Trump and Democrats Fight Over Election Law Control | CLIP | Crossroads

With the midterm elections coming up, there's a legal battle right now starting over election laws, and most importantly, campaign finance. Who controls these things? Who has oversight? Well, President Donald Trump is saying the White House should have oversight. He signed an executive order to bring the FEC, Federal Election Commission, under the scrutiny of the White House. They can decide, should we do this or not? And Democrats, while they argue this will undermine the independence of the FEC and the elections by extension, the FEC is in charge of enforcing campaign finance laws and other things, and a new lawsuit brought by the Democratic Party, well, it could actually soon determine the legalities of Trump's order, and frankly, who runs the elections. Now, Reuters said this, it said U.S. President Donald Trump was sued on Friday by the Democratic Party over a recent executive order, it says, violates federal election law by giving him too much power over the independent Federal Election Commission. The lawsuit filed in the Washington, D.C. federal court by three national Democratic committees is the party's first against Trump during the Republican's second White House term. We're only a month in, right? This is the first lawsuit officially from the Democrats, and it says Democrats said enforcing it would essentially substitute Trump's views on election-related disputes for those of the bipartisan election commission and let him dictate outcomes. Now, notice as well, Congress created the election commission in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal to oversee elections and enforce campaign finance laws, and the complaint quotes then Republican President Gerald Ford, saying both political parties had expressed their pleasure with this bill, noting that it allows them to compete fairly. But according to the complaint, letting Trump micromanage the commission would undermine its purpose by allowing a single partisan political figure to rig campaign rules, they say, and resolve disputes against his opponents. Now, look, a bit of background on this. Trump signed an executive order to establish more White House oversight on around 80 independent government agencies. That includes the FEC. It includes a lot of other ones as well. About two of those are focused on elections. This is the official fact sheet from the order on February 18th. Here's what the White House statement says. It says today, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order ensuring that all federal agencies are accountable to the American people as required by the Constitution. Under this executive order, the order notes that Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution vests all executive power in the president, meaning all executive branch officials and employees are subject to his supervision. That of course means all these otherwise independent government agencies, if they're part of the executive branch under the Constitution, they're under the president. They argue, right? And they say this, therefore, because all executive power is vested in the president, all agencies must one, submit draft regulations for White House review with no carve out for so-called independent agencies like the FEC, except they say for the monetary policy functions of the Federal Reserve. They gave one exception to it, the Federal Reserve. And also two, it says to consult with the White House on their priorities and strategic plans and the White House, it says, will set their performance standards. The Office of Management and Budget, OPM, will adjust, sorry, OMB, will adjust so-called independent agencies' apportments to ensure tax dollars are spent wisely. The president will get to review all of that. And it says the president and attorney general, subject to the president's supervision and control, meaning Trump would still be technically in control of it even with the AG in there, will interpret the law for the executive branch instead of having separate agencies adopt conflicting interpretations. It notes as well, executive power, the power of the president, without responsibility has no place in our republic. What's a president otherwise? And it says the United States was founded on the principle that the government should be accountable to the people. We elect the president. The president has this function and this power, not elected, unelected bureaucrats. And it says this, that is why the founders created a single president who is alone, vested with the executive power and responsibility to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. It notes as well that voters and the president can now hold all federal agencies, not just cabinet departments, responsible for their decisions as the constitution demands. Now look, basically, since this is based on a constitutional argument, it's very likely the democratic lawsuit, it's probably going to head to the Supreme Court eventually. And the basic argument from the Trump side is that, as he mentions, the constitution in writing does establish powers under the executive branch of the government, mainly under the White House, to ensure that government agencies can be reined in by voters. We elect the president. The president represents us in the democratic process because we are a representative democracy, which is a republic. Now, the other side, the Democrats would argue, well, Congress and the president or Gerald Ford created a law that changes this. Can Trump just change it by making an executive order? Does an executive order override legislation approved previously? Well, we will see. Because Trump is now arguing that the law created by Congress and Gerald Ford is unconstitutional. That's going to be the debate. Now, the idea right now is to not have rogue agencies that can basically do whatever they want with little accountability and basically nobody to answer to among the voters, which is the argument against these independent agencies. How can you have agencies within the executive branch of our government who don't have to answer to the president, right? Now, like the other side argues that having some separation, well, that helps ensure that whoever's president doesn't get to influence agencies that could benefit themselves politically, right? The FEC, for example, Federal Election Commission, basically this would let whoever's in office review laws that could benefit or harm the president or the party they're part of, Democrat or Republican, during an election. Imagine, for example, if Kamala Harris was president and she got to decide on, you know, finance laws that might harm the Republican Party. Would that change people's opinions? I don't know. Because that's what Trump's doing right now. And look, of course, the counter argument to that is, well, who in government is not partisan these days, right? Can you name a single government official who doesn't align with one side of the aisle or the other? The former head of the FEC, Federal Election Commission, even though it was independent, the former head was a vocal critic of Trump. The individual really did not like Donald Trump. Was that a breach of independence? Well, what happens in that case when an otherwise independent agency risks showing some type of partisan position? Does that damage, again, the nonpartisan nature of the agency if partisanship is expressed by its leadership? Who then has oversight to ensure the agency is not acting in partisan interest because the individuals in charge are doing that? How is that different from how the president do it? Well, that's the argument the Supreme Court is very likely going to get to hear as this case moves its way up through the circuit. Now, look, leading up to this, Trump took other actions to reform the Federal Election Commission. In particular, what did he do? He fired that chairwoman. He fired her. The FEC, right? That was Ellen Weintraub, who had been in place for about 20 years. Now, she published Trump's January 31st letter online firing her. And this is what it said. It said, quote, you are hereby removed as a member of the Federal Election Commission, effective immediately. Thank you for your service on the commission. Now, look, in response, she actually tried defying the president and keeping her position regardless of the presidential order. Now, her argument for saying, I'm going to stay in whether you like it or not, her argument was that the president of the United States does not have the authority to remove an FEC commissioner and that they could only be replaced if they resign or if their terms expire. She said, Mr. President, you have no power here, basically. Now, Trump's executive order, it seems, changed that because Trump gave himself the power to do that. And it puts the FEC and other agencies under the normal rules of the executive branch, meaning, oh, yeah, he can fire her, although that's going to be debated in court now. And it's also on this front that we're seeing the Democrat lawsuit, of course. But look, things also got more complicated from there. It came to light that the commissioner, the one who was fired and then refused to be fired, Ellen Weintraub, well, her appointment had already actually ended a long time ago. She was appointed under President George W. Bush way back in 2002. And here's where it gets a bit complicated. The Hill reported this, quote, Weintraub's term ended in 2007, but a successor was never appointed to take her spot and allowed her to serve as an acting commissioner for over 20 years. How does that happen? Well, Weintraub tried keeping her position. It does seem her removal did go through. The FEC website currently shows it's four active commissioners. There are two Republicans, two Democrats, two vacant seats, and she's not there. Now, this is also possibly important for another reason, though. Weintraub was a vocal critic of Trump's various claims on election fraud, especially after the 2020 elections. And these are claims Trump has stood by. He's not backed off that. On the election funding side, money going through campaign finance laws, one of the things the FEC has oversight of, there's some important things with this, there was the Zuck Bucks scandal of the 2020 elections. A lot of Republicans criticized that for possibly swinging the election in the favor of former President Joe Biden. In 2024, you had the same thing on the other side, right? Trump also had support from Elon Musk, and there were likewise Democrats who criticized some of his lottery-style campaigns as also impacting the outcome of the elections. But there are arguably more significant issues with election finances, I would say are significantly more important, that could actually be impacted under the new changes to the FEC. We're now seeing the vast gray area caused by NGOs, non-governmental organizations, that ironically get funding from the government, USAID and otherwise, which raises the question, are they non-government if they're government funded? Well, we're seeing all the politically active groups that were getting money from our government, from our taxes, and many of these were politically involved, including in our elections. Now there are questions of whether this could amount to partisan campaigns being paid for by American tax dollars.