1. United States
2. N.C.
3. Letter

Per Josh Helgott: What will you do? Trump just FIRED every member of the only federal agency that helps run America's elections — four months before the midterms. The commission now has zero commissioners and legally cannot act. The Election Assistance Commission is supposed to have four members, two Republicans and two Democrats. On Thursday, White House aides emailed the two Democrats, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, to tell them they were done. The lone remaining Republican, Christy McCormick, got a call and was asked to resign. The email was 24 words long. It ended with "Thank you for your service." Hovland found out at the airport. He'd just come from a Missouri election office, doing the actual work of the agency, and got the notice before boarding a commercial flight home in the middle seat. Here's what the EAC does. It certifies the voting machines states use. It sets the federal standards those machines have to meet. It's handed out hundreds of millions of dollars to help states run elections. With the last administration having already gutted the nation's main election cybersecurity agency, this was one of the last federal bodies left doing election security work at all. Now it can do nothing. Without commissioners there is no quorum, and with no quorum the agency is frozen. Replacements need Senate confirmation, which is not fast. The timing is not an accident. Trump has spent months trying to force a proof-of-citizenship requirement onto the federal voter registration form. His executive order demanding it was largely blocked in court. His bill to do it stalled in Congress. The EAC was the one body that could actually change that form, and it had received hundreds of thousands of public comments without ever voting. So he cleared the board. A Trump-aligned law firm had already petitioned the commission to change the form. Now he can appoint people who say yes. One person familiar with the firings called it purely political and said it would throw the country into chaos four months before Americans vote. Arizona's secretary of state said the administration is dead set on causing chaos for election workers. Hovland's parting message wasn't about himself. He asked people to sign up as poll workers.