National

The Defendant Switched Sides.

When the campaign finance limits reached the Supreme Court, the agency charged with enforcing them argued to strike them down. The Court appointed one private lawyer to defend the statute. He lost 6 to 3, and the agency cannot act anyway: it has two commissioners and needs four.

Photo by Michael D Beckwith / Unsplash

Federal campaign finance law made its last stand at the Supreme Court this June, defended by a single private lawyer the Court had to appoint itself, because the government would not do it. He lost, 6 to 3.

THE GAP

What the Coverage Gets Wrong

The ruling in NRSC v. FEC ran under Citizens United sequel headlines, a scoreboard story about the conservative majority striking down another campaign finance law. The scoreboard is accurate and it hides the mechanism. On June 30, the Court held that the limits on coordinated spending between political parties and their candidates violate the First Amendment, overruling its own 2001 precedent and freeing parties to spend unlimited amounts in direct coordination with campaigns. But the law did not die on June 30. It died earlier, by abandonment, and the ruling arrived to ratify a corpse. We wrote Monday about the two federal election referees being neutralized in two weeks, one by removal, one by starvation. This is the starvation half, in full, because how an agency dies while still legally existing is the part of the story that generalizes.

The Defendant Switched Sides

Start with who stood where in the courtroom. The case is captioned NRSC v. FEC, Republican party committees suing the Federal Election Commission. But by the time it was argued, the FEC under the current administration had joined the Republicans in urging the justices to strike down the caps, with the Solicitor General arguing the limits violate the First Amendment. The named defendant argued for its own defeat. The FEC declined to defend the constitutionality of the statute it exists to enforce, formally supporting the plaintiffs' contention, and because the administration would not defend the law, the Court appointed an outside lawyer, Roman Martinez, to argue in its defense, while the Democratic party committees intervened to help.

Sit with that arrangement. A statute passed by Congress, upheld by the Supreme Court in 2001, and reaffirmed by the full Sixth Circuit as recently as September 2024, reached its final hearing with no branch of the government willing to speak for it. Its defense fell to one court appointed private attorney and a political party. When people ask what selective enforcement looks like at the top of the system, it looks like this: the executive deciding which duly enacted laws deserve a lawyer.

The Agency That Cannot Act

The FEC's capitulation in court was not an aberration. It was the behavior of an agency that had already been switched off. The timeline, from the government's own documents: in February 2025, the president fired Democratic commissioner Ellen Weintraub, something no president had ever done to an opposing party's FEC commissioner without naming a replacement. By May 1, 2025, the commission fell below the four members federal law requires for any substantive act. A Congressional Research Service report confirms that without a quorum the FEC cannot hold hearings, issue rules, or enforce campaign finance law at all, and that by October 2025 the agency was down to two commissioners, with two nominations sent to the Senate in February 2026 and still pending.

The paperwork of the paralysis is public. In its own court cases, the FEC now files notices stating that the Commission is without a quorum and unable to authorize defense of this action, form letters from an enforcement agency explaining, case by case, that it cannot participate in its own lawsuits. And the clock does real work here: complaints keep arriving at the commission, but with no quorum to act, some will expire under the five year statute of limitations before the agency is ever restored. Paralysis is not neutral. Every month of it is amnesty.

ROOT

The Dissent That Waited Twenty Five Years

The limits struck down in June were upheld in 2001, in a case called Colorado II, where the Court reasoned that coordinated party spending could be capped because otherwise donors would route unlimited money to candidates through the party as a pass through. One justice dissented, arguing that earmarking rules and disclosure already handled the problem. That dissent, by Justice Thomas, became the foundation of this year's majority opinion. The pattern is the same one we traced Monday with removal power: the lock was picked one pin at a time, corporate spending freed in 2010, aggregate donor limits struck in 2014, and now the coordination wall, each ruling citing the diminished landscape the previous ruling created.

The Vacancy That Became a Weapon

The FEC has lost its quorum before, in 2008, in 2019, and in 2020, and each time the agency limped and survived, because the vacancies were treated as a problem to fix. What is new is the vacancy as a tool. Fire one commissioner, accept a resignation, decline to promptly fill the seats, and an agency Congress built and funded continues to exist on paper but cannot decide cases, issue rules, or approve enforcement actions, no repeal vote required. The same play has already disabled the Merit Systems Protection Board, and after last month's removal power ruling, it is available against any small commission in the government. Starvation is now a general purpose off switch, and the FEC is simply where it was tested against an election.

What always happens, stated plainly: enforcement dies before the law does. The agency was defanged in 2025, the executive declined to defend the statute, and only then, with the field already empty, did the Court make it official. The first federal election under unlimited coordinated party money begins now, refereed by a commission that cannot convene.

THE COUNTER MECHANISM

One structural action, same layer as the problem.

The part of the FEC that still functions is the part that cannot be quorum starved: disclosure. Campaign finance reports are still filed, still processed, and still public, because publishing them is ministerial work that requires no commissioner vote. The enforcement referee is gone, which means the remaining check is the one in your hands. Go to fec.gov, type your representative's name in the search bar, and read the top contributors and the party committee transfers, it takes five minutes and no expertise. Do it once now, so you have the baseline, and once in October, when the first unlimited coordinated money of the new era will be sitting in the filings with its name attached.

Disclosure survived the ruling. The majority itself pointed to disclosure as a remaining safeguard. A safeguard nobody reads is not one. Be the quorum.