President Donald Trump has moved to fire Ellen Weintraub, chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, but she says her termination is invalid and is refusing to step down.
Weintraub, one of three Democrats on the six-member bipartisan panel, posted a letter dated Jan. 31 from Trump that she received Thursday informing her “you are hereby removed” as a member of the FEC commission “effective immediately.”
“There’s a legal way to replace FEC commissioners-this isn’t it,” Weintraub wrote on X. “I’ve been lucky to serve the American people & stir up some good trouble along the way. That’s not changing anytime soon.”
Weintraub was first appointed by President George W. Bush in 2002. By federal law, the FEC must be composed of three Democrats and three Republicans ‒ an arrangement that has led to many deadlocked decisions on the agency’s role of overseeing federal elections and campaign finance laws.
FEC commissioners serve six-year terms that are staggered, with two seats subject to an appointment every two years. One seat is now vacant. Commissioners are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Weintraub’s term ended in 2007, but FEC commissioners continue to serve in their positions until they are replaced. Commissioners choose a new chair each year on a rotating basis. Weintraub was named the panel’s chair this year.
The White House doubled down on Trump’s effort to fire Weintraub.
“Our message to Ellen Weintraub is simple: you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here,” Harrison Fields, White House principal deputy press secretary, said in a statement. “The President has made a decision on who he’d like to chair the Federal Election Commission (FEC), and it’s not her. Grandstanding over this decision won’t change the President’s mind.”
But Trump’s targeting of Weintraub drew a sharp a rebuke from former Republican FEC Commissioner Trevor Potter, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush and served in the 1990s. He said the action “violates the law, the separation of powers, and generations of Supreme Court precedent.”
Potter, president of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, said Trump is free to nominate multiple new commissioners “and to allow Congress to perform its constitutional role of advice and consent” given the vacant seat and multiple FEC commissioners serving on expired terms.
“It’s contrary to law that he has instead opted to claim to ‘fire’ a single Democratic commissioner who has been an outspoken critic of the president’s lawbreaking and of the FEC’s failure to hold him accountable,” he said.
“In the entire history of the bipartisan FEC, no president has ever removed a member from the opposing party without naming a successor recommended by that party’s congressional leaders. This is an extraordinary break from that history,” said Weiner, director of the nonprofit Brennan Center’s elections and government program.
In a post on BlueSky, Weiner added that Trump is trying to fire Weintraub as the FEC takes up dozens of complaints from the 2024 election, including matters involving billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, Trump’s largest donor of the campaign.
