President Donald Trump has terminated two of the federal Election Assistance Commission's three members, eliminating the panel's ability to help local election officials prepare for the 2026 midterms.
The two commissioners selected by congressional Democrats, Chairman Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, each received an email dismissing them on July 9. USA TODAY has reviewed a copy of that email.
Christy McCormick, the commission's vice chair who was selected by congressional Republicans, resigned June 9.
“These removals leave the agency without leadership and unable to carry out its major responsibilities,” Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, said in a statement.




An Israeli strike on Tuesday killed Mohamed Fawaz al-Wahidi, the public relations director for the Egyptian Relief Committee in Gaza.
The Irish parliament on Tuesday approved legislation to prohibit the import of products from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Federal agents killed a man at a Memphis motel on Wednesday morning in a Drug Enforcement Administration operation with the Memphis Safe Task Force, the fourth officer-involved death since the anticrime initiative began in September.
A Manhattan federal court judge on Wednesday ordered the release of the more than $5m Donald Trump owes E Jean Carroll following her successful 2023 sexual abuse and defamation trial against him. Less than an hour after the judge issued his order, Trump filed paperwork indicating he was appealing the decision.
The senior legal counsel to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine is stepping down nearly a year ahead of schedule — the latest top official to leave or be pushed out of the Pentagon since the start of the second Trump administration.
Graham Platner, the oyster farmer whose populist platform took Maine by storm, dropped his Senate bid Wednesday night as controversies over his past stacked up, leaving Democrats without a nominee to take on Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) this fall.
In the space of just a few weeks - the blink of an eye in the timeline of this Middle East conflict - US President Donald Trump has gone from being so popular in Israel he boasted he could be its next prime minister to a man so hated he could qualify for Israel’s next Amalek.





























