Voting rights groups and election officials are sounding alarms after President Donald Trump abruptly pushed out the three remaining members of an independent agency tasked with supporting officials who run the nation’s elections.
The president’s latest firings leave the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission without any active members less than four months before midterm elections with the balance of power in Congress — and the future of Trump’s agenda — at stake.
A Republican appointee on the four-member panel resigned, while the remaining two Democratic appointees reportedly received termination emails from the White House. A fourth commissioner left the panel earlier this year.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, the chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said Trump’s latest firings are “incredibly irresponsible.”
Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group engaged in several legal battles with the Trump administration, bluntly called the president’s firings a “pathetic power grab.”
The commission, which was established by the Help America Vote Act more than 20 years ago, operates largely behind the scenes performing the routine work of distributing grants and election security support.
Without any commissioners on the panel, that work is effectively paralyzed.
But the panel has played a critical role in the president’s attempts to assume federal control over the nation’s elections. His 2025 executive order pushed the commission to implement proof of citizenship on voter registration forms and deny funding to states that that didn’t receive mail-in ballots by Election Day. That executive order and another targeting election administration have been blocked by the courts.
Trump is gutting the agency “because he’s scared of the voting power of the American people,” according to Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert. “This move is another pathetic attempt to sow doubt in our elections, which are safely and expertly run by states and localities.”
Without support from the commission, which plays a crucial role overseeing federal funding and voting system standards, election officials like secretaries of state are left without critical “support, stability and protection from political pressure,” according to the League of Women Voters.
“The American people deserve elections administered by trusted professionals, not shaped by political interference,” Celina Stewart, CEO of the century-old voting rights group, said in a statement.
“This is not a routine personnel decision — it is a dangerous escalation in the effort to weaken the safeguards that protect free and fair elections in the November midterms,” she said.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes called the move “irresponsible and dangerous,” and Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read said the firings are yet another attempt by the Trump administration to “disrupt and sow distrust in our elections.”
“Purging commissioners just months before the midterm elections and further gutting support for our state and local elections officials is a blatant part of his plan to politicize our elections and enable more unlawful and dangerous election interference,” Sen. Alex Padilla and Rep. Joe Morelle said in a joint statement.
Advocates see the latest purge as part of a broader pattern of the president’s attempts to centralize control over election administration, which is left to the states, in an attempt to boost Republican candidates and suppress Democratic turnout.
Trump’s purge joins a series of White House-directed actions targeting the nation’s elections and the people who run them.
The administration — fueled by the president’s obsession with his loss in the 2020 election and baseless allegations that the results were rigged against him — has launched a sweeping attack on the nation’s election infrastructure since returning to office last year while Republican allies carve up election maps ahead of midterm elections this fall.
A false claim that millions of noncitizens are voting in federal elections is fueling the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE America Act, and the president is calling on Republican senators to blow up the Senate filibuster and stuff the legislation into other bills to get it passed.
The Department of Justice has also threatened criminal charges against election officials in every state if they knowingly permit noncitizens to vote or remain on voter rolls.
Election officials and voting rights groups fear the administration’s threats could intimidate election workers and chill voter participation.
“There should be no doubt in any American’s mind: the biggest threat to the integrity of the 2026 midterms is President Donald Trump,” Michael McNulty with voting rights group Issue One said in a statement.
“This is not a partisan message, simply a factual one. Our Constitution is clear that state and local bodies – not the president – run elections, and yet President Trump is doing everything within his power to sow mistrust and usurp the balance of power established by our Founding Fathers in the system of checks and balances and federalism that they created,” he added.
