I chaired the US Federal Election Commission. Now there’s no cop on the beat | Ellen L Weintraub

Threats to the US electoral process keep accelerating. Donald Trump is issuing increasingly unhinged demands that his political adversaries and those who fund speech that he views as contrary to his political agenda or supports his political opponents be prosecuted. When a prosecutor balked at this political intervention, Trump simply found one who is more compliant.

In what appears to be yet another attempt to concoct support for unproven claims of voter fraud, the Department of Justice has issued exhaustive voting records requests to multiple states. Voting rights lawsuits have been dismissed. A division targeting foreign interference in our elections has been dismembered. Attempts are under way to make voter registration more onerous. Alarmingly, at least one commentator has warned that the extraordinary call-out of the military against US civilians on US soil may be a “dress rehearsal” for taking over the 2026 election from the lawful administrators in the states. Even short of a takeover, one could well imagine this administration developing pretexts for troop deployments in Democratic strongholds during voting. Indeed, Trump has already called for the military to use American cities, at least those run by Democrats, as “training grounds” and ominously talks of a “war from within”.

American democracy may be under attack, but billionaire megadonors are fully engaged in protecting their own interests. And as we head into what will undoubtedly be another multibillion-dollar election year, the agency charged with regulating money in politics is missing in action. With the recent announcement of another commissioner leaving the already moribund agency, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) will be down to two commissioners. By law, there should be six, but it takes four to make a quorum. Without a quorum, the FEC cannot enforce the law.

Fifty years ago, in the wake of Watergate, a scandal featuring a president who used burglars and bags of cash to go after his political enemies, the Federal Election Commission opened its doors to enforce campaign finance restrictions and enable the American people to “follow the money”. In this anniversary year, the commission finds itself, for the fourth time, without even a bare quorum of commissioners to conduct its most important business. Three out of four of these periods have occurred during a Trump administration. The last time, in 2020, as previous fundraising records were being shattered, Trump waited until after the election to restore the quorum.

The Trump administration’s gutting of the FEC is another indication of a pervasive contempt for the electoral process and the post-Watergate anti-corruption reforms that would have made Richard Nixon blush. The FEC is just one of the checks on the president’s conduct that Trump has disabled, along with removing Inspectors general, Democratic appointees to boards and commissions throughout the federal government, and others who dare to voice a dissenting view.

Watergate was a scandal involving about a million dollars, an amount that shocked the nation back then, but would be considered chump change today, after a 2024 campaign cycle when six separate donors contributed 100 times that amount, moguls lined up to make million-dollar donations to a largely unregulated inaugural committee, 2,500 Super Pacs together raised more than $5bin, and overall, almost $15bn was spent, almost $2bn in undisclosed “dark money”.

No one is more aware than I am of the FEC’s shortcomings in enforcing the law and the increasing challenges it will face in a world where the president feels empowered to fire any official who defies him.

Having no cop on the beat to address any potential campaign finance wrongdoing, however, will only embolden political actors who would disregard the law, and it leaves those seeking to comply with no way to get definitive guidance. And the resulting backlog of enforcement cases will provide an opening for those commissioners seeking an excuse to avoid investigating alleged illegality. The commission needs a quorum, and specifically, a quorum of commissioners willing to enforce the law and stop engineering loopholes.

We are sadly learning how many ways there are for a determined president to undermine government agencies whose missions he finds inconvenient. The president needn’t zero out the budget or fire all the staff to literally decommission the commission. In the case of the FEC, it’s been death by decapitation. Billionaires seeking new ways to wield influence from the shadows will face no deterrence while the American people’s desire for a fair and transparent political system goes unfulfilled.

• Ellen L Weintraub is currently a senior fellow at End Citizens United. She served as a commissioner on the FEC from 2002-2025, until her removal by Donald Trump, and served as chair four times