it exceeded the president’s authority because the U.S. Constitution gives authority over elections management and oversight to Congress and the states. The administration has said it will appeal. So the cycle continues: executive order, court block, appeal, repeat. The apparatus keeps grinding.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 last month in the case of former Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter that Trump had wide executive authority to fire political appointees of independent executive agencies. Trump had fired Slaughter without cause despite a federal law provision requiring a reason and a nearly century-old Supreme Court precedent insulating independent agency heads from presidential whims. The court’s six conservatives said those restrictions violated the Constitution’s separation of powers. The logic extends to other agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, where Trump also has fired board members.
In a separate case involving Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, whom Trump had tried to fire, a 5-4 majority said the president could not fire central bank governors without cause. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the court’s three liberals in that case. They cited the central bank’s unique structure as a congressionally chartered but independent, quasi-private institution whose “appearance of independence is key to the Federal Reserve’s design” and its role in setting monetary policy that shapes the U.S. and world economy.
According to VoteBeat, Hicks and Hovland were notified of their removal by an email signed by Morgan DeWitt Snow, the deputy director of presidential personnel in the Executive Office of the President. Hicks and Hovland could challenge their dismissals, but that could require the Supreme Court to revisit the decisions it just issued on the president’s power over independent agencies. Even the challenge route runs back through the same gatekeepers.
Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.