On July 9, 2026, Trump removed the three remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission, the bipartisan federal agency Congress created after the 2000 election to help run American elections. He fired the two Democrats, Thomas Hicks, the chair, and Benjamin Hovland. The Republican, Christy McCormick, was allowed to resign. The fourth seat had already emptied when Republican Don Palmer left earlier in the year for the Heritage Foundation.
With no commissioners, the four-member body cannot take official action until the Senate confirms replacements. The EAC certifies voting systems, maintains the national voter registration form, distributes federal election funds, and advises state and local election officials. Freezing it months before the midterms can stall voting-system certification and any updates to the federal registration form.
The agency was deliberately built to be insulated from a single party: no more than two commissioners may come from the same party, and each is nominated by the president on the recommendation of congressional leadership and confirmed by the Senate. Clearing the board lets Trump propose replacements more amenable to his demands. In March 2025 he had already ordered the EAC to rewrite the national voter registration form to require documentary proof of citizenship, a change most states do not require, where voters instead attest to citizenship under penalty of perjury.
A White House official would not confirm the specifics but said the president “reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America's elections.” Election law professor Rick Hasen called the legality an open question after recent Supreme Court removal-power rulings. Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who chairs the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said the EAC “plays a critical role in supporting state and local election officials, and it will again fall on Secretaries of State and other election administrators to fill the gap.” Voter advocacy groups called the move reckless and irresponsible (see Trump Blocks Appointments to the Voting Equipment Standards Committee, Leaving Nearly Half Its Seats Vacant Before the Midterms).