The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is vital to America’s political process. As the only federal agency dedicated solely to enforcing election laws, the FEC plays a critical role in protecting voters and maintaining a level playing field for political campaigns.
But at this moment, America faces an unfortunate choice: We can have an FEC that does nothing or an FEC that President Trump wields as a partisan weapon against his political opponents.
Between those two unhappy options, the nation is better off without a functioning FEC for now.
One of the FEC’s six seats became vacant last week. Combined with a prior resignation and President Trump's unlawful firing of another commissioner earlier this year, the FEC is now down to only three members—one fewer than the minimum quorum it needs to take legal action on election issues. The FEC has faced other challenges in recent years, but without a quorum, the agency is effectively out of business: it can’t make any rules, issue opinions, or launch investigations.
The FEC’s incapacitation is not good for voters or for American elections. Under normal circumstances, restoring the FEC’s quorum would be a no-brainer. Indeed, in prior instances when the FEC has lost its quorum, our organization, Campaign Legal Center (CLC), has vigorously argued for Congress to quickly confirm new members so that the agency can perform its role of enforcing election laws.
This time is different.
In February, President Trump issued an executive order in which he claimed to take control of all independent federal agencies, including the FEC. He directed the FEC to conform its official legal actions to his positions and to the positions of Attorney General Pam Bondi. Under this order, the FEC may not take any action that is contrary to Trump or Bondi’s views of election law.
We cannot overstate how dangerous this is. A big part of the FEC’s job is to enforce the law against political candidates, parties, and members of Congress—and the President is now claiming that he has the right to control who, when, and how the FEC prosecutes.
Particularly from a President who has demonstrated unprecedented willingness to use his power against anyone who dares oppose him, placing the enforcement arm of election law under his control would enable him to investigate his political opponents in Congress for supposed election offenses, while also allowing his allies to break the rules with impunity.
This should be deeply concerning to every American.
More than 50 years ago, Congress intentionally and carefully insulated the FEC from that type of presidential control for exactly this reason. Congress recognized the obvious: The enforcement of election laws cannot be in the hands of someone who—either personally or through his party—is an active player in those same elections.
We know from personal experience that this insulation has been successful. One of us was the Republican chairman of the FEC, and the other held senior nonpartisan positions at the agency, under a combined four Presidents. At no time did either of us witness any presidential administration exert undue influence over the FEC’s actions.
President Trump’s order is completely contrary to the independent oversight role Congress created the FEC to serve. Yet the FEC’s remaining commissioners have conspicuously failed to disavow—or even question—the president’s power grab.
At least three times since the president issued his order, the FEC has had specific opportunities to reject the president’s claim of control and assert its independence. All three times, it has declined to do so.
First, when the order was issued, we urged the FEC to disavow it. The agency said nothing.
Second, in the context of a lawsuit filed by the Democratic Party, the FEC has been given multiple chances to assure the court that the FEC will not allow itself to be co-opted by the administration. The FEC has instead litigated the case on hyper-technical issues, studiously avoiding saying anything about the core matter of President Trump’s takeover attempt.
And third, in a formal request CLC filed with the FEC, we asked for a ruling that the president’s legal views would not grant blanket amnesty to his political allies from FEC enforcement. The FEC’s response again took refuge in technicalities, and the agency explicitly disclaimed offering an opinion on “any executive orders” or “the authority of any Executive Branch official or agency.”
At this point, we can only interpret the FEC’s repeated refusal to speak up for itself as its answer: capitulation.
Weaponization of election law would threaten the very core of American democracy. Accordingly, Congress must not restore the FEC’s quorum unless and until the agency’s commissioners reassert their independence. And any future nominees for FEC positions must be questioned extensively on their commitment to impartiality.
The FEC is too important to be turned into the partisan tool of a vindictive president.
Trevor Potter is founder and president of the Campaign Legal Center. Read more from The Fulcrum's Election Dissection blog or see our full list of contributors.
Adav Noti is the Executive Director at the Campaign Legal Center
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.