President Donald Trump confirmed Friday he has shaken up federal election commission membership after it dragged its feet on addressing non-citizen voting ahead of the approaching midterms.
AP reports the executive action against members of the Election Assistance Commission, which distributes federal grants to states, oversees the testing of voting systems and maintains the national voter registration forms.
The presidential intervention came after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling delivered the president new personnel authority to fire members of independent agency boards via the Trump v. Slaughter case.
“The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted. The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so,” said a White House statement to AP.
The president removed the commission’s two Democratic members, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland.
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The panel’s Republican member, Christy McCormick resigned, the AP report notes.
Former Republican commissioner Donald Palmer already had left his post voluntarily earlier this year.
Trump told Breitbart News in an exclusive Oval Office interview last month while he is disappointed about the Supreme Court’s recent ruling upholding birthright citizenship, the court’s decision in the Trump v. Slaughter case, which once again grants a president the power to fire independent agency employees at will, “more than made up” for it.
More to come…