Trump Guts Entire Election Commission Months Before Midterms

Donald Trump has completely neutered the Election Assistance Commission.

The last three remaining members of the four-member bipartisan commission were forced out of the independent agency Thursday. The two Democratic appointees—Thomas Hicks and Benjamin W. Hovland—were fired via an email notice from the White House Presidential Personnel ​Office, according to inside sources that spoke with Reuters. The agency’s Republican commissioner—Christy McCormick—recieved a call and was asked to resign, reported NBC News.

“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as Commissioner of the Election Assistance ​Commission is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” read the termination email delivered to the two Democratic appointees.

The Election Assistance Commission, or EAC, was created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to help states administer elections. It has also provided consultation on voting procedures. Its fourth commissioner left the agency in April.

The mass overhaul comes in the immediate wake of a Supreme Court decision—Trump v. Slaughter—that granted the president more power over independent agencies late last month. The 6–3 decision overturned Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 91-year-old precedent that had historically shielded staffers at such agencies from political interference by protecting them from being fired by the president at will.

The White House confirmed the terminations later on Thursday, suggesting that the EAC commissioners had not passed the Trump administration’s loyalty test.

“The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring ​every legal vote is counted,” a White House official said in a statement that cited the Supreme Court’s decision.

The White House told NBC News that all of the EAC’s members “will be replaced,” though doing so will require presidential appointments and subsequent Senate confirmations. Considering Capitol Hill’s current appointment turnaround times (as influenced by Trump’s SAVE America Act demands), that process could take an extraordinarily long amount of time at a point when America only has a few short months until a contentious midterm season.

The federal immigration agents who shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican father of three in Texas, weren’t even looking for him.

When ICE agents conducted a deadly traffic stop in Houston on Tuesday, they were looking for two people from Guatemala, two people familiar with the matter told The New York Times. Agents believed one of the people they were looking for drove a white van—instead, they found Salgado Araujo and three men he was driving to work.

Before conducting the traffic stop, federal agents knew they had the wrong man. They reportedly looked up the owner of the van and learned it was Salgado Araujo, who was undocumented. The supposedly “targeted operation” ended in ICE’s tenth fatal shooting this year.

In the hours after the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security claimed the officer had fired in self-defense after Salgado Araujo refused to comply with orders and “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.”

But the other three men in the car who were arrested by ICE told their lawyer that was a lie—there were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. Surveillance footage from the traffic stop also doesn’t support DHS’s claim. One video showed that agents boxed in Salgado Araujo’s car, before he attempted to U-turn and drive the other way. Another video showed that there was no damage to the ICE agents’ vehicle.

In another potentially dark turn in the saga, the three men who were with Salgado Araujo are under pressure from immigration officials to agree to self-deport, Juan Proaño, a representative for the families and CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said in an interview with The New Republic.

ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a traffic stop in Texas on Tuesday morning. The agents stated that Salgado Araujo ignored verbal instructions and tried to ram their vehicle. Newly obtained footage puts a massive asterisk over those claims of self-defense.

Surveillance video footage obtained by local outlet KHOU 11 shows the agents using their unmarked black SUV in an attempt to box in Salgado Araujo—initiating the conflict. Salgado Araujo makes a U-turn and heads in the other direction, and the agents then turn around to follow him.

While the video did not capture the final moments of the shooting, separate footage showed no damage to the ICE vehicle, again weakening federal agents’ claim that Salgado Araujo tried to ram them.

This discrepancy between the agents’ statements and the video footage has led to widespread calls for an independent investigation into Salgado Araujo’s death. Complicating that is the fact that the Department of Homeland Security detained the three other immigrant men in the car with Salgado Araujo—one of whom is Salgado Araujo’s brother—and is pressuring them to self-deport, preventing them from serving as witnesses.

“What we have heard … is that they’re being told to sign voluntary departures. They’re being told to cooperate with the version [of events] that ICE has released,” Immigrant Families and Students in the Fight head Cesar Espinosa told Democracy Now! on Thursday. “Threatening them that they’re going to file charges if they don’t, or that they’re going to be deported expeditiously. And what we fear is that this is another effort from ICE to cover up something that they did very, very wrong.”

ICE also arrested and detained witnesses after the killing of Alex Pretti in January. And this isn’t the first time it’s offered this version of events, either. When Marimar Martinez was shot five times in her car last year, ICE initially claimed that when the officers exited their vehicle, Martinez tried to run them over, “forcing the officers to fire defensively.” Bodycam footage showed no such thing, and her charges were dismissed.

“They are being approached by unmarked vehicles. These vehicles, many times, often, start ramming vehicles, trying to get them to stop. And when people jump out, they’re not wearing insignia saying ‘federal agents’ or ‘ICE’ or a badge. They’re wearing, a lot of the times, plain clothing with vests that just say ‘police,’” Espinosa continued. “So, I cannot imagine the fear that a lot of people feel when they are being persecuted by somebody that’s unknown. And I ask people, you know, put yourself in these folks’ shoes and ask yourself: How would you react?”

Salgado Araujo, a father of three U.S. citizens, had been in the United States for almost 35 years.

Mexico is taking legal action over ICE agents killing an immigrant in North Houston on Tuesday.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced Thursday that her government planned to file criminal complaints in the United States over all Mexican citizens who have been killed while being targeted by ICE. Fourteen Mexican nationals have died in ICE custody, while three have been killed in immigration enforcement operations, including Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, on Tuesday.

“We cannot turn a blind eye to ​the Mexicans who have died,” Sheinbaum said during a press conference. She said the purpose of the complaints was to bring accountability to anyone accused of a homicide or of committing human rights violations.

The Mexican government provides help to all of its citizens who ask for it, but “especially to Mexicans whose only crime is working honestly ​in the United States,” Sheinbaum added.

The Department of Homeland Security claims Salgado Araujo, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who had lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, was killed after he didn’t comply with orders from ICE agents, and then “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.” It’s a similar excuse to the ones DHS used for the shooting of Marimar Martinez in Chicago last year and the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis in January.

In both of those cases, video footage showed that neither Martinez nor Good tried to use their cars against ICE agents. The DHS has not provided any evidence to back up its claim in Salgado Araujo’s case, and has even pressured witnesses to “self-deport,” The New Republic found.

Salgado Araujo’s U.S. citizen son Ronaldo discovered his father’s death through social media, and not from the government or medical professionals.

“I saw a video posted on Facebook that he had been shot. I recognized him immediately,” Ronaldo said, his voice breaking. “Not from his appearance, but from his voice, crying for help as he lay on the street, bleeding out.”

Hopefully, the Salgado Araujo family will get justice, and hopefully so will the families of Martinez, Good, and Alex Pretti.

Senator Mitch McConnell was inexplicably admitted to the hospital nearly a month ago, a stretch of time that has even the far-right media machine growing suspicious of the Kentucky Republican’s true medical condition.

McConnell was hospitalized after he was found unconscious in his Washington residence on June 14. But as the weeks have dragged on without a clear explanation from his team as to his mysterious absence, speculation about McConnell’s health has become increasingly grave. Earlier this week, far-right influencer Laura Loomer claimed on X that an unnamed “high level source close to the White House” told her that McConnell was suffering from severe organ failure and “is officially brain dead.”

By Thursday, hosts of the far-right news network Newsmax had joined the expanding choir.

“Republicans are doing the same bullshit with McConnell that Dems did with [Joe] Biden. No one has actually spoke to him, they are just trying to carry this on to keep @RepThomasMassie from running for his seat,” Carl Higbie posted to X on Thursday morning, referring to the highly dependent dynamic the previous president was rumored to rely on in the waning days of his term.

Newsmax anchor Rob Finnerty took his concerns to his show, questioning on air: “Where is Mitch McConnell? What is going on?

“When you factor this in under Kentucky state law, if McConnell resigned or died, a special election would have to happen within 90 days, meaning before the November elections, meaning someone like Congressman Thomas Massie could run in that race and potentially win, which is not something Republicans want,” Finnerty said.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear got involved in the matter Wednesday, penning a letter to McConnell’s office demanding a formal update on the senator’s health.

The 84-year-old Republican has represented Kentucky in the U.S. Senate since 1985, and remained on Capitol Hill through several recent health scares, particularly since 2023. In March of that year, McConnell fell at a dinner event at Washington’s Waldorf Astoria hotel, fracturing his rib and suffering a concussion in the process.

He fell again that July. He also publicly froze mid-sentence twice that year, dissociating for 20 to 30 seconds each time, sparking concerns that the aging lawmaker had suffered a stroke.

In December 2024, McConnell fell for a third time in a public setting, and again in October 2025 while on his way to vote in the Capitol. He has since been transported via wheelchair by his aides as a health precaution.

In February, McConnell’s staffers shared that the lawmaker had spent roughly eight days in the hospital with “flu-like symptoms.”