Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

29. Federal Election Commission · Major · Needs Congress

Amend FECA to strip the FEC of independent litigating authority

Attempted

865 29. Federal Election Commission

“As a legislative matter and given this abuse, the President should seriously consider recommending that Congress amend FECA to remove the agency's independent litigating authority and rely on the Department of Justice to handle all litigation involving the FEC.”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    Executive Order 14215 brought independent regulatory agencies under White House control by executive action rather than statute: it named the FEC among the agencies whose rules go to OIRA review and declared the President's and Attorney General's legal opinions controlling on all executive-branch employees. FECA's litigating authority (52 U.S.C. 30107(a)(6)) is unchanged and no bill or presidential recommendation to amend it was found.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The event is an executive workaround, logged as attempted under the playbook’s Requires-Congress rule, not partial: EO 14215 does not touch FECA’s grant of litigating authority, and the FEC still appears in court in its own name (e.g. CREW v. FEC, D.D.C., opinion 2025-03-17, in the Corpus). The Mandate’s ask — a presidential recommendation and a FECA amendment — has not been made.
  • Negative search: Corpus bills.ndjson grep for “Federal Election Campaign Act”, “Federal Election Commission”, “FECA” (titles hit only the workers’-compensation FECA); Federal Register full-text “Federal Election Commission”, PRESDOCU only, since 2025-01-20: one hit, EO 14215. FEC-related bills in the window (H.R. 8738 FEC Administrative Improvements Act, seen only in a congress.gov search snippet, 403 to fetch) are leads.
Action
eliminate
Object
the FEC's independent litigating authority under FECA
ID
2225