Trump Fires Top Election Assistance Commission Staff Ahead of 2026 Midterms

Trump fired the top four staff of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) on July 9, 2026, eliminating the agency’s senior technical and operational expertise needed to certify voting systems ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Sourcing note. The entry’s sole cited source, Miles Taylor’s Defiance News piece, does not discuss the EAC staff firing, a SAVE Act “backdoor” purge scheme, or a 340,000-voter Georgia purge. That piece instead reports on a separate effort by Trump ally Peter Ticktin to place the 2026 midterms under federal control via a draft executive order citing foreign interference in voting machines — an unrelated scheme. The SAVE Act “backdoor”/Georgia claim is cut pending a source that actually supports it.

The EAC staff terminations land the same week as DOJ’s escalation to criminal threats against state election officials (2026-07-07–doj-threatens-criminal-prosecution-election-officials-50-states) — together describing a coordinated pressure campaign against multiple layers of election administration within the same election cycle.

Corrected 2026-10-01: cut the SAVE Act “backdoor”/340,000-Georgia-voters claim — the sole cited source (Defiance News) does not discuss it and is instead about an unrelated Peter Ticktin scheme; set status to disputed because the entry’s single tier-2 source does not support its remaining core claim (the EAC staff firing).