A most dubious anniversary
And it involves a government shutdown you probably haven't heard about
Today marks one year since the Federal Election Commission effectively shut down.
Why you should care? Here’s why: Our nation’s campaign finance enforcement and regulatory agency cannot investigate suspected scofflaws, formalize audits, issue fines, write rules, offer formal legal guidance or even conduct public meetings as the 2026 midterms approach.
How is this possible?
As Taylor Giorno and I explain in our new NOTUS deep dive:
For more than nine months after the de facto shutdown began, President Donald Trump declined to name commissioner nominees that would allow the bipartisan agency to regain its quorum. He finally tapped a pair of Republican nominees to serve alongside two remaining Democrats in February, but the Republican-controlled Senate has yet to schedule a confirmation hearing for either of them.
To understand where this is all going, we spoke to a politically diverse slate of 22 former FEC commissioners, former staff members and attorneys with regular business before the commission.
Many concluded that the FEC — already diminished in statutory authority by years of adverse court rulings and starved by Congress of requested resources — is destined to functionally contract into what’s primarily a government records clearinghouse.
The lesson here, many former FEC commissioners and practitioners say, is that Trump and Congress have little collective interest in empowering the FEC beyond its core transparency function. The full mission of the FEC — serving as an independent regulatory agency “charged with administering and enforcing the federal campaign finance law” — is therefore imperiled. And barring a major power shift in Washington, such as regulation-minded Democrats occupying the White House and both chambers of Congress, the situation isn’t likely to change in the foreseeable future.
Read the full story here.