National Democrats sued Friday to stave off what they say could be President Donald Trump’s destruction of impartial campaign finance regulation by the Federal Election Commission.
The Democratic National Committee and the campaign arms for congressional Democrats say Trump’s executive order taking control of all independent agencies in the Executive Branch means the FEC could now be weaponized against Trump’s political adversaries in ways it was designed to prevent in the aftermath of Watergate.
In particular, Democrats pinpoint a section in the order that requires all executive branch officials to defer to Trump’s own interpretation of the law, rather than any judgments they may reach on their own. In the context of boards and agencies meant to exercise independent judgment, this order could “replace that bipartisan consensus with the judgment of a single partisan political figure—the President of the United States,” they wrote.
Democrats are asking a judge to declare that the FEC’s independence from the president is constitutionally permitted and to bar the Trump White House from attempting to apply his executive order to the agency. The Democrats’ lawsuit is the first specifically aimed at the FEC and to seek to have Trump’s order itself deemed invalid — at least for that agency.
The challenge by Democrats comes as the party struggles to find its footing in the new Trump era in Washington. They are out of power in Congress and seeking a message that might propel them to gains in the 2026 midterms that return the House or Senate to Democratic control.
Trump has sought to consolidate control of every facet of the executive branch, even agencies that have long exercised a measure of political independence from the president, contending that such restrictions on his authority are unconstitutional. The Supreme Court is already weighing a legal challenge to his effort to fire a federal ethics watchdog, Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger, on the grounds that the office’s legal independence conflicts with Trump’s authority to run the executive branch.
Court cases are also pending following Trump’s removal of 17 inspectors general and members of boards that oversee employee grievances.
Undergirding the new complaint is a fear that Trump could use his assertion of control over the FEC to tilt the scales against Democrats in the midterms. Democrats say the FEC’s power to decide complaints aimed at national party or candidate committees, as well as its routine use as an advisory body for campaigns seeking to comply with campaign finance law, would become corrupted without confidence that its decisions are rendered in an impartial way.
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