Trump fires Election Assistance Commission members

Trump removes all sitting EAC commissioners four months before midterms

President Donald Trump on Thursday dismissed all three remaining members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a small bipartisan federal agency that certifies voting equipment and coordinates with state and local election officials, according to The Washington Post, NPR and NBC News. The action leaves the four-member panel with no commissioners in place roughly 120 days before the November midterm elections, which will determine control of the House and Senate.

NPR reported that Democratic commissioners Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland were dismissed and Republican commissioner Christy McCormick resigned at the administration’s request. NBC News, citing two people familiar with the terminations, said the Democratic commissioners were notified by a brief email sent around 4 p.m. ET by White House aide Morgan DeWitt Snow that read: “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I’m writing to inform you that your position as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.” McCormick, according to NBC, was asked to resign by phone. A fourth Republican commissioner, Don Palmer, had already left the panel earlier in 2026. All three dismissed members had been confirmed unanimously by the Senate.

A White House official told NPR that the president “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,” adding that “The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so.” The reference is to a recent Supreme Court ruling, reported by NPR as issued late in the previous month, that the administration reads as giving presidents a freer hand to remove members of independent federal agencies. A spokesperson for the EAC did not respond to requests for comment, NPR said.

What the EAC does and why the timing is unusual

The EAC was created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the legislation Congress passed in response to the disputed 2000 presidential election, NPR reported. By statute, no more than two of its four commissioners may belong to the same political party. The agency’s core work is technical: it certifies voting systems, develops voluntary guidelines for state and local election administration, and distributes federal election-security grants. The Bipartisan Policy Center, cited by NBC News, said the commission distributed more than $1 billion in such grants between 2018 and 2025.

The dismissals follow a 2025 executive order in which Trump called on the EAC to add a proof-of-citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, NPR reported. Federal judges have blocked the main provisions of that order, ruling they exceed presidential authority. The action also comes a day before the president publicly threatened to refuse to sign a sweeping bipartisan housing bill in protest over the Senate’s failure to pass the SAVE America Act, a voter-ID and proof-of-citizenship measure that has passed the House but lacks the votes in the Senate to overcome the filibuster. The Guardian and CNBC both reported that the housing bill is set to become law automatically at midnight Friday even without Trump’s signature.

Reactions from Democrats, voting-rights groups and state officials

Democratic lawmakers were quick to condemn the firings. California Sen. Alex Padilla and New York Rep. Joe Morelle, the ranking Democrats on the Senate and House committees with jurisdiction over elections, said in a joint statement that “President Trump is trying to dismantle yet another independent guardrail of our democracy designed to keep elections fair and secure,” and called the move “a blatant part of his plan to politicize our elections and enable more unlawful and dangerous election interference,” according to NPR.

Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, said the dismissals “are deeply concerning in light of President Trump’s relentless efforts to try to interfere in elections,” and warned that “these removals leave the agency without leadership and unable to carry out its major responsibilities.” Matt Weil, vice president of governance at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former EAC staffer, told NBC the EAC has “operated without a quorum for much of its existence” — including a roughly three-year stretch starting in December 2011 — yet still called the latest dismissals “unprecedented” and “a significant loss for one of the federal government’s few institutions explicitly designed around bipartisan governance.” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, said the move was “irresponsible and dangerous” and “undermines the integrity of nonpartisan election administration.”

Why it matters — the practical and constitutional stakes

The immediate practical concern is administrative: state and local election offices are deep into preparations for the midterms, and the EAC has historically served as a federal clearinghouse for sharing best practices, distributing security grants and fielding questions about equipment. Outgoing Democratic commissioner Benjamin Hovland, speaking to NBC News after learning of his dismissal on the way home from a work trip to a Missouri election office, said: “When you’re asking more and more of people without giving them the necessary resources, you know, mistakes happen. And so there’s this real risk of like self-fufilling prophecies in that way.” He called it “much more like a death-of-1,000-cuts situation than there’s one particular thing that you’re concerned about.”

The constitutional stakes run deeper. NPR reported that the EAC was deliberately structured by Congress as a bipartisan body — a design that, together with similar independence provisions at other agencies, is now contested after the Supreme Court’s Slaughter decision. The Washington Post framed the dismissals as the latest step in a broader push by Trump to “overhaul election administration before November’s midterms,” an effort the administration has tied to the still-stalled SAVE America Act. With Republicans holding 53 Senate seats and needing 60 votes to break a filibuster, NPR and CNBC both noted that GOP leaders have said they lack the votes to pass the bill in its current form. The combination — an empty EAC, a controversial voter-ID bill stalled in the Senate, and a president who has publicly conditioned his signature on other legislation on its passage — is the situation critics warn could leave the 2026 midterms administered with a diminished federal partner.

Where the reporting converges and where it diverges

The Washington Post, NPR and NBC News agree on the core facts: three commissioners were removed on Thursday, two by email and one by request to resign; the action is justified by the White House under the recent Slaughter decision; and the commission is now empty. NBC adds the granular detail of the termination email’s wording and the 4 p.m. timestamp, which the other two outlets do not include.

The outlets diverge most on framing. The Washington Post leads with the structural language of a president “dismantling” a “long-standing bipartisan elections board.” NPR balances the White House’s stated justification — alignment with the mission of “securing America’s elections” — against reactions from Democrats and reform advocates. NBC foregrounds the human element, quoting Hovland’s account of being fired in an airport and the technical functions the EAC performs. None of the sources reports a confirmed nominee to fill any of the vacant seats; a White House official told NBC that the dismissed commissioners “will be replaced,” but gave no timeline, and Senate confirmation of new commissioners is itself a multi-month process.

Comparisons and scale

By the numbers, the EAC is one of the smallest federal agencies with a statutory role in elections: four commissioners, a sub-$20 million annual budget, and, by Weil’s account, long stretches of its history without a quorum. The $1 billion in grants distributed between 2018 and 2025, cited by the Bipartisan Policy Center, is a small share of total federal election spending but a significant portion of the dedicated money that flows directly to state and county election offices for cybersecurity and equipment. The current 4-month window before the midterms is shorter than the 2011–2014 leadership vacuum, when, NBC reports, the agency was left without commissioners for roughly three years — a period during which, Weil told the network, the EAC was “pretty well hamstrung” until staff-level changes allowed continued certification work.

What to watch next

Three near-term tests will determine whether Thursday’s move becomes a sustained restructuring or a brief interregnum. First, nominations: Trump has not publicly named replacements, and Senate confirmation of any new slate will take weeks, meaning the EAC is likely to enter the fall with no sitting commissioners. Second, litigation: voting-rights groups and former commissioners could seek a court order reinstating the dismissed members, particularly if legal challenges argue that the Slaughter ruling does not extend to a body whose statute explicitly insulates it from presidential removal — a question the sources do not resolve. Third, the SAVE America Act: the BBC, Time, The Guardian and CNBC all report that the housing bill will become law at midnight Friday without Trump’s signature, but his Truth Social post called the Senate’s failure to pass the voter-ID measure “a serious threat to any politician who votes against it” and urged Republicans to “terminate the filibuster” — a step Senate Majority Leader John Thune has previously said lacks the votes. Until either a nominee clears the Senate or a court intervenes, the Election Assistance Commission will be running on its career staff alone in the run-up to a midterm that both parties are treating as a referendum on how American elections are run.