President Trump on Thursday fired the remaining members of the federal Election Assistance Commission, exercising a power the Supreme Court confirmed he always had — and clearing out commissioners who refused to act on proof-of-citizenship requirements for the national voter registration form.
The move leaves the four-member bipartisan commission with zero commissioners. But that commission has operated without a quorum for much of its existence, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center's Matt Weil, and had stalled on the single most consequential request before it: adding citizenship verification to the federal voter registration form. The same voices now warning about "chaos" are the ones who defended an unaccountable body that certifies voting systems, accredits testing laboratories, and controls the national mail voter registration form — all while being impossible for the elected president to fire.
Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, the commission's Democrats, were terminated by email from the White House Presidential Personnel Office. Republican Christy McCormick was allowed to resign. A fourth commissioner, Republican Don Palmer, departed in April. All three remaining commissioners had been confirmed by the Senate unanimously.
The firings follow the Supreme Court's June 29 ruling in the Slaughter case. In a 6-3 decision, the court found that the president can remove officials at independent agencies without cause. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that "neither Congress nor the courts may saddle [the president] with those with whom he cannot work" and that "subordinates who exercise the President's power are subject to removal by him." Trump called the ruling "the Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years."
A White House official stated 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."
Follow the money. The EAC is a gatekeeper: it decides which voting systems get certified, which labs do the testing, and what the national voter registration form requires. In March 2025, Trump issued an executive order directing the EAC to add proof-of-citizenship requirements to that form. Judges blocked the order's main provisions. The Trump-aligned America First Legal petitioned the EAC directly. The commission posted a notice seeking comments and received hundreds of thousands of responses — but never held a vote. An entrenched, unremovable bureaucracy that can't be fired and won't act on citizenship verification serves everyone who profits from the status quo. That doesn't include the American voter.
The press reaction was predictable. The Guardian framed the dismissals as inciting "fears of midterm 'chaos.'" ProPublica called it an "unprecedented dismantling." NPR described Trump as trying to "influence elections in unprecedented ways." Sen. Mark Warner said the removals "should concern every American." The Brennan Center's Michael Waldman called them "deeply concerning." What none of these critics explained is why commissioners who refused to act on a citizenship-verification mandate should be immune from removal — or why a commission that has spent much of its existence without a quorum is suddenly indispensable.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said "it will again fall on Secretaries of State and other election administrators to fill the gap" — which raises the question of what exactly the EAC was filling in the first place.
The Supreme Court settled whether Trump had the power to fire these commissioners. The open question is what comes next: will Trump appoint commissioners who finally require proof of citizenship to register, or will the EAC return to its long tradition of existing without actually doing much of anything?
