The Daily Fuckup

A federal lawsuit over President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14215 did not end with a ruling that the White House had taken control of the Federal Election Commission. It ended, for now, with dismissal. On June 4, 2025, U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali threw out the case brought by the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, saying the plaintiffs had not shown enough evidence that the executive order was being applied to the FEC or its commissioners. ([apnews.com](https://apnews.com/article/b615faaa24d42a5da561ec95ad57c156?utm_source=openai))

The lawsuit, filed February 28, 2025, targeted Section 7 of the order and asked the court to block it from reaching the commission. The plaintiffs said the language would let the president and attorney general set controlling legal interpretations for executive-branch employees, a setup they argued would collide with the FEC’s congressionally designed independence. The complaint sought declaratory and injunctive relief. ([fec.gov](https://www.fec.gov/documents/5704/elg-compl-for-decl-and-inj-relief-02-28-2025.pdf?utm_source=openai))

But the court’s dismissal was narrower than the alarm around the case. According to the judge’s ruling as summarized in the FEC’s litigation update, the record did not show a concrete directive aimed at the commission, and the court left the door open to a future challenge if changed circumstances produced actual interference. In other words, the case tested a theory about presidential reach; it did not produce a finding that the FEC had been folded into the White House chain of command. ([fec.gov](https://www.fec.gov/updates/district-court-grants-motions-to-dismiss-in-democratic-national-committee-et-al-v-donald-j-trump-et-al/?utm_source=openai))

That leaves the broader structural fight intact, even if this lawsuit is not. The FEC remains the kind of agency Congress built to operate with a degree of independence from the executive branch, and the dispute here was over whether a presidential order could override that design. For now, the answer from the court was no live case, no present injunction, and no ruling that the administration had already seized control of the commission. ([fec.gov](https://www.fec.gov/updates/district-court-grants-motions-to-dismiss-in-democratic-national-committee-et-al-v-donald-j-trump-et-al/?utm_source=openai))