Negotiate with the Senate Democratic leader to temper the opposition party's FEC pick

Not started

Printed page 863 29. Federal Election Commission

“Also, to the extent that the President has the ability to negotiate with the Democratic Party leader in the Senate, he should try to temper any choice of the opposition party to ensure that this individual does not have extreme views on aggressive overenforcement that would severely restrict political speech and protected party, campaign, and associational activities.”

What has happened

Sep 1, 2026 Not started
No opposition-party FEC nomination has been made, so there has been no pick to temper. The seat held by Ellen Weintraub, whom the President purported to remove in February 2025, is still vacant, and the only two FEC nominations of the 119th Congress (2026-02-11) are for the two expired Republican seats. Nothing on whitehouse.gov or in the Corpus's nominations file records a negotiation with the Senate Democratic leader.
- Nominations Sent to the Senate, 2026-02-11 — the only two FEC nominations of the 119th Congress, both to Republican seats
  Primary Executive branch Feb 11, 2026

Research log

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

Research notes

Negative search recorded in docs/research/ch-29.md under the FEC nominations cluster: nominations.ndjson holds exactly two Federal Election Commission nominations for the 119th Congress (PN806-10 and PN806-11, both received 2026-02-11), and both replace Republican commissioners whose terms had expired.
A negotiation of this kind would leave no instrument even if it happened; the honest reading is that the antecedent — an opposition-party pick — does not exist yet.
Confirmed on the receiving committee’s own record, 2026-09-03 (read-queue ticket 04). The Senate Rules and Administration Committee’s nominations page (https://www.rules.senate.gov/hearings/nominations, read 2026-09-03) lists exactly two pending FEC nominations, PN806-10-119 (Ashley Stow) and PN806-11-119 (Andrew Woodson), both received 2026-02-11 and both for seats vacated by Republican commissioners — Stow “vice James E. Trainor III, term expired” and Woodson “vice Allen Dickerson, term expired”. There is no third FEC nomination pending, so the traditional paired-nomination practice this ask contemplates has not been used. That is a dated Primary observation supporting the negative, and it is better than a bare absence.

Action: appoint
Object: opposition-party FEC commissioner nominee
ID: 2219