President Donald Trump has failed to nominate any of three qualified commissioner candidates recommended by congressional leaders to the hobbled Federal Election Commission, NOTUS has learned.
Trump’s inaction comes as the FEC has entered the third month of a de facto shutdown, lacking enough commissioners to enforce campaign finance laws, formalize investigations, provide official legal guidance, defend itself in lawsuits or even conduct public meetings.
Republicans have recommended Ashley Stow, a staff attorney for current FEC Commissioner Trey Trainor, and Andrew Woodson, a partner at law firm Wiley Rein and former FEC attorney, as commissioner nominees, three sources familiar with the deliberations told NOTUS.
Democrats have recommended Jonathan Peterson, an attorney at the Elias Law Group, led by Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias, two sources familiar with the deliberations said. Peterson also previously worked as an FEC attorney.
Woodson declined to comment. Peterson and Stow could not be reached for comment by phone or email.
“There are no personnel announcements at this time, and any new nominee will be announced by President Trump,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields told NOTUS.
By law, a quorum of at least four FEC commissioners must be present to attend to the agency’s high-level duties. At present, only three of six commissioners are on the job.
Trump alone is empowered to thaw the FEC freeze by nominating new commissioners, who must then be confirmed by the Senate.
If Trump continues to delay, the FEC, which is charged with protecting “the integrity of the federal campaign finance process,” could soon face a significant backlog of election law enforcement cases. Federal courts could also find themselves saddled with disputes that typically go before the independent, bipartisan agency.
“It doesn’t benefit anyone for us to die on the vine,” said FEC Commissioner Dara Lindenbaum, one of two remaining commission Democrats, told NOTUS. “I’m sympathetic that there’s a lot going on. This itty-bitty agency is far from a lot of people’s minds. But there’s bipartisan interest to get this over the line.”
When Republican commissioners Sean Cooksey and Allen Dickerson resigned their seats earlier this year, Trump did not nominate replacements. The president also has not moved to fill the void created in February when he kicked longtime Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub off the FEC — a move she decried as illegal but has not challenged in court. (Chair Shana Broussard is the other remaining Democrat on the commission.)
For weeks, it appeared the FEC might lose a fourth commissioner — Trainor — who was mulling whether to run for Texas attorney general.
But on Monday, Trainor told the Washington Examiner that he will stay at the FEC for now, lest the agency feature no Republican commissioners at all in its ranks. (No more than three FEC commissioners can come from any one political party.)
“At this critical time for our democratic institutions, facing efforts to break norms and weaponize law enforcement for political advantage, I believe it is my duty to continue serving on the Commission,” Trainor said.
Under Trump, the FEC has now lost a commissioner quorum on three different occasions — in 2019, 2020 and 2025 — totaling about 17 months.
Prior to 2019, the FEC had only lost a quorum one other time, in 2008, which lasted six months.
When the commission returned to full strength after its 2020 shutdown, it had nearly 500 delayed enforcement cases to process. Some cases expired without an FEC ruling because of a five-year statute of limitations. As of March 2025, the FEC had 161 pending enforcement matters, according to an FEC memorandum issued in April — a number that’s certainly grown since the agency’s latest loss of quorum.
Broussard, who became FEC chairwoman on July 1, did not respond to interview requests but said in a statement last week that, “We do not know when the quorum will be restored, but I will continue to do all I can to support my colleagues.”
Those colleagues — now fewer than 300 agency staffers — are already doing more work with fewer resources.
As president, Joe Biden paid the FEC little attention, despite pledges to “reduce the corrupting influence of money in politics” and improve politics by banishing “big money from the system.” Biden made one commissioner nomination during his four years — Lindenbaum — while allowing other commissioners, including Weintraub, whose six-year term expired in 2007, to continue serving in what’s known as “holdover status.” Under Biden, the FEC’s funding and staffing largely remained flat.
Now, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget is seeking more cuts, recommending that the quorum-less FEC receive $70.8 million in 2026 — an amount just above what it received 16 years ago in 2010 — with no adjusting for inflation.
Meanwhile, the FEC’s workload has spiked as federal elections have grown exponentially more expensive. During the 2012 presidential election, federal political committees reported fewer than 50 million financial transactions to the FEC. During the 2024 election, they reported more than 500 million, according to FEC records.
The agency has experienced “steadily decreasing staffing levels” — from more than 350 in 2010 to a projected 260 or less in 2026, according to a budget justification report the FEC sent Congress in May.
Some government reform advocates are convinced that Trump, who has been the focus of numerous FEC investigations during the past decade, is simply attempting to kill the FEC any way he can.
“Trump clearly has no interest in the FEC as a priority, otherwise he would have taken action by now,” said Claudine Schneider, a Republican and former member of Congress from Rhode Island who affiliates with government reform organization Issue One. “Every member of Congress should be shouting for action.”
Trump simply not naming new FEC commissioners is “absolutely” a possibility, said Stuart McPhail, director of campaign finance litigation for nonprofit watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
But McPhail argues that there’s a potential upside to the FEC languishing: A person or organization that would typically file a campaign finance complaint with the FEC can now take that complaint directly to a federal court.
A court, in turn, could issue a tougher ruling against an election scofflaw than a functioning FEC, whose commissioners in recent years have often deadlocked along ideological lines over thorny matters such as “dark money” while issuing relatively mild civil punishments for seemingly serious campaign law violations.
Already last month, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted summary judgement to the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center in a case it brought against the FEC over the dismissal of a complaint. The court remanded the matter back to the FEC and ordered it to revisit the matter within 30 days. But without a commissioner quorum, the FEC cannot comply.
Having one of his connected political committees getting hauled before a federal district judge as opposed to FEC commissioners that Trump himself mostly appointed, could motivate Trump to name new agency commissioners, McPhail said.
But federal courts alone shouldering FEC matters is “no substitute for an agency doing its job,” and a “a prolonged period like this is a real and serious concern for elections,” said Daniel Weiner, director of elections and government for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and a former FEC attorney.
Former Republican FEC Chairman Bradley Smith, chairman of the nonprofit Institute for Free Speech, predicted the biggest immediate effect the FEC’s shutdown will have on political committees is the inability to issue what are known as “advisory opinions” — interpretations of federal rules law that help committees comply with them.
For Lindenbaum, one of the three remaining FEC commissioners, she acknowledges that there’s a lot less to do these days given her agency’s loss of power. But she and her colleagues are still showing up. Basic agency functions such as processing thousands of campaign finance reports, which political committees must continue to file, remain.
“My office is operating as if we’re going to get a quorum tomorrow, in case we do,” she added.
Dave Levinthal is a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist.