Trump called ‘irresponsible and dangerous’ over election commission firings – live

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Trump called 'irresponsible and dangerous' over election commission firings

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The Trump administration has been branded “irresponsible and dangerous” after the president terminated the remaining members of the independent, federal commission (EAC) that assists election administration officials nationwide.

Trump’s “deeply concerning” move comes just a few months before the midterm elections, with remaining three commissioners of the four-member bipartisan commission forced out on Thursday in different ways.

The one Republican appointee resigned and the other ⁠two, Democratic appointees were notified of their terminations via email from the White House presidential personnel office.

“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,” the email, seen by Reuters, said.

The terminations follow Trump and top administration officials’ advocacy to change vote-by-mail requirements and investigations into the 2020 election outcome, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

“It is ⁠irresponsible and dangerous that this Administration remains dead set on causing chaos for our election officials across this country,” Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes said in a statement. “This ‌move undermines the integrity of nonpartisan election administration.”

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia posted on X that the dismissals “should concern every American regardless of party,” adding “removing every remaining commissioner just months before the 2026 midterm elections is an extraordinary step that demands an immediate explanation from the administration.”

The Brennan Center for Justice’s CEO Michael Waldman called the firings “deeply concerning in light of president Trump’s relentless efforts to try to interfere in elections.”

Read the full story here:

In other developments:

Victor Marx, a marines veteran, pastor and self-described “high-risk missionary”, whose extraordinary claims about his past have been disputed and mocked, won the Republican primary for Colorado governor. State senator Barbara Kirkmeyer conceded the race, despite losing by just fewer than 2,500 votes.
Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said her government will ask state and federal prosecutors in the United States to file criminal charges against the people responsible for the deaths of 17 Mexican citizens targeted ⁠during anti-immigration operations or while in immigration detention centers.
A Mexican immigrant who was fatally shot by a federal immigration agent during a traffic stop in Houston on Tuesday was not the man federal officers were searching for, the Department of Homeland Security said.
Morris Katz, Zohran Mamdani’s 27-year-old media strategist, who has been blamed by many Democrats for helping to recruit Graham Platner to run for the US Senate in Maine and made ads for the campaign, distanced himself from the candidate.
Troy Jackson, a former president of the Maine state senate who hopes to replace Graham Platner as the Democratic nominee for US Senate, if Platner makes good on his promise to formally withdraw by the Monday deadline, said in an interview with MS Now that Platner had lied to him.
Dan Kleban, a co-founder of the Maine Beer Company, wrote on Substack on Thursday that he would not vote for Chuck Schumer as the party’s Senate leader next year should he win the nomination and be elected.

Key events

Without commissioners, the Election Assistance Commission can still continue its core functions, with its executive director in charge, Just Security writes in a helpful breakdown of what the firings mean.

Taking a step back: The commission, created by the Help America Vote Act in 2002, is an independent, bipartisan body tasked with helping election officials improve election administration and helping Americans vote. It does not administer elections - elections in the US are administered by state and local jurisdictions, despite Trump’s frequent push to take control over more aspects of voting.

Effectively, without a board, the career staff at the agency are “frozen” at the point of whatever the commission last approved, Aaron Blacksberg, the Federal Policy Counsel at the Institute for Responsive Government, wrote for Just Security.

And crucially, the staff can still disburse grant funds to states for election security and continue certifying voting systems, important pieces of keeping elections secure, he wrote.

“The President’s summarily firing the bipartisan EAC commissioners is unprecedented, but this action gives the federal government no more authority over elections than it had before,” Blacksberg wrote.

The Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank that promotes bipartisanship, noted that the Election Assistance Commission often has operated without a quorum, leaving it unable to exercise its full authority, but Trump’s move is still “unprecedented”.

“The removal of several of the Commissioners is a significant loss for one of the federal government’s few institutions explicitly designed around bipartisan governance,” said Matt Weil, the vice president of the center’s governance program. “The commission’s most recent members demonstrated that bipartisan collaboration on the practical work of election administration remained possible. The Commissioners nearly always voted unanimously.”

While commission staff can continue to operate crucial functions, the commission’s full authority requires three bipartisan members, Weil wrote.

“Yet even without a full set of commissioners, the EAC’s role sits on top of a federalist election system: states and localities run elections,” Weil said. “That means election officials will still be able to administer secure, accessible, and trustworthy elections this November. But they will do so without the full level of support that the EAC normally provides.”

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the US Senate, called Trump’s firing of the full Election Assistance Commission another step toward the president’s attempt to take over elections.

“Firing every remaining member of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission months before the midterms is a brazen attempt to seize control of our elections before a single vote is cast,” Schumer wrote on X. “He is gutting the independent agency that certifies voting systems and helps election officials run secure elections.”

Schumer said Senate Democrats will fight this move.

“The American people—not Donald Trump—will decide the 2026 election.”

Dharna Noor

The Trump administration has directly spent $2.7bn of taxpayer money on its crusade against wind power while pouring $1.125bn into boosting coal, which critics say is pushing up Americans’ bills.

They say the moves are evidence that the president aims to serve fossil-fuel companies like those which donated record sums to his presidential campaign, rather than the working-class Americans to whom he pledged to lower energy bills and other costs.

“Trump is getting Americans coming and going,” said Jay Inslee, the former governor of Washington state and a Trump detractor. “He’s forcing higher power bills on them by blocking clean energy, then he’s fattening the wallets of his cronies – all with billions of our tax dollars.”

The Department of the Interior has, since March, struck four deals with energy companies, paying them to cancel a total of eight offshore wind projects and pledge to invest in fossil-fuel power. The first such agreement was announced in March with the French energy company TotalEnergies, sparking a lawsuit from seven Democratic-controlled states that alleged it was an illegal use of taxpayer money.

The latest deal with Duke Energy was announced late last month.

Man killed by ICE agents not intended target of immigration arrest, DHS says

Gabrielle Canon

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a man killed by federal immigration agents during a traffic stop in Houston this week, was not the intended target of the “enforcement operation”, the Department of Homeland Security said on Thursday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were reportedly seeking two people from Guatemala when they attempted to stop Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who had lived in the United States for 35 years, the New York Times reported.

Salgado Araujo, who was on his way to work early on Tuesday morning, was driving three other people in a white van. After the shooting, the three men were taken into custody. One of the three men has been identified by advocates as Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, the brother of the victim. The New York Times reported that he was still in an immigration detention center.

In a statement provided to the Guardian, an unnamed DHS official said officers had received a tip from law enforcement partners about their target’s address and had previously spotted two white vans at that property.

“On July 7, officers were almost at the target’s address when they observed a white van with an individual who resembled the target,” the official said.

The statement does not clarify what happened next. Salgado Araujo died in the hospital after being shot in the abdomen, according to accounts from local law enforcement officers. The officers involved were not wearing body cameras, DHS said.

David Smith

“Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

These were the parting words of Richard Nixon after he was forced to resign the presidency over the Watergate imbroglio in 1974. For Graham Platner on Wednesday, the stakes were somewhat smaller. But when it came to suspending his Senate campaign in Maine, the Democrat had plenty of hate to go around.

The scandal-plagued Platner was forced to step down after a woman who dated him said he drunkenly forced her to have sex despite her telling him to stop, an allegation he denies. It spelled doom for an insurgent campaign that had begun 323 days earlier with a glossy horizontal video that showed Platner farming oysters, chopping wood and gruffly talking about “hardscrabble” folk in Maine.

On Wednesday the video was vertical and, according to the Politico news site, recorded at 4pm outside Platner’s home in Maine in the company of aides including Ben Chin and Morris Katz, a 27-year-old adviser to New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani.