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Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
The Watchdog That Won’t Bark – How FEC Dysfunction Threatens Democracy
Aug 13, 2025
The American people are being asked to trust a democracy that is, at its core, unguarded.
Right now — in the middle of a national election cycle — the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has just three active commissioners out of six. That makes it legally unable to act on violations, issue rules, or even respond to urgent questions about election law. It’s not just gridlock; it’s institutional paralysis — and it’s happening on purpose.
As of August 2025, the remaining three commissioners are:
- Dara Lindenbaum (Democrat)
- Shana M. Broussard (Democrat)
- Trey Trainor (Republican)
Former Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, also a Democrat, is no longer voting and is not listed as active. With no fourth member, the Commission lacks a quorum, meaning it cannot legally take action — including appointing new commissioners.
The FEC is supposed to be the referee that keeps our elections fair, transparent, and accountable. Instead, it’s been sidelined by years of intentional neglect, partisan obstruction, and political self-interest. And who benefits? Those who are willing to bend or break the rules to stay in power.
A System Designed to Fail
Congress created the FEC after Watergate to serve as a nonpartisan watchdog. But it has a fatal flaw: it requires four votes to take any action. With six commissioners split evenly between the two major parties, all it takes is one party refusing to play ball to stop enforcement entirely.
What we have today is worse: just three commissioners are seated. This means:
- No investigations of illegal campaign donations
- No rulings on dark money disclosures
- No enforcement of super PAC coordination violations
- No action at all
And with no quorum, there’s no way to even confirm new commissioners. This is not oversight; it’s sabotage.
How This Connects to Gerrymandering
The dysfunction of the FEC is precisely why, in The People’s Redistricting Act of 2025, I refused to entrust them with oversight. Instead, the Act proposes a new citizen-approved model that uses nonpartisan AI to generate district maps, which are then voted on directly by the people.
In contrast to the FEC’s gridlocked model, this process:
- Requires no partisan appointees
- Operates transparently and publicly
- Returns power to voters rather than to entrenched elites
The lesson is clear: we cannot protect democracy using broken institutions. We must build new ones rooted in accountability and simplicity.
A Call for Structural Reform
If we’re serious about safeguarding our elections, we must:
- Reform the structure of the FEC to eliminate the built-in deadlock.
- Ensure timely appointments through fast-track confirmation procedures.
- Expand the role of nonpartisan agencies, such as the Election Assistance Commission, to ensure continuity when the FEC fails.
But more than that, we need to listen to the growing cry from the American people: They are tired of being shut out, gerrymandered, and governed by systems that protect power instead of public trust.
We Can’t Wait
Every day the FEC remains broken is a day we accept an election system without referees. That is not democracy. That is a slow descent into democratic decay.
We don’t have to accept this. We can reform it. We can build something better.
Let's start by urging Congress to pass The People’s Redistricting Act — and by demanding that our institutions work for us, not against us.
Keith Davenport is a candidate for U.S. Congress, NC-06.
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In an era marked by increasing legal challenges, We The Action is connecting volunteer lawyers with nonprofits to deliver free legal services to those in great need.
Getty Images, Ngampol Thongsai
We the Action Mobilizes Volunteer Lawyers To Tackle Civil Legal Inequality
Aug 13, 2025
In an era marked by increasing legal challenges, We The Action is connecting tens of thousands of volunteer lawyers with nonprofits to deliver free legal services to immigrants, federal workers, voters, and others.
The organization was founded in 2017 after President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning refugees and immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim nations from entering the country for 120 days. Executive Director of We The Action Anna Chu said they have grown into a national network of over 54,000 lawyers, who have provided over $380,000 of free legal assistance to 700 nonprofits.
“We The Action is committed to expanding access to justice and delivering free legal services where they are critically needed,” Chu said.
We The Action’s website also states that they believe lawyers have the power to “do good” because of their ability to defend the nation’s values in the court of law.
Deportations or lay offs typically fall under civil legal problems, meaning they typically do not involve criminal charges but still have consequences. According to The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law, Americans have more than 150 million new civil legal problems every year, with 120 million of these going unaddressed. Other research also shows that only 14 percent of civil justice problems are taken to court or a hearing body.
Also, per the Legal Services Corporation, Americans with low income receive no or “inadequate” legal help in 92 percent of all legal problems.
Chu said We The Action works to support immigrant communities, like people seeking asylum like asylums or refugees, by finding nonprofits “defending” immigrant communities. She added that lawyers help people with the immigration system, reuniting families, and more.
One way that lawyers are connected with immigrant communities is through postings on We The Action’s website under the immigration section. Currently, postings include one from Hands United—which works to decrease the prevalence of language deprivation among hard-of-hearing children in immigrant families—for helping a Colombian family with a deaf child “fight” for asylum. Another post, by the Asian Women’s Shelter, which supports survivors of domestic violence and oppression in Asian and other communities, calls for California-based divorce and family attorneys. There is also a space on the website to get updates on future postings.
“We are facing unprecedented attacks on the rule of law,” Chu said. “And despite the uncertainty this brings, We The Action’s community of lawyers are poised to meet the moment.”
Under the first Trump administration, America saw the lowest number of migrants come to approximately 411,000. When President Joe Biden took office in 2021, immigration reached its highest in the 2000s at approximately 3.3 million in 2023. Since Trump has taken office again, immigration has dropped to approximately two million as of April 2025, according to The Brookings Institution.
Within Trump’s first week of office, he increased the number of active duty troops to the southern United States border by 1,500, for a total of 4,000 troops—a 60 percent increase. Through an executive order, he also halted the processing of all undocumented migrants and asylum seekers into the U.S., among other actions.
According to the Pew Research Center, 32 percent of Americans think all immigrants illegally in the country should be deported. This is compared to 51 percent, who stated that some should be deported. And 97 percent of those individuals said someone should be deported if they previously committed a violent crime.
Chu added that with these "unprecedented threats,” We The Action launched the Immigration Legal Response Center for volunteer lawyers to protect immigrant communities under threat.
We The Action is also supporting federal workers who have been laid off under the Trump administration’s policies. In 2025, Chu said that We The Action partnered with the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Federation of Federal Employees, the American Constitution Society, Democracy Forward, the Partnership for Public Service, and others to launch Rise Up: Federal Workers Legal Defense Network and connect federal workers with critical legal resources.
Rise Up gives those laid off access to free initial legal consultations with federal workers recently laid off. It also allows lawyers to sign up to volunteer and help laid-off federal workers.
According to reporting from the HuffPost, since Trump took office, nearly 150,000 federal workers have been laid off. Trump’s administration also established the Department of Government Efficiency, whose objective is to cut excess regulation and spending, modernize technology, and maximize productivity.
The LA Times also reports that the civil service system, which We The Action assists, was not set up to deal with all these layoffs in a short period of time.
“Our lawyers have the power to support federal workers and protect the stability and integrity of federal institutions,” Chu said.
But federal judges have already blocked the Trump administration from laying off federal workers, citing a number of legal reasons. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston blocked the Trump administration from moving forward with its plan to lay off federal workers from more than 20 different agencies.
Illston wrote in her ruling that presidents do not have the authority to change federal agencies unless they have obtained approval from Congress. She also added that nine presidents over the last century have changed federal agencies only after getting approval.
Besides assisting in federal layoffs, Chu also said that We The Action advances racial justice and protects voting rights in a number of ways. Looking forward, Chu said they will continue their mission.
“We will continue to meet the moment by expanding our technology and platform, meeting needs of vulnerable communities, protecting the rule of law, and defending democracy,” Chu said.
Maggie Rhoads is a student journalist attending George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs. At The Fulcrum, she covers how legislation and policy are impacting communities.
Maggie was a cohort member in Common Ground USA's Journalism program, where Hugo Balta served as an instructor. Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum, and the publisher of the Latino News Network.
The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists. Learn more by clicking HERE.
Please Help The Fulcrum In Its Mission Of Nurturing The Next Generation Of Journalists By Donating HERE!
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Just three months into his second term, the Trump Administration terminated 373 grants worth about $500 million from the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs.
Getty Images, Mary Long
Youth Injustice: Trump Administration Cuts Violence Prevention Programs
Aug 13, 2025
This essay is part of a series by Lawyers Defending American Democracy where we demonstrate the link between the administration’s sweeping executive actions and their roots in the authoritarian blueprint, Project 2025, and show how these actions harm individuals and families throughout the country.
Just three months into his second term, the Trump Administration abruptly terminated 373 grants worth about $500 million from the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP). The grants were ended without any prior notice and affected programs across the country that provide support for the complete range of department activities, including juvenile and youth justice, violence prevention, child protection, policing and prosecution, and victims’ services.
Most of these cuts attacked multi-year programs that were already in progress. The result? Critically important violence prevention services are no longer available for those most in need. Staff and service providers on the front lines will lose their jobs. The Vera Institute of Justice, a national research and policy organization, says that lives are in danger.
Overall, the scope of the grant cuts is staggering. Affected programs also include research and evaluation initiatives, efforts to better address the treatment of mental health conditions, substance use disorder, plans to improve the corrections and reentry justice systems, and projects providing training and technical assistance for youth advocates, public defenders, prosecutors, and judges.
Many of the programs are dedicated to combating gangs and preventing violence. Moreover, the cuts hit programs in urban, suburban, and rural communities in 37 states, both “red” and “blue”. In the history of federal grants across Republican and Democratic administrations, nothing like this has happened before. No notice, no opportunity for debate, just boom, it's gone.
The Administration’s blandly dismissive reason for killing these programs is that the "awards no longer effectuate the program or agency goals or agency priorities.” But this makes no sense as the focus of the agency is violence prevention. Do you protect public safety by cutting violence prevention programming?
Project 2025 may offer a more insidious reason for these cuts. Crime and crime prevention disproportionately affect communities of color. Failing to support these communities reflects Project 2025’s goal of eliminating the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Examples of Massachusetts-based nonprofits dedicated to violence prevention intervention in communities of color that are damaged by the funding cuts are Roca, based in Boston, and UTEC, in Lowell. Both work with young adults 18 to 25, many of whom have been involved in child protection and the juvenile and criminal legal systems. Tools to help them include street gang prevention, educational and job readiness, help with reentry from youth correctional and criminal facilities, and community outreach.
Roca lost $4 million in grant money, and UTEC lost $2 million, even as their initiatives dramatically reduced the recidivism rates of their young clients by treating them as assets to be developed rather than problems to be managed (or ignored). These programs have created models of community-based collaboration with police, courts, and legal service providers.
Also hit hard were initiatives supporting crime investigation and prosecution; child protection; and training for advocates, prosecutors, and judges. The OJP’s Office for Victims of Crime lost $50 million, and programs designed to safeguard children against abuse and neglect suffered cuts of $137 million, undermining the training of juvenile and family court judges, weakening protections for youth at risk, and hindering the work of regional centers dedicated to investigating and prosecuting child abuse.
Some school-based programming was terminated as well, after cuts to projects aimed at preventing bullying and school violence in Oregon, Minnesota, California, and Pennsylvania.
A further cut of $8 million hit nonprofit efforts to combat youth substance abuse. Other cuts hobbled programs in hospitals to provide lifesaving assistance for victims of crime and their families. The implication seems to be that these victims are undeserving and simply need to move on.
WHY IT MATTERS
These cuts would suggest that violence prevention programs no longer help combat violence or protect victims. But this is false. Cutting these programs will increase recidivism and compromise public safety while pushing countless numbers of people into juvenile and criminal courts. Every study has shown that it costs much less to reduce crime through community-based programs than to lock people up.
Law enforcement specialists increasingly talk about the importance of being smart on crime. These cuts aren't smart. Reacting to crime after it has happened is a losing proposition. Eliminating the safety net of community support and violence prevention services can only result in worse outcomes for all of us.
Contrary to what many believe, crime rates for youth in most places are historically low. This is attributable to programs like UTEC and Roca. These cuts will increase crime and result in reactively spending more money to detain and incarcerate. More people will enter jails and prisons and be more likely to return, given the lack of concern about community reentry.
The grant cuts raise serious questions and deserve public scrutiny. Has the Trump administration offered better ways to prevent crime and gang violence other than to react after it has happened? What steps does it envision to stop people from falling through the social services safety net and ending up on the street?
TAKEAWAY
If reducing crime and increasing public safety isn't the goal, what is? The objective appears to align with Project 2025, which unapologetically seeks to block the reach of the federal government. Not incidentally, Project 2025 also conflates federal programs with furthering diversity, equity, and inclusion, which it has demonized as if it were the source of all of our nation's ills.
America deserves thoughtful, effective steps toward progress, not a vision that stops and ends at slash and burn.
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The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6 of that year, effectively prohibited racial discrimination in voting and required federal oversight to ensure its implementation. But the promise of the now seminal Voting Rights Act is at risk as Americans mark this milestone anniversary.
LOC; The 19th
The Voting Rights Act Turns 60 — but Its Promise Is Still Under Threat
Aug 13, 2025
Sixty years ago, a landmark piece of voting rights legislation was signed into law — a policy that has aimed to course-correct America’s wobbled experiment of representative democracy.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6 of that year, effectively prohibited racial discrimination in voting and required federal oversight to ensure its implementation.
Before then, Americans were routinely denied access to the ballot box based on the color of their skin, despite such practices being prohibited for nearly a century. But people in power still threatened Black and Brown residents — including women of color who had been excluded from the promise of The 19th Amendment in 1920 — with poll taxes, literacy tests and violence.
It would take decades of protest, organized in part by Black women and culminating in brutal public violence, to get Congress to take action.
But the promise of the now seminal Voting Rights Act is at risk as Americans mark this milestone anniversary.
The Supreme Court has struck down key aspects of the law and is poised to further challenge its provisions around race. It has also made it harder to challenge racialized voting maps.
President Donald Trump, who spread disinformation about his 2020 election loss to incite violence at the Capitol, is now attempting to overhaul how elections are run in the United States in part by demanding proof of citizenship — a policy that could disproportionately impact women and transgender people.
This comes as the attorney general guts the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division that helped enforce the federal laws that protect the right to vote and seeks sensitive state voter records.
The 19th continues to report on the fight for voting rights through the lens of everyday people — the women-led election workforce, the freedom fighters still around today, the queer and trans activists, and the local organizers. They’re all still seeking equal access to the ballot box on behalf of their communities — and that work isn’t going away soon.
‘All liberations are connected’: Marisa Richmond on fighting for voting rights on multiple fronts
Marisa Richmond’s formative memories are of an America under Jim Crow. She thinks back to a Hardee’s fast food restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee, a dollar clutched in her 6-year-old fingers, where no one would serve her. She remembers giving in and going outside to her mother, who sighed deeply with frustration.
She recalls the road trip to Dallas to see her maternal grandparents when her mother, who was light-skinned, rented a hotel room for the family, and she and the others had to sneak in under cover of darkness. Richmond was not allowed to leave even to get a Coca-Cola that night.The Civil Rights Act of 1964 substantially gutted discriminatory Jim Crow laws. But the Voting Rights Act of 1965 dealt the final blow to them.
Richmond, 66, who hails from Nashville, would go with her parents to vote. She grew up to teach history and women’s and gender studies at Middle Tennessee State University. And she made it her life’s work to empower people like herself — Black and transgender — to exercise their rights at the ballot box.
In 2008, Richmond became the first African-American transgender person to serve as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. She served for years as the president and lobbyist for the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition and was the first trans person to win an election in Tennessee when she won a spot on the Davidson County Democratic Party Executive Committee.
For her, the fight for voting rights for Black Americans and trans Americans is one in the same.
“I think all liberations are connected,” she said. “First, there are some of us who have multiple identities, but the fight for equality is not isolated to one group in particular. You know, we’re all in it together.”
Today, she is retired and busier than ever. She fought voter ID requirements in her home state last year. And she continues to fight disenfranchisement nationally today.
‘The right to vote is foundational to our democracy’: Danielle Lang on the overlooked impact of the SAVE Act on trans voting rights
Danielle Lang is answering what feels like an obvious question posed on this 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act: Why is it important that all people have the right to vote?
Lang is the senior director of voting rights at Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that fights for access to the polls.
“The right to vote is foundational to our democracy,” she said. “And our democracy is foundational to our freedoms more generally, to order our lives as a community, to try to find shared values and govern ourselves according to those shared values, rather than live under the tyranny of elites and under authoritarian regime.The question of who will be able to vote in coming elections, however, is not obvious. In April, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 22, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, also known as the SAVE Act. It’s now before the Senate. The bill has been highly controversial because it forces voters to prove citizenship through documentation like a birth certificate.
Opponents of the measure point out that millions of married women don’t have birth certificates that reflect their legal last names.
Less attention has been paid to transgender Americans, an already disenfranchised minority who could see hundreds of thousands turned away from the ballot box if the SAVE Act becomes law.
According to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, there were approximately 1.3 million transgender adults living in the United States as of 2022. Of those, around 30 percent will seek name changes, according to the nonprofit Center for Transgender Equality. Of those who do, 18 percent will succeed in updating their birth certificates to reflect their lived names.
The result is that 319,800 transgender people who are legally barred from making those updates are likely to be stricken from the voter rolls if the SAVE Act passes.
Transgender people already face steep barriers in making it to the polls. Nearly a quarter (24 percent) reported in 2022 that they were not interested in elections or involved in politics, and 19 percent said they felt their vote would not make a difference.
“Sixty years ago, the country recognized that it was not living up to its ideals and passed landmark legislation that was about stripping away barriers to voting,” Lang said. “And the SAVE legislation would do exactly the opposite.”
‘These spaces are meant for you’: Alejandra Gomez on the grassroots work of building our democracy
Alejandra Gomez’s introduction to organizing came in 2006, in the lead-up to Arizona’s referendum on Proposition 300, which banned colleges and universities from giving in-state tuition or state-funded financial aid to students who couldn’t prove U.S. citizenship or legal residency. The daughter of immigrant parents fought to oppose the measure.
In the midst of that campaign, a fellow organizer told her that she has a voice, and that it matters. “Since that moment, I have not been able to look back,” Gomez told The 19th.
Gomez, 43, is the executive director of Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), a political advocacy group representing the interests of working-class Arizonans. The membership-led organization has worked to significantly expand Latinx political representation and access to the ballot. And its grassroots organizing is credited with helping Democrats clinch statewide victories in the state, particularly by helping turn out low-propensity voters and voters of color.Gomez is reflecting on the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act by leaning on the legislation’s vision to inspire the work that the current political moment demands. The law, Gomez said, was “forged through fire” with the goal of creating a democracy for all.
“Now more than ever, the democratic experiment of building the multiracial democracy that we know that we can be feels mission critical,” Gomez said.
Right now, the most important work Gomez and LUCHA are engaged in is called “deep organizing.” That is, Gomez said, “going into neighborhoods and building what we’re calling barrio teams — neighborhood teams — and inviting our community into a conversation about their vision for Arizona and the power that they want to wield inside of their democracy.”
It doesn’t take seasoned organizers to do this work, Gomez said.
“Pull together your neighbors and start with a conversation about how you feel as a community,” Gomez said. “Then together maybe go to a school board meeting or attend a zoning meeting, a city council meeting, and just begin to understand that these spaces are meant for you to be in.”
‘Recommitment and not nostalgia’: Celina Stewart on reclaiming the promise of the Voting Rights Act
The League of Women Voters believes that if 8.5 million people — just 3.5 percent of eligible voters — engage in nonviolent protest, they have the power to fight an anti-democratic administration.
That statistic is what’s driving the organization’s Unite and Rise 8.5: An Initiative to Defend Democracy — a movement of advocacy, civic education and community engagement. The initiative launched in May, as the league saw an increase in attacks on democracy after President Donald Trump’s inauguration.While the program is new, the League of Women Voters’ fight for democracy is not, as a grassroots voter protection and expansion organization founded in 1920. From protesting discriminatory voting laws to challenging gerrymandering, protecting the essence of the 1965 act has always been a generational win for the league.
“Democracy is not self-executing; people have to defend it and be willing to act. This is about visibility, accountability and disruption to injustice that’s being attempted,” said Celina Stewart, the CEO of the League of Women Voters.
The initiative is rooted in a study by the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights that identified the 8.5 million-person figure. The league is calling for people to vote, call lawmakers and donate to democracy-defending organizations as ways to be civically engaged.
With current and pressing attacks on voting across the country and on the Voting Rights Act, Stewart feels that this anniversary demands courage: “We’re not commemorating a relic, we’re continuing a fight that continues to be relevant today.”
“This should be a time of recommitment and not nostalgia, because of what’s happening in this country. Congress has failed to restore the Voting Rights Act for over a decade and as people, I think we’re done waiting. The Unite and Rise 8.5 campaign is definitely a way for us to reclaim that promise,” Stewart said.
The Voting Rights Act Turns 60 — but Its Promise Is Still Under Threat was originally published by The 19th and is republished with permission.
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