Trump accused of trying to ‘rig’ elections after firing federal commissioners | Donald Trump

Donald Trump is accused of trying to rig the upcoming US midterm elections after firing the final three members of an independent federal commission.

Trump’s extraordinary move to paralyze the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) eliminates the only federal agency dedicated solely to election administration, months before the US midterm elections.

Critics, including top Democrats, have vowed to fight the Trump administration’s efforts to increase the federal government’s participation in elections. Trump continues to push the Save America Act, a right-wing election amendment that would impose new restrictions on voting.

Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP civil rights organization, said: “Donald Trump knows that voters in November will reject everything he stands for. The economy is devastating, he is starting endless wars that leave Americans dead, and the paramilitary ICE police force is terrorizing our communities. Trump fears the sacred power we all have as voters, and that’s why he wants to rig this election.”

“Mr. President, your plan will fail miserably. If you think the American people will allow fascism, you are very mistaken. The NAACP will do everything in its power to get people to the polls and make their voices heard.”

Democratic US Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said the move followed Trump’s suggestion that Republicans “take over the voting” and called the impeachments a “brazen attempt” to seize control of the election “before a single vote has been cast.”

“The removal of all remaining members of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission months before the midterm elections is a brazen attempt to seize control of our elections before a single vote has been cast,” Schumer wrote on social media. “It eviscerates the independent agency that certifies voting systems and helps election officials conduct elections safely.”

He added: “Senate Democrats will fight against this power grab at every opportunity. The 2026 elections will be decided by the American people, not Donald Trump.”

The commission’s two Democrats, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, were told by email Thursday that their positions had been terminated, effective immediately, according to people familiar with the matter. The only remaining Republican, Christy McCormick, was forced to resign rather than be fired outright; The fourth seat had already been vacant since Republican Donald Palmer left for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, earlier this year.

The White House has argued that the president has the authority to remove officials who do not fully comply with securing elections, and has expanded his authority to remove heads of independent agencies, citing a recent Supreme Court decision. Election law experts say the ruling’s reach in bipartisan bodies like the EAC has yet to be tested since the U.S. Congress deliberately built the commission around a partisan divide.

Other Democrats have since piled on. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia said the purge “should concern every American,” while Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, accused the administration of creating chaos for election officials across the country.

The EAC, created under the Help America Vote Act after the disputed 2000 election, does not conduct the elections itself. It distributes federal election security grants, maintains national mail-in voter registration, certifies voting machines for compliance with federal standards, and advises state and local officials. Since there are no commission members left, no vote can be taken to take any official action.

That leaves the agency unable to update voting standards or the federal registration form and freezes changes the administration is pushing, including a citizenship certification requirement that has already been partially blocked by the courts. The changes would still need Senate approval, a process that could extend well beyond the midterms.

Hovland is one of the dismissed commissioners. he told NBC News The agency had served as a clearinghouse to help cash-strapped states share best practices and had warned that losing it could lead to real administrative errors as the midterm approaches.

“If you ask more and more people without giving the necessary resources, mistakes will happen,” he said. “This sounds more like a situation that resulted in 1,000 deaths than anything specific that you’re concerned about.”

Cisco Aguilar, the Democratic secretary of state in Nevada and president of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said in a statement that the firings were “incredibly irresponsible.”

“The EAC plays a critical role in supporting state and local election officials, and it will once again fall to secretaries of state and other election administrators to fill the gap,” Aguilar said. “This pattern of behavior by the Trump administration, ranging from cutting off cybersecurity funding to launching false investigations, makes it difficult for our election officials to do their jobs and does nothing to make elections safer.”