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In 2002, Congress created the Election Assistance Commission to administer the Help America Vote Act, which assists states in reforming their elections. On Thursday, the EAC dropped below a quorum after President Donald Trump fired its three remaining members. By statute, the commission requires the affirmative vote of at least three members to act. In the middle of an election year, Trump has hamstrung the only federal agency dedicated to helping states run their elections.

The EAC is one of dozens of multimember commissions that make up an overlooked part of the federal government. Some, such as the Federal Reserve or the Federal Trade Commission, are household names. Others, like the Marine Mammal Commission, are quite obscure. In establishing these commissions, Congress wanted the commissioners to use their expertise and collective decisionmaking to shape important areas of policy without partisan influence. Although the president appoints these commissioners with the advice and consent of the Senate, Congress often—but not always—protected them from removal except for cause.

In Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court struck down these removal protections as a violation of the president’s power under Article 2, overruling a 91-year-old precedent that reached the opposite conclusion. With the exception of the Fed, Slaughter allows the president to remove appointees from these commissions at will.

Much of the discussion of Slaughter has focused on the president’s ability to shape the behavior of commissioners by threatening to remove them from their positions. Before Slaughter, presidents who wanted to reshape a multimember commission generally needed to wait for the commissioners’ terms to expire to nominate replacements who shared their policy preferences. Slaughter allows presidents to immediately remove and nominate commissioners.

But Slaughter also provided Trump with a new, more dangerous weapon: the ability to incapacitate........

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