The already minimalist regulation of money in national politics, which has been completely suspended for more than a year, may get started again. But it won't be until after the end of a campaign fueled by an astonishing $14 billion in donations and spending, some of it questionable and none of it policed.
The Senate seems likely to confirm three new members of the Federal Election Commission during its lame duck session starting the second week of November, creating the quorum needed to mop up after the voting is over — and the ocean of money has been given to and spent by congressional and presidential candidates.
A record-long logjam at the FEC started to break Wednesday, when President Trump announced nominees to fill two of the seats: Republican senior congressional aide Sean Cooksey and Democratic senior agency attorney Shana Broussard.
Because the law is designed to ensure either bipartisanship at the FEC or total gridlock — the situation for most of the past decade — the president effectively had to propose one person from the opposing party.
Senate Rules and Administration Chairman Roy Blunt, whose panel screens nominees for the FEC, said he would move quickly to fill the empty chairs. And it's highly unlikely the president would have made the announcement without advance clearance from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. (Nominees left waiting at the end of the year would have to start the process over, or else potentially be replaced next year if Joe Biden becomes president.)
"Given the unique challenges facing campaigns now and in the months ahead due to the coronavirus pandemic, I urge my colleagues to support our efforts to fill these vacancies and ensure the FEC is able to do its job," Blunt said after the White House announcement.
For all but one month in the last 14, the commission has had just three members, short of the quorum required to consider complaints about misbehavior by candidates or political organizations, let alone set new policies or even hold public meetings.
The agency has more than 400 cases on its enforcement docket. FEC attorneys have readied recommendations for next steps in half of them, which must be reviewed by the commission. The other half are not as far along in the pipeline.
Cooksey currently serves as general counsel to Missouri's other senator, Republican Josh Hawley, after working as deputy chief counsel to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
Broussard has been a senior FEC attorney for longer than a decade. She was previously an IRS attorney and a prosecutor in New Orleans. Senate Democrats have been promoting her nomination for more than a year. She would be the first Black commissioner since the FEC was created in 1975 in response to the campaign finance abuses of Watergate.
The Rules panel's top Democrat, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, agreed that the FEC needs to be fully functioning but lambasted the president's timing.
"We need to stop treating the agency that's charged with keeping corruption out of our elections like a political pawn," Klobuchar said. "We must restore trust in the FEC."
A third vacancy would be filled by attorney Allen Dickerson of the Institute for Free Speech, which advocates for almost total deregulation of money in politics. Trump nominated him in June, after Caroline Hunter resigned.
If all three are confirmed by the Senate, not only would a quorum be restored but the commission would have all six seats filled for the first time since March 2017.
Commissioners are supposed to serve for six years, but can stay on if no replacement arrives. That's the case for Democrat Ellen Weintraub and Independent Steven Walther, who have both been on the commission for more than a decade.
Trey Trainor, who joined the commission in June and immediately became chairman (the job rotates) said he was excited about the potential to get back to work.
Weintraub said the news was "welcome, but long overdue" considering the FEC has been out of commission since September 2019 except for this June — after Trainor arrived but before Hunter left.
The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit that vigorously tracks campaign finances, estimated this week that the total cost of the 2020 campaign for president and Congress would reach $14 billion — double the grand total just four years ago.
With this unprecedented level of political spending, having the FEC unable to regulate the campaign cash or enforce rules has been a travesty, said Meredith McGehee, executive director of Issue One, a bipartisan nonprofit that advocates for a broad democracy reform agenda. (It owns but is journalistically independent from The Fulcrum.)
"These new nominations are too little, too late," she said. "For the FEC to be an effective watchdog, it needs to not only have just a quorum but a quorum of commissioners who are dedicated to upholding our nation's campaign finance laws."
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.