With the recent decision in Trump v. Slaughter affirming the right of presidents to fire members of the “independent” commissions, President Donald Trump took out the newly recognized power for a spin by removing the members of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). He removed the commissioners over their failure to implement voter identification and security policies. The question now is how the EAC will operate as a zombie commission without active commissioners. It turns out that this is not the first time that the EAC has been devoid of living members, though critics are likely to say that the EAC has always been moribund.
“the President must have the assistance of officers he can trust. Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the President would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work. Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.”
The move is the first use of the power recognized in Slaughter, and it was expressly cited in the termination notice:
“The President, and head of the Executive Branch, 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. The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so.”
The absence of active members creates an obvious power vacuum, as the Commission rules require an affirmative vote by at least three commissioners to conduct official business. Notably, the Commission has previously had no active members or a working quorum.
Until the Senate confirms new commissioners (which statutorily has meant an evenly divided partisan makeup), the EAC can continue to function even if it cannot establish new rules or policies. For example, it can continue to certify equipment and disburse grants through its Executive Director, General Counsel, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and staff.
It can even hold hearings and meetings to gather new information and data.
Moreover, it is the states that continue to administer elections for the most part under our constitutional system. Congress does have concurrent jurisdiction for federal elections and this move is likely to refocus attention on the pending legislative reforms being pushed by the Trump Administration.
Given the current state of affairs in Congress and the late date of the move, this is unlikely to make material differences in the midterm elections. However, it is the first salvo from a newly invested president over such independent commissions.
“Australia requires absolutely no ID to vote.”
They do in a different form than you expect. Australia has compulsory voting; they validate the name and address before placed on the voter rolls. They send an email after the vote to tell you that you voted, and if you didn’t, they ask for an explanation and possibly impose a fine.
That’s not ID. They have no idea whether the person who shows up and claims to be you is in fact you. If you are someone who only votes because you have to, then when you show up and they tell you you’ve already voted you don’t kick up a fuss, you go away satisfied that you’ve avoided a fine. Or if someone offers to vote for you, and you have no objection because you regard voting as a chore, there’s nothing to ever stop them.
And no, there is no confirmation email after you voted. I don’t know where you heard that, but it’s not true. If you don’t vote you get a letter in the mail demanding an explanation, but if you’re down as having voted you get nothing.
Millhouse, to my understanding, the nonvoting person must explain why he didn’t vote, or that someone else voted in his place. When a question arises, either from the assigned voter or those at the polling place, the police review the time of the vote and the cameras available, track the criminal down, and jail him. The ID is identified and confirmed when the voter’s name is placed on the voting rolls. Apparently, voting is taken seriously in Australia, with fines and jail terms for criminals,
“And no, there is no confirmation email after you voted. “
I think there is, but I got this from a friend in Australia, so I can’t be sure. In any event, this method seems fairly secure, though it isn’t my choice. Media reports indicate Australia’s voting is one of the most secure.
We lost a good one. More than most politicians, I trusted Lindsey. Dedicated. Spoke out for his beliefs. Seemingly a good guy. Folks ran a restaurant. Served in the military for 3 decades. Had a good mind. We needed him. Thanks for your service, your example, Colonel, and Senator. Wish you were still here.
I am confused about the actual constitutional nature of the EAC. It appears to be not “an independent agency” bearing statutory powers that require Executive and Legislative compromises on their constitutional powers, but merely a form of a Presidential Commission fused with a Congressional Commission, not touching upon any constitutional powers in Article 1 or 2, and not granted any meaningful statutory powers. In effect, its powers are purely advisory, and no branch is obligated in any way to use executive, legislative, or judicial power with respect to either the Federal or State governments.
I wonder whether any members of Congress who voted for this advisory commission were thinking that the creation of a simple joint commission would somehow endow the “agency” with federal supremacy over a topic outside the sweep of federal power.
Was this an early inspiration for the DOGE gambit?
It dispenses money; that’s an executive function.
Trump Sabotaging Midterms
Two federal judges, presiding nearly 1,000 miles apart, issued conflicting rulings in recent days that left unclear whether states can legally abide by a Trump administration push to use federal data to confirm all voters are citizens.
The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database is used by government agencies nationwide to help determine eligibility for health care benefits, ID cards and professional licenses, among other things. It is run through the Department of Homeland Security, and the administration recently expanded how states could use the database to more fully and easily check their voter rolls.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan in D.C. ruled that the use of the database violated privacy laws, noting it had been used to revoke eligible voters’ registrations. In response, DHS limited state election officials’ access to the database.
Soon afterward, though, four Republican-led states turned to U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II in northern Florida. Wetherell last year signed off on a settlement between those states and DHS that gave them expanded access to the database, and they argued that the department had now violated the terms of that agreement.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/07/11/conflicting-court-orders-over-citizenship-data-stir-more-midterm-confusion/
…………………………………………
The midterm elections are just 4 months away. And here we have two different court decisions regarding voter databases. Confusing, huh? That’s what Trump intended!
Trump wants to keep throwing wrenches at the machinery of these elections. That way if they don’t go well for Republicans, Trump can claim the blue states ‘resisted efforts to ensure integrity’, or something to that effect.
That was the hope of the Founders: Anarchy.
More likely fluidity and flux concurrent to the Nation’s pulse and direction. Always in agreement to the framework of the Constitution.
Laken Riley.
You are some loyal patriot. Even when an innocent young lady is kidnapped and murdered in cold blood, skull broken apart with brain tissue gushing from her head, you elect to be silent over that hideous assault. All because a foreigner, here illegally, and with a violent criminal record, killed her. This is wok. If Laken was your child? Take a hard look at promoters of “progressive” behaviors and attitudes. Dear GOD, save us before it’s too late.
*. At least they’re off the payroll. Dems are feathering their nest with the Humphreys thing. An email firing everyone in departments and dem dictatorship follows.
SCOTUS betrayer, worthless. Bravo Bravo, author take a bow.
Don’t they just love trump in Albania? Thousands came out in tears to support the trump family.
“Thousands of Albanians marched in Tirana Saturday calling for the resignation of the country’s prime minister and protesting a tourism project linked to the Trump family – the 42nd consecutive night of such demonstrations.”
Oh wait…I read that wrong. They are protesting against trump. My mistake
Who cares whether Albanians love or hate him? What have they got to do with anything?
Hmmmm. For a learned Professor, seems a bit fifth grade to quote the Chief Justice thus:
“the President must have the assistance of officers he can trust… Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him.”
You see, as I understand it, and indeed SCOTUS understands it, elections and their conduct have nothing to do with the President. They are matters reserved to States, and, in certain circumstances, Congress, should it choose to legislate on their conduct. As SCOTUS ruled only a few days ago, five striking Trump’s election interference actions as unconstitutional, and one as unlawful in legislative terms. So, how is a ruling regarding those who “exercise the President’s power” remotely relevant when the Commission is NOT exercising the President’s power?
I think I finally figured it out. The Anonymous trolls here are lawyers who lost their anti-Trump cases and lash out and want to see Turley fail as well. Keep goin’– we get it.
Estovir, you’re anonymous more than anyone. And all the liberals are anonymous because of ‘you’.
If it weren’t for Estovir, we could have discussions (free of sock puppets) where everyone uses a name. That would be make much better reading. But Estovir won’t let us.
Instead we’ve got all these stupid names and anonymouses that sound like Estovir parroting far-right talking points.
What a maroon.
If the commission is not exercising the president’s power then whose power is it exercising? The constitution says the executive power of the USA is vested entirely with the president, and no one else. The entire basis on which Humphrey’s Executor was decided in the 1930s was that at that time the FTC was not exercising executive power; Slaughter overturned it because whatever may or may not have been true in the 1930s is certainly not true today. But even in the ’30s they knew that a federal agency that does use executive power must be working for the president.
Because, moron, elections have nothing to do with executive power, and hence nothing to do with the President. Very, very simple. Elections are about the people exercising power, and the Constitution, and subsequent legislation, rightly says that Presidents should have nothing to do with a process where they could manipulate and profit from interference in the electoral system. Which happens to be exactly what your beloved orange shitgibbon is trying to do.
Then whose power does this commission exercise? Does it make laws? Does it interpret the law? No, it does neither of those things. All it does is execute the law — and that is the executive power, which belongs to the president.
Hang on moron. What about local sheriffs and State police forces? State courts? State prosecutors? They do not answer to the President, they answer to the state or local community. It is the States that conduct elections, and the Constitution makes it crystal clear that the President has zero, zero role in their conduct, precisely because he is himself a candidate or partisan towards other candidates. Stop just shouting EXECUTIVE POWER, give your head a wobble, and try understanding the Constitution, not the MAGA fantasy interpretation of it. Look at the SCOTUS rulings – they struck down Trump 6-3 only the other week on electoral interference.
More pathetic MAGA spin from Turley. His prose: that the SCOTUS “affirmed the right” for a POTUS to remove members of an independetn commission. Not so. The Leo Leonard Federalist Society CREATED a previoulsy nonexistent “right”. Turley also says that the firings were due to the “failure” to implement Trump’s draconian election suppression tactics under the Project 2025 “Save America Act”. It’s not a “failure” to refuse to do something that should not be done–spinning refusal to do Trump’s bidding as some kind of “failure” is more of the MAGA-purchased punditry Turley spouts. All of this is due to Trump’s ego–he continues to insist he “won” the 2020 election that was “stolen” by “voter fraud”. No, he didn’t, and no it wasn’t—but that ego just won’t quit. So, he’s trying to grab voting equipment, voter rolls and is threatening to send federal agents to polling places, such as Detroit–to do what? To fix a problem that doesn’t exist? For “vindication”? He is withholding federal anti-terrorism funds appropriated by Congress for states that won’t comply with his commands. Where is the proof of widespread voter fraud? Where is the proof that non-citizens voted in sufficient numbers to affect the outcome in 2020? There’s no proof of either–but that ego just won’t quit. Turley claims: there is a “…. failure to move forward with a proof-of-citizenship requirement for national elections, updated guidelines on voting machines, and other election policies.” The simple fact is–the votes are NOT there–even Republicans don’t want to “move forward” and neither do Democrats–because it isn’t needed. American elections ARE secure–there is no proof to the contrary, and Trump throws a fit whenever a journalist asks him to prove his attacks on election integrity. Trump is a just a narcissistic liar who refuses to accept the will of the American people. Just look at what that ego has already cost–the insurrection, damage to the Capitol, Capitol Police Officers beaten up, a Trump supporter shot to death. Giuliani lost his law license, 60+ lawsuits dismissed for lack of merit, J6 insurrectionists being pardoned, and now, trying to federalize elections based on nothing. The Election Assistance Commission was bipartisan. Now it doesn’t exist.
Oh, and on the topic of the pardons, did you see the hissy fit Jeanine Pirro threw when a journalist asked her how she could try to get a federal felony conviction for that Olympic canoeist who touched a piece of the already-peeling defective liner of the reflecting pool, while at the same time, the DOJ was demanding the dismissal of cases against the J6 insurrectionists, who did millions of dollars of damge to the Capitol and beat up Capitol Police?
Are there meds for this hot mess?
Thorazine shuffle…
More pathetic MIGI* spin from gigi. Her prose: That SCOTUS doesn’t know as much about the law as she and GeorgeX do.
*MIGI: Make Immature Gigi Invisible
Hey look what Siri wrote.
Trump Abuses Executive Power
A federal judge nominated by Donald Trump during his first term reluctantly agreed on Friday to grant the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the seditious conspiracy convictions against leaders of the Proud Boys who were convicted by a jury of serious crimes during the attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters on 6 January 2021.
US district judge Timothy Kelly noted in a seven-page memorandum that the Proud Boy leaders Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl were all convicted of multiple crimes, including seditious conspiracy, and a fourth member of the group, Dominic Pezzola, was convicted of assaulting an officer and “breaking a Capitol window, thereby helping to create the first entry point through which hundreds of rioters streamed into the building”.
Kelly, in Friday’s filing, went on to note that he was granting the motion to dismiss the prosecutions even though the request was clearly based not on facts or the law, but on Trump’s desire to excuse the violence of his supporters.
“There is little mystery about why the Government is moving to dismiss this case, or whether dismissal is in fact what the Executive seeks,” Kelly observed. “President Trump’s views about the prosecution of those who attacked the US Capitol on January 6 – whether those views are based on fact or fiction – are well known, as is his intention to extend clemency to them”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/10/proud-boys-seditious-conspiracy-case-dismissed
From a strict legal standpoint, no laws or constitutional rules were violated by the Department of Justice or the judge in the dismissal of the Proud Boys case. While the decision is highly controversial and criticized on policy grounds, the actions conform entirely to the statutory authorities granted to the Executive and Judicial branches under U.S. law.
– Gemini
Oh, my! Say it ain’t so. Anon The Anonymouse loses again!
Must have been a tradeoff agreement for not prosecuting the seditious conspiracy of Barry the Butt Bean Obama…