The Federal Election Commission will soon lose its powers to enforce and regulate campaign finance laws, NOTUS has learned.
This de facto FEC shutdown will be triggered when Republican Commissioner Allen Dickerson resigns on Wednesday, leaving the six-member FEC with too few commissioners to legally conduct high-level business, three government sources familiar with the matter said.
The independent, bipartisan agency won’t be legally empowered to fine scofflaws, make new rules, conduct audits, issue advisory guidance, vote on the outcomes of investigations or even conduct formal meetings — at least until President Donald Trump nominates one or more new commissioners that the U.S. Senate, in turn, must confirm.
The FEC freeze comes at a time when Trump has sought to curb or control the leadership and operations of other independent agencies across the government, such as the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board.
The FEC needs a quorum of four commissioners to operate, but was already down by two after one resigned and Trump ousted a Democratic commissioner in February. The FEC will soon be down to three: Dickerson’s term expires next week, and he plans to leave office instead of continuing to serve in “holdover status” until President Donald Trump nominates a replacement, fellow Republican Commissioner Trey Trainor confirmed to NOTUS on Friday.
The FEC freeze could last weeks or even months, depending on when Trump nominates new commissioners and how quickly the U.S. Senate acts to confirm them.
Any amount of time is too long, some campaign reformers argue.
“The FEC is supposed to be the nation’s top campaign finance referee. The loss of a quorum at the FEC is more than a bureaucratic hiccup — it’s the refs walking off the field at a moment when robust scrutiny of money in politics is needed more than ever,” said Alix Fraser, vice president of advocacy for pro-campaign reform organization Issue One. “Americans deserve a government that keeps corruption in check, not one that turns a blind eye as a torrent of money floods our politics.”
During Trump’s first term, the FEC found itself similarly hobbled during two stretches without a quorum that together lasted more than a year in 2019 and 2020.
At the time, some enforcement cases pending before the FEC exceeded a five-year statute of limitations and effectively died for a lack of commissioners to rule on them. And when the FEC finally regained its quorum just before Election Day 2020, it found itself saddled with a backlog of hundreds of cases that took months to work through.
“It’s sort of like Groundhog Day,” said Michael Toner, a former Republican FEC chairman who’s now a partner at law firm Wiley Rein. “If this one lasts one or two months, it’s not going to be overly disruptive. It’s quite another thing if it’s six months or a year.”
Trainor, a Trump appointee from the president’s first term, said he doesn’t anticipate a repeat of the FEC’s extended work stoppage.
“I know it’ll be a priority for [the White House] to get back to a quorum. I don’t anticipate a prolonged period of time,” Trainor said. “Our hope is that the Senate will quickly confirm whomever the president sends over … there have been conversations with the Senate about the process, and there seems to be a lot of bipartisan consensus to move quickly.”
For however long the FEC lacks a quorum, the FEC’s staff will continue to accept, process and publish political committees’ campaign finance reports and respond to inquiries, Trainor added.
But Sen. Alex Padilla of California, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which vets FEC nominees, said the agency is “losing much of its ability to enforce the existing rules on transparency and money in politics.
“When it comes to future nominations, I will fight to ensure that the FEC maintains its balance and independence as Congress intended,” he said in an email to NOTUS. Representatives for Sen. Mitch McConnell, chair of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, did not respond to requests for comment.
The White House likewise did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.
But Trump has taken a new interest in campaign finance matters: On Thursday, he issued an executive order directing U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to “crack down on illegal ‘straw donor’ and foreign contributions in American elections” — singling out Democratic political payment processing firm ActBlue by name.
ActBlue described Trump’s order as “blatantly unlawful” and the “latest front in his campaign to stamp out all political, electoral and ideological opposition.”
The FEC’s power loss is partially of Trump’s own doing. The FEC had a full complement of six commissioners — three Republicans and three Democrats — as recently as January.
But Republican FEC Commissioner Sean Cooksey resigned at the end of January, and Trump has yet to nominate someone to replace him.
Then, in February, Trump removed FEC Chairperson Ellen Weintraub — a Democrat who had served in “holdover” status since 2007 — over her objections. Weintraub, who could not be reached for comment Friday, remains off the commission, and the agency has no chairperson at present.
Padilla and 10 other Democratic U.S. senators immediately derided Weintraub’s dismissal as “illegal” and “without precedent” in a letter to Trump.
“There is no question that President Trump is dead set on using his time in office to advance his personal interests and those of his billionaire backers,” Padilla told NOTUS. “His illegal attempts to subvert the FEC by executive order and fire its chair are all part of that effort.”
The Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that Trump — for now — could dismiss a pair of other board members who oversee independent agencies.
Legal scholars are concerned that Trump gaining more control over independent agencies would portend an expansion of presidential power that could extend to other independent bodies, such as the Federal Reserve.
“Unfortunately, this is part of a pattern we’re seeing across the entire government, as the Trump administration tries to shake the bedrock principles of our democracy to the core,” Fraser of Issue One said. “This pattern of dysfunction is a breach of public trust we simply can’t afford.”
In what may be one of its final rulings for a while, the FEC this week unanimously dismissed two conservative organizations’ complaint against NPR for allegedly being controlled by the Democratic Party.
The FEC has a public meeting scheduled for Wednesday — likely its last until Trump nominates new commissioners.
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Dave Levinthal is a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist.