The Daily Fuckup

Trump’s February 2025 order tried to tighten White House control over so-called independent agencies, including by saying the president and attorney general’s legal views would govern executive-branch employees. The Federal Election Commission became one of the early test cases for that claim when the Democratic National Committee, the DSCC and the DCCC sued on February 28, 2025, asking a court to block the order’s application to the agency. ([whitehouse.gov](https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-reins-in-independent-agencies-to-restore-a-government-that-answers-to-the-american-people/?utm_source=openai))

That fight did not produce a broad merits ruling on the president’s theory of power. Instead, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted motions to dismiss on June 3, 2025. The FEC later said the court dismissed the case because the plaintiffs had not shown a live controversy requiring judicial intervention. In other words, the court did not bless Trump’s attempt to treat the commission like a normal cabinet department; it said this case was not properly teed up for the court to decide. ([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))

The result matters because the underlying order was written to erase the usual carveout for independent regulators, with the FEC only one agency in the crosshairs. But the dismissal also narrows the public takeaway: the June 2025 ruling resolved this lawsuit on justiciability grounds, not as a sweeping constitutional endorsement of presidential command over the commission. ([whitehouse.gov](https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-reins-in-independent-agencies-to-restore-a-government-that-answers-to-the-american-people/?utm_source=openai))

What Trump tried to do in this case was simple to describe and harder to defend in court. The administration said independent agencies should answer more directly to the White House. The plaintiffs said the FEC was built by Congress to operate with partisan balance and a degree of insulation from presidential control. The court’s dismissal left that larger argument for another day, while closing this particular challenge before it could reach the merits. ([whitehouse.gov](https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-reins-in-independent-agencies-to-restore-a-government-that-answers-to-the-american-people/?utm_source=openai))

So the clean reading is not that Trump won a big legal fight over the FEC. It is that the lawsuit against his order on the commission ended in dismissal on June 3, 2025, after the court found no live case to decide. The broader push to bring independent agencies to heel still exists as a political project, but this case did not deliver the kind of judicial approval the White House wanted. ([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))