On Thursday, the Trump regime forced out the three remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission — effectively ending it. 

You need to see this as part of Trump’s overall strategy to take over the midterm elections some 90 days from now. The strategy has six parts:

1. Eliminate neutral watchdogs

The small Election Assistance Commission was focused on the unglamorous but important work of election administration — helping states with testing and certification of voting systems, serving as a national clearinghouse for information on how best to administer elections, and maintaining the national mail voter registration form established by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

It had been created by Congress in 2002 after the Florida recount marred the 2000 presidential election and effectively pushed it into the Supreme Court to decide. In 2016, after Russia’s election interference, the commission targeted cybersecurity, supporting states as they reviewed and improved safeguards on their voting machines.

Trump has also overseen major cuts at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, also intended to review and improve safeguards on voting machines. The cybersecurity agency has not had a Senate-confirmed director since Trump returned to the White House. 

The two major points of nonpartisan help for state and local elections officials — the Election Assistance Commission and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — are now effectively gone. 

The Trump regime says it had the right to fire the commissioners, under the Supreme Court’s recent Slaughter decision (the name fits), which gave a president the authority to fire commissioners from what had been independent regulatory agencies. But the high court did not authorize Trump to eliminate an entire agency wholesale. 

2. Eliminate all constraints on big money

On June 30, the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court in NRSC v. FECruled against any spending limits on coordinated party expenditures. That means political parties can now spend unlimited money in direct coordination with their candidates. A donor who could give a candidate $7,000 directly can now route a million dollars or more through the party to cover that same candidate’s bills, and the candidate can solicit exactly it. 

The case was filed in 2022 by JD Vance. Although those spending limits were contained in an act of Congress, the Trump regime’s Justice Department refused to defend it when it reached the court. (I used to argue Supreme Court cases before the Supreme Court, and I’m hard-pressed to think of another case in which an administration has refused to defend an act of Congress before the Supreme Court.)

Make no mistake: ICE is intended........

© Eurasia Review