On the evening of July 9, 2026, the White House Presidential Personnel Office sent emails to two federal commissioners firing them. A third commissioner was called and asked to resign. She did. By the end of that night, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the only federal agency whose sole purpose is supporting the administration of American elections, had no members. It cannot conduct any official business. It cannot certify voting equipment. It cannot update the federal voter registration form. It cannot distribute federal funds to states for election administration. Nine days before the firings, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling that eliminated the legal protection that had kept the president from doing exactly this for 91 years. The White House cited that ruling as its justification. No replacements have been named. The 2026 midterms are approximately 17 weeks away.
What the Election Assistance Commission Is
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission, known as the EAC, was created by Congress in 2002 through the Help America Vote Act, a law passed in direct response to the 2000 presidential election. The chaos of that election, including the disputed Florida recount, hanging chads, inconsistent ballot designs across counties, and widespread confusion about voter registration procedures, prompted Congress to establish a dedicated federal body to help states administer elections more consistently and reliably. The agency’s responsibilities include testing and certifying the voting machines and software that states use to count ballots, setting voluntary national guidelines for voting systems, maintaining and updating the National Mail Voter Registration Form that American citizens use to register to vote in federal elections, distributing federal funds to states under the Help America Vote Act, and serving as a national clearinghouse for election administration best practices. Many states will not purchase or deploy new voting equipment unless it has been certified by the EAC. The agency is structured as a bipartisan body: four commissioners, no more than two from each political party, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Under the law creating it, presidential nominations are supposed to be made based on recommendations from the majority and minority leadership of both the House and the Senate, ensuring that both parties have a voice in who runs the agency. The commission requires at least three of four members to agree before it can take any official action. It now has zero.
Who Was Fired and How
The two Democratic commissioners, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, were notified of their termination by email from the White House Presidential Personnel Office on the evening of July 9. Hicks had served on the commission since 2014 and was serving as its chair. Before joining the EAC, he worked for Democrats on the House Administration Committee, which oversees federal election law. Hovland joined the commission in 2019 after being unanimously confirmed by the Senate. He had previously served as acting chief counsel to the Senate Rules Committee and as a senior counsel on election matters. The Republican commissioner, Christy McCormick, who had served on the EAC since 2014, received a phone call from the White House and was asked to resign. She did. Before joining the EAC, McCormick had worked as a senior trial attorney in the voting section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the same office responsible for enforcing the Voting Rights Act. The three firings occurred nine days after the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Trump v. Slaughter. The White House stated that the ruling gave the president the authority to remove the commissioners and cited it explicitly as its justification.
The Supreme Court Ruling That Made It Possible
For 91 years, a Supreme Court precedent called Humphrey’s Executor v. United States prevented presidents from removing members of independent federal agencies without cause. That protection existed to ensure that agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and others could operate without being subject to direct presidential control or retaliation for their decisions. On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices overturned that precedent in Trump v. Slaughter, a case that originated when Trump fired Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter in March 2025 without citing any legal basis. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented. The ruling effectively means the president can now fire members of any independent federal agency at will, without cause, regardless of the statutory protections Congress wrote into the laws creating those agencies. The EAC firings followed nine days later. Legal experts note that if the fired commissioners sue to challenge their removal, it would be the first direct test of whether Slaughter’s logic extends to election-specific agencies created by Congress with explicit bipartisan design requirements.
What Cannot Happen Now
With no commissioners, the EAC is effectively shut down as a functioning body. It cannot certify new voting systems or equipment. States that depend on EAC certification before deploying voting machines face uncertainty as they prepare for November. The agency cannot update the National Mail Voter Registration Form, which is the standard federal form used by Americans to register to vote in federal elections. It cannot revise or update its voluntary voting system guidelines. It cannot distribute federal funds to states under the Help America Vote Act. It cannot convene, deliberate, or issue any official guidance. New commissioners would need to be nominated by the president and confirmed by a majority of the Senate, a process that under normal circumstances takes months. The White House has not announced any nominees. Election law scholars noted that the timing creates a specific operational problem: if any state needs EAC guidance or certification decisions before the November 2026 elections, there is no mechanism for obtaining them.
The Broader Pattern
The EAC firings did not happen in isolation. The same week, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin publicly threatened state election officials with potential prison time if they refused to run their voter rolls through a federal DHS database to check for noncitizens, a demand that a federal judge has already ruled violates laws governing Social Security records. Earlier in July, Trump gave a primetime address claiming declassified documents proved foreign interference in the 2020 election, one of which stated that China had ultimately chosen not to interfere. In March 2026, Trump signed an executive order directing DHS to compile lists of American citizens and restricting mail-in voting, which a federal court subsequently declared legally void. The Supreme Court also ruled during this term to narrow the Voting Rights Act in ways that legal experts say will allow racial gerrymanders to be defended as partisan ones. The EAC was created specifically because Congress determined in 2002 that elections needed a dedicated, protected, bipartisan federal body to support their integrity. As of July 20, 2026, that body has no members.