President Donald Trump has fired the remaining three members of the Federal Election Commission with just months to go before the midterm elections, reported Reuters’ Erin Blanco on Thursday evening.
This follows the landmark Supreme Court decision that overturns 90 years of precedent to give Trump near-unlimited power to fire the heads of agencies, even those Congress set up to be independent with merit protections.
The FEC, which is required to maintain a bipartisan balance of members, was already effectively neutered because it had too many vacancies to meet quorum, meaning the agency’s normal campaign finance actions were paralyzed.
In addition to overseeing campaign finance law, Blanco noted, the FEC is “responsible for guiding states on things like voting procedures, voting machine system updates, etc.”
Trump and his associates, she added, have been “for a year discussing ways to find ways to bypass the EAC on certain things – like voting machine system updates/changes.”
It also comes as Trump, who has never abandoned his conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election being rigged against him, seeks to impose strict new federal oversight of state mail-in voting procedures, and investigate election workers around the country.