Good Monday morning. I’m Isaac Saul, living through apocalyptic times in the greater New York City area: mass floods, toxic air, and hordes of strangers overwhelming the streets and public services. Okay, that last one is just soccer fans descending on North Jersey for the World Cup final, but you get the idea. It’s been a wild, funky few days here — and this morning, I was grateful to wake up to clear skies, breathable air, and a cool (dry) summer morning. I may even get my son outside today. You really don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.

While a new dawn rises here, we’re jumping into Trump’s firing of two Democratic election commissioners, a reader question about your political influence, and a reminder to go read my piece on conspiracy theories (and the fact that they’re getting dumber). It’s a packed morning after a big weekend of news, but just a 13-minute read if you’ve got things to do. Let’s jump in.

Quick hits.

1. U.S. Central Command announced that two U.S. servicemembers were killed and another is missing following Iranian strikes on two military bases in Jordan on Friday. Four other service members were medically evacuated and have since been discharged. (The deaths) Separately, another service member was killed in Iraq during a “controlled detonation” of unexploded ordnance from an Iranian drone. (The death)
2. The New York Times reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced internally that it will no longer investigate confrontations with federal immigration agents. However, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security denied the report. (The report) Separately, border czar Tom Homan said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will be required to record vehicle stops with at least one body camera, adding that Homeland Security is in the process of distributing the cameras. (The policy)
3. Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson (D) appears to have secured enough delegates to replace Graham Platner as the Democratic nominee in Maine’s Senate race. (The latest)
4. Russia launched a major ballistic missile attack targeting Kyiv, Ukraine, killing at least one person and wounding 16. (The attack)
5. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) said he is exploring options to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he attends the upcoming United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York City, citing a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. (The comments)

Today’s topic.

The Election Assistance Commission. On Thursday, July 9, President Donald Trump fired the two Democratic commissioners of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), and the agency’s final commissioner, a Republican, resigned. Without commissioners, the agency can still distribute election funding to states, but some of its functions will be impacted, such as establishing new programs or carrying out the appeals process for decertified voting systems. President Trump has not indicated whether he plans to nominate replacements. The White House said the Supreme Court’s recent ruling affirming the president’s power to remove leaders of independent agencies established precedent for the firings.

Back up: In 2002, the Help America Vote Act created the EAC to support the administration of federal elections. The agency’s four commissioners are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and no more than two can belong to the same political party. In addition to distributing funds, the EAC provides election-administration information, certifies voting equipment, and maintains the National Mail Voter Registration Form. 

In April, former EAC Commissioner Donald Palmer (R) left the agency to take a position at the Heritage Foundation, leaving the four-member board with three commissioners. Christy McCormick, the other Republican commissioner, resigned on July 9 in conjunction with the president firing Democratic commissioners Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland. McCormick has declined to comment on her decision to step down. 

While President Trump did not offer a specific rationale for firing the Democratic commissioners, the EAC had previously resisted the president’s directive to change the national voter registration form to require applicants to provide proof of citizenship. “The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted,” the White House said.

Many Democrats criticized the firings, tying them to Trump’s broader efforts to influence election administration and advance claims of election fraud. “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 (D-CA) and Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) said in a joint statement.

Republican lawmakers have mostly refrained from commenting on the firings, though Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) said he “would not have done it” this close to the 2026 midterm elections. 

Today, we’ll share views from the right and left on the shakeup at the EAC, followed by Executive Editor Isaac Saul’s take.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote “Trump fires a federal election board, panic ensues.” 

“President Trump on Thursday forced out the entire bipartisan leadership of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which is his latest flexing of the principle… that executive agencies aren’t constitutionally independent. On the practical implications, however, the partisan rhetoric is ahead of reality,” the board said. “While some of the EAC’s functions are useful, the November elections would go on even if the agency were hit by an asteroid and vaporized.”

“Democrats have sought for years to nationalize election rules in their favor. H.R.1, the bill they pushed under President Biden, would have let the EAC dole out money for recruiting poll workers and running state redistricting commissions. Mr. Trump’s move to assert control of the EAC is a chance for Democrats to repent and embrace the wisdom of decentralized elections,” the board wrote. “Mr. Trump’s cleanout of the EAC is probably the first of many such firings after Slaughter. That makes this a ripe moment for lawmakers to reconsider all of the authority they spent decades handing to Washington’s alphabet soup of ‘independent’ agencies.”

In Texas Scorecard, Trey Trainor praised “Trump’s decisive action on the Election Assistance Commission.”

“While well-intentioned on paper, [the EAC] has evolved into an unnecessary federal intrusion into an area the Framers deliberately reserved for the states,” Trainor said. “Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress limited authority to regulate the ‘Times, Places and Manner’ of federal elections, but this power has always been understood as secondary to the states’ primary role. The EAC has blurred those lines, inserting itself as a de facto national election overseer through guidelines, certifications, and grants that influence how states conduct their most fundamental duty.”

“President Trump’s action recognizes a hard truth: federal agencies like the EAC, often captured by special interests and insulated from accountability, have contributed to the very problems they were meant to solve,” Trainor wrote. “Electronic systems, pushed in part through federal incentives and standards, have fueled skepticism — particularly among conservatives who have witnessed irregularities, delayed results, and a lack of transparency in recent cycles. By clearing out the commissioners, the President is signaling that it is time to return power to the states and the people, where it belongs.”

In his blog, Jonathan Turley said “Slaughter leaves zombie commission.”

“President Donald Trump took out the newly recognized power [to remove agency leaders] for a spin by removing the members of the [EAC],” Turley wrote. “The Administration made clear that it wanted to expedite policies to ‘safeguard elections from fraud and abuse’ ahead of November’s midterm elections. The tensions with the Administration have been building over the failure to move forward with a proof-of-citizenship requirement for national elections, updated guidelines on voting machines, and other election policies.”

“The absence of active members creates an obvious power vacuum, as the Commission rules require an affirmative vote by at least three commissioners to conduct official business. Notably, the Commission has previously had no active members or a working quorum,” Turley said. “Moreover, it is the states that continue to administer elections for the most part under our constitutional system. Congress does have concurrent jurisdiction for federal elections and this move is likely to refocus attention on the pending legislative reforms being pushed by the Trump Administration.”

For the Election Reformers Network, Kevin Johnson and Heather Balas said the firings “illustrat[e] America’s crisis of election governance.”

“Democracy depends on governance being protected from partisan pressures and from politicians with a stake in the outcome. In many other areas of public life, we recognize the importance of independent governance… Elections deserve no less,” Johnson and Balas wrote. “The President’s hobbling of the EAC is an aggressive escalation in his ongoing campaign to sow doubt and distrust in our elections. And his actions lay bare a worrisome truth: our election system is not fully protected against partisan abuse.”

“Most democracies establish clear guardrails to insulate election governance entities from partisan influence. Some have created whole fourth branches of government for this function. For example, India’s constitutionally established national Election Commission played an essential role in building a new democracy among hundreds of disparate communities,” Johnson and Balas said. “While we reckon with the immediate fallout of the President’s assault on the EAC, we must also commit to the urgent effort of insulating election governance from continued partisan control.”

In MS NOW, Steve Benen argued “you should care about Trump gutting the Election Assistance Commission.”

“In the wake of the 2000 elections, there was one thing Democrats and Republicans could agree on: The entire election cycle was a mess that exposed structural and institutional flaws that required reforms. It wasn’t easy, but Congress ultimately passed the Help America Vote Act… which included a variety of constructive changes and created a new entity called the Election Assistance Commission,” Benen wrote. “The point of the commission, as its name implies, is to assist state and local election administrators with training, security grants, voluntary election management guidelines and detailed information on best practices… There was no reason to gut the commission. Donald Trump did it anyway.”

“Until very recently, such a move wouldn’t have just been seen as a power grab, it also would have been recognized as legally dubious,” Benen said. “But after Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court issued their ruling in Trump v. Slaughter early last week, the executive branch suddenly had vast new powers to remove independent government regulators and officials at independent federal agencies.”

In Salon, Chauncey DeVega explored “Trump’s slow-motion dismantling of elections.”

“There is a growing sense among many pro-democracy Americans and the public at large that Trumpism and the MAGA are not forever… In reality, Trump’s MAGA coalition is continuing to attack and wear down American democracy and society,” DeVega wrote. “On Thursday, the president removed the remaining members of the bipartisan federal Election Assistance Commission… The administration justified this unprecedented move by citing the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Trump v. Slaughter, which handed the president new power to fire the heads of ‘independent agencies’ without cause.

“So why now? The EAC refused to support Trump’s push to include a citizenship question on voter registration forms. This is part of a much larger campaign to manipulate and take control of the country’s elections in the name of security and stopping fraud to guarantee wins for Trump and MAGA Republicans in the November midterms, the 2028 presidential contest and beyond,” DeVega said. “Trump’s moves against the EAC and the larger campaign against multiracial pluralistic democracy are pushing the country ever further towards a state of competitive authoritarianism where elections take place but the outcome is essentially pre-determined in favor of the ruling party.”

My take.

Isaac Saul

Executive Editor

 

• Ousting the EAC commissioners probably won’t disrupt elections in the near term.
• However, the move represents Trump’s latest attempt to exert influence over elections.
• If the president is concerned about election security, dismantling this agency is a strange response.

Reminder: This is where we share a personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, leave a comment on the website or reply to this email.

One difficult part of our work at Tangle is analyzing stories like this in a vacuum — through a narrow, specific lens — while also trying to fit them into a larger picture. Here, I think articulating each as distinctly as possible is valuable.

In a vacuum, the firings are probably not a huge deal. The EAC is primarily a voluntary federal certification program for voting equipment. It also hands out millions in grants to help states replace old equipment, improve accessibility, or navigate unexpected challenges like Covid-19. Lastly, it helps states share data, provides best practices, and maintains a national mail voter registration form.

Most of the EAC’s work for the upcoming election was already done, and its remaining staff will allow it to carry on as a kind of zombie agency. The EAC has long struggled with commissioner vacancies (it didn’t have a quorum from 2010–2014, spanning two federal elections) and lacks regulatory or enforcement power. Many states don’t even use EAC-certified equipment. Its budget is also relatively small, so even if the agency went away altogether, it wouldn’t disrupt the actual administration of elections all that much. For years, Republicans have viewed the agency as an example of government bloat and have proposed legislation to dismantle it. Now, after Slaughter, Trump can effectively kill the agency without Congress.

In this narrow lens, the firings will probably have very little impact on the 2026 or even the 2028 elections, and I doubt we’ll hear much more about it between now and then.

However, the larger context makes this move much more worrisome. President Trump has, for the last 18 months, significantly expanded the reach and power of the presidency. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Slaughter has allowed the executive to exert more power over agencies and legislators, and one of the first things Trump did with that power was attack a group of bipartisan, unanimously confirmed commissioners overseeing an election-security agency. 

At the same time, there is a lot of evidence that Trump is injecting chaos, uncertainty, and doubt into the 2026 midterms. On Thursday night, Trump gave a national address with the goal of advancing the SAVE America Act, the bill that would require citizens to present documentation confirming their citizenship when registering to vote, require photo identification to vote in federal elections, and restrict mail-in voting. The president insisted that passing this bill is essential, because China has allegedly interfered in our elections and our electoral system is vulnerable to hacking, and he would release never-before-seen classified documents that proved it. 

Instead, as I wrote on Friday, the documents did almost the opposite. I actually read them, and they mostly consisted of existing intelligence reports detailing how state actors like China and Russia have at times tried to influence public opinion, accessed data on American voters, and considered (though never attempted) causing chaos in our elections via actual hacking. Ironically, these documents reinforced what we already knew: Russia has tried to help Trump win elections, but our voting machines have neither been infiltrated nor compromised. On the whole, the document dump detailed legitimate vulnerabilities in our election systems that election experts have long understood, while also reinforcing the reality that our elections are secure and have not been hacked — and that the 2020 presidential election was not rigged. But a huge unveiling of historical election interference was not what Thursday night was about. 

Trump was never going to prove that the 2020 election was stolen or that our elections have been compromised, because it wasn’t and he can’t. Thursday night was about casting as much uncertainty and doubt on the election as possible so Trump can capitalize on that doubt to push through the SAVE Act.

The Washington Post reported in February that right-wing activists are lobbying the White House to declare an Election Day national emergency. Trump has denied those allegations, but insisted there will be voter ID for the midterm elections, with or without Congress. Ty Cobb, the former White House attorney, has suggested that Trump is preparing to declare a national emergency before the midterms and even deploy federal agents to polling places across the country. Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, declined last week to explicitly rule out deploying federal agents to polling places. Postmaster General David Steiner, a Trump ally, said that USPS will not deliver mail-in ballots in states that don’t hand over sensitive voter data to the federal government. Trump himself is already making it abundantly clear that he thinks no election result could possibly be legitimate unless his preferred election reform bill is passed. 

In this larger context, the EAC is just one small piece of the president’s continued insistence that our elections — specifically the one he lost — are corrupted. Without the EAC in action, one fewer bipartisan group will be able to tell voters, “No, actually, that claim of election fraud is false, and we know because we certified the technical specs on these voting machines.” Or, “Yes, actually, this election in Michigan was fraudulent, because we — a group of agency heads including Democrats — helped coordinate an audit of those results.”

Dismantling the EAC is not a specific attempt by the Trump administration to rig or otherwise tilt the 2026 and 2028 elections in its favor. Compared to the potential for federal agents to be deployed at polling places across the country, or Trump ruminating on some kind of election-oriented national emergency, it’s a nothingburger. But it's hard to wave off. Even in the best of times, the quality and impact of the agency’s work is hard to assess, and what could break in its absence is genuinely unclear. At a moment when the administration keeps generating reasons for the public to want assurances, decapitating the EAC feels more than directionally wrong.

If I wanted to take an optimistic view, I’d offer this: If Trump were trying to rig the 2026 elections in his favor (as some Democrats allege), gutting the EAC is a pretty bad way to do that. Instead, the president seems to be preparing his caucus to cope with midterm blowback from the electorate. That’s a good signal, because even if Trump is preparing an argument to use after the election, he isn’t preparing a means to shape the results before it.

Still, even that optimistic tea-leaf reading is cold comfort. The irony of Trump effectively shutting down the EAC, in case it isn’t clear, is that the EAC is actually helpful for election security — the very thing Trump claims to worry about. In the mishmash of exaggerations and lies from Thursday night, Trump is correct that our election systems are constantly under threat, that our security can be improved, and that we need coordinated action. A bipartisan agency doing basic things like creating standards for election security and helping fund states’ security efforts is exactly what we need more of; yet Trump just took that group off the board because he won’t admit that he lost an election fairly. 

That, more than anything else, is a dark and disappointing sign of the times. 

Take the survey: How concerned are you about these firings? Let us know.

Disagree? That’s okay. Our opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we’ll consider publishing your feedback.

Your questions, answered.

Q: It seems to me that we [as citizens] have some minimal influence, but ultimately not much. Does it actually make sense to be spending all this time and effort figuring out what we think of the policy proposals that are being considered, or figuring out what we would want to propose if we had the power, since ultimately we don’t?

— Jared from West Hartford, CT

Executive Editor Isaac Saul: Definitively: Yes. For starters, I would not underestimate the influence we have as citizens. Elected officials are very sensitive to public pressure at all levels of government. Even if you believe that all legislation is controlled by an influential group of the rich and powerful, then all you need to do to elicit major change is convince a handful of people. That feels like a hopeful thought to me, not necessarily a discouraging one. Knowing how you want to influence them is only an option if you are well informed. 

Well informed, motivated individuals can catalyze huge political change from the ground up, too. LeeAnne Walters was a stay-at-home mom in Flint, Michigan, and she made the water crisis a national story. Katie Fahey was an unknown nonprofit worker who used a single Facebook post to launch a successful campaign to end gerrymandering in her state, replacing it with a bipartisan citizens’ redistricting committee. After the murder of their daughter, Richard and Maureen Kanka successfully lobbied for the federal adoption of “Megan’s Law,” requiring communities to be notified when registered sex offenders were nearby.

Honestly, I think we underestimate our power as citizens. I haven’t quite had the influence of the people above, but I was just one person with some passion for a good idea, and now I have half a million people on a mailing list and a 15-person company doing a little bit of good.

Also, having influence is no longer unique to people with a platform or an audience. “Normie” Americans have more influence than ever, thanks to the megaphone that is social media and the potential for anything you say or write to go viral. 

All of this is to say that, even if Congress or the president can sometimes feel distant or immovable, I actually think both individual and collective Americans still wield far more influence than we appreciate.

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Under the radar.

On Friday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said that the Trump administration is pursuing a policy to deny banking services to people in the United States illegally in an effort to compel them to self-deport. “Illegal aliens have credit cards, they have bank accounts and they’re paid with direct deposit,” Miller said. “Shutting that down is a massive engine for deportation.” Outside of this effort, the Trump administration has taken other actions to restrict noncitizens’ access to financial services, issuing guidance to allow lenders to consider applicants’ immigration and work-authorization status when determining whether to issue a loan. Fox News has the story. 

Numbers.

• 13. The number of commissioners in the Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC) history, including the three commissioners who were fired or resigned on July 9. 
• 10. The approximate number of years the EAC went without its full number of commissioners prior to the confirmation of Commissioners Benjamin Hovland and Donald Palmer in 2019. 
• $4.35 billion. The approximate amount of election-related funding distributed to states by the EAC since 2003. 
• $175.9 million. The approximate amount of election-security funding disbursed by the EAC from 2020–2023 that states spent on cybersecurity. 
• $112.7 million. The approximate amount of election-security funding disbursed by the EAC from 2020–2023 that states spent on voting equipment.

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just published a Friday edition on the surprising developments in the latest climate science.
• The most clicked link in our last regular newsletter was our ad for The Penny Hoarder.
• Nothing to do with politics: Watch Josh Kerr run the fastest mile in history.
• Our last survey: 3,890 readers responded to our survey on the proposal to move the U.S. to permanent Daylight Savings Time, with 46% saying they would rather move to permanent Standard Time. “Permanent standard time would put us in sync with how most of the planet does time,” one respondent said. “I don’t care whether it is standard or daylight savings time, I just prefer no time change each year,” said another.

Have a nice day.

Hannah Bruner and Wilder McGraw, two eight-year-old New Yorkers, recently set out to achieve one of the coolest world records imaginable: visiting the most New York City playgrounds in one day. As fun as it sounds, the pursuit required preparation and perseverance, too. With help from their parents, the two mapped out a route spanning the Upper West Side and Midtown West, then kicked off the record-setting day at 8 AM. Hitting all of the planned stops took roughly nine hours — with requisite time for slides, monkey bars, and other activities at each one — but by the time they finished, Bruner and McGraw had visited 41 playgrounds, shattering the previous record of 26. “The kids are getting older and we only have a little bit of playground time left with them,” Jesenia Ruiz de la Torre, Bruner’s mother, said. “It almost felt like a way to say goodbye to the playground.” The New York Post has the story.