Democrats Sue Trump Over Attempt to Control Independent Election Agency

The Democratic Party is suing President Donald Trump over an executive order that could make it easier for him to tilt elections in the GOP’s favor.

The lawsuit, filed Friday by Elias Law Group on behalf of the three national Democratic committees, challenges an expansive executive order Trump issued earlier this month that would give him unprecedented power over key regulatory agencies that were designed to operate without direct White House control.

In it, the plaintiffs argue that the executive order specifically threatens the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which Congress established in 1974 to enforce federal campaign finance laws through a bipartisan board of six commissioners who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

If Trump’s order is allowed to stand, the president — through coercion or direct control — could affect FEC decision-making to his party’s benefit, the lawsuit warns. 

“The extinction of the FEC’s independence — and replacement with the President’s decree — severely harms Plaintiffs by placing the head of the opposing political party in charge of interpreting campaign finance law for the executive branch,” it reads.

Filed in the District Court of D.C., the lawsuit asked the court to declare that the FEC’s status as an independent regulatory body is constitutional and to bar the Trump administration from applying the executive order to FEC commissioners. 

They also requested that the court ask the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to weigh in on the constitutionality of the Federal Election Campaign Act, the law that established the FEC.

Trump’s order was a major step toward the conservative legal movement’s decades-long goal of ending the independence of regulatory agencies and concentrating authority over them in the White House.

The movement has been guided by a once-fringe legal theory which asserts that the president has unlimited control over the actions of the four million people who make up the executive branch.

In past decisions, like Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., the Supreme Court has prevented presidents from dismissing members of independent regulatory bodies like the FEC.

However, Trump has taken steps — directly pulled from Project 2025 —  that appear to violate federal statutes to challenge the constitutionality of independent agencies and to expand his ability to remove federal officials at will.

The moves are likely an attempt to get cases before the Republican-appointed majority of the Supreme Court in the hopes of eliciting favorable decisions.