A federal judge tossed a Democratic Party lawsuit aimed at one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders, which it alleged intruded on the independence of the Federal Election Commission.
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali said in a ruling on Tuesday night that the Democratic Party’s case proved too speculative to justify emergency intervention.
The judge relayed that the FEC said the executive order, titled “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies,” will “have no effect on their operations or decisionmaking.” Without “concrete action
or impact on the FEC’s or its Commissioners’ independence,” the judge said, the court must dismiss the case.
The Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee brought the suit against the Trump administration in February.
Trump’s executive order does mention the FEC: “‘Agency,’ unless otherwise indicated, means any authority of the United States that is an ‘agency’ under 44 U.S.C. 3502(1), and shall also include the Federal Election Commission,” the order says.
The order suggests it grants the president more power over independent agencies like the FEC. “For the Federal Government to be truly accountable to the American people, officials who wield vast executive power must be supervised and controlled by the people’s elected President,” the order says.
Ali, a Biden appointee, said the Democratic committees needed to “point to a concrete basis for [the] conclusion” that the FEC’s independence had been broken or is facing a looming threat of interference.
“They have not done so here,” he said.
In the Democrats’ initial complaint, they wrote, “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.”
Ali has dealt with other high-profile cases concerning the Trump administration. In February, Ali ordered the Trump administration to resume millions of dollars in payments to the dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development.
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As for the FEC, the Trump administration appeared to influence it via its leadership.
Former FEC Chairwoman and Democrat Ellen Weintraub said in February that the administration was trying to fire her illegally, and she no longer appears as an active member of the FEC. On the FEC website, her tenure is listed as “December 2002 to February 2025.”
