Fatal ICE shooting in Maine comes just days after similar incident in Texas – US politics live

Key events

Michael Sainato

Federal officials fired by the Trump administration are calling the recent supreme court decision a “dagger in the heart” of the civil service that will open independent federal government agencies to corruption and manipulation at the whim of the president.

Since Donald Trump took office again in January 2025, he has fired more than 50 officials from federal agencies as the Trump administration openly sought to have the supreme court overturn a landmark 1935 ruling that limited the president’s power over independent agencies, known as Humphrey’s Executor.

The ruling in the decision, Trump v Slaughter, which effectively gives the president free rein to fire members of independent agencies, was based on the firing of Rebecca Slaughter, appointed to serve as a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by Trump in 2018.

Slaughter said she received the email notifying her that she was fired by Trump in March 2025 as she was helping with rehearsal for her child’s elementary school play, a performance of Beauty and the Beast.

“My stomach just dropped,” she said, noting she wasn’t surprised given similar firings were occurring at other agencies with statutory protections. “I was really hoping that it would avoid us, both because I love my job, but really more because I love the agency. I just knew this was going to be a big fight and pretty unpleasant and pretty destructive to this institution that I really valued.”

She called Alvaro Bedoya, the other Democratic commissioner at the agency, who was at his daughter’s gymnastics practice. He had been fired as well.

They both filed a lawsuit challenging their terminations a few days later, though Bedoya resigned from the FTC as he was not being compensated and he could not afford to be without income, while Slaughter’s husband’s income made it possible for her to continue pursuing the litigation.

‘Misuse’ of crowd control weapons on ICE protesters led to blindings and traumatic brain injuries, report finds

José Olivares

It’s been a brutal tactic deployed by local and federal law enforcement officials time and again over the past year: using teargas, rubber bullets and pepper spray to control protests outside ICE detention centers or during enforcement operations.

Now, a new report lays bare the scale of the use of these crowd control weapons during anti-immigration demonstrations across the US, including hundreds of incidents that resulted in lasting and traumatic injuries.

The report and an interactive map was created by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley (HRC) and released this week. Doctors and human rights experts with PHR and HRC documented 412 verified incidents of the “misuse” of these crowd control weapons, also known as “less-lethal weapons”, from June 2025 through May 2026.

“This is a concerning story,” said Dr Rohini Haar, the lead author of the report and a PHR medical expert, in an interview with the Guardian.

The report documented 203 injuries stemming from the alleged misuse of the crowd control weapons. Some of the injuries included blindings, traumatic brain injuries, lacerations, fractures and contusions.

The researchers struggled to confirm the full scale of the injuries, because “visual investigative techniques cannot adequately assess invisible injuries, such as chemical injury or chronic pain or hearing loss”.

“The true number of injuries is likely far greater,” the report adds.

ICE agent fatally shoots driver in Maine, six days after similar death in Texas

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

A US immigration officer shot and killed a man identified by rights groups as a 26-year-old Colombian on Monday, the second such killing by federal agents in less than a week.

The shooting happened in Biddeford, a town of 22,000 people in the northern state of Maine and is likely to fuel criticism of president Donald Trump’s deportation drive and its handling by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

US media identified the victim as Joan Sebastian Guerrero, who reportedly worked as a delivery driver and lived in Biddeford with his wife and three-year-old daughter.

An ICE spokesperson said officers had tried to stop a vehicle at around 7.20am local time after conducting surveillance of the last known address of a person with a deportation order, AFP reported.

A vehicle “attempted to flee the scene and fearing for public safety an officer discharged his weapon. The driver of the vehicle was struck, and emergency services were immediately contacted. He passed away from his injuries,” they said.

Senator Angus King said he spoke with homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin following the fatal shooting. King urged state and local officials to remain involved in the FBI-led investigation and also raised concerns that ICE agents were not wearing body cameras.

Dozens of demonstrators were seen in Biddeford hours after the incident chanting “get ICE out” and called out Republican senator Susan Collins for her complicit votes supporting the DHS agency.

Monday’s ICE-involved killing in Maine, and the one last ‌Tuesday in Texas, brought to at least seven the number of ‌people shot dead during immigration enforcement operations since January 2025, when Trump returned to office and launched a campaign of mass deportations.

In other developments:

• Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, has been named as her late brother’s temporary replacement in the US Senate after his unexpected death over the weekend. Nordone would serve the remaining months on Graham’s current term. More here.

• The US has launched its third consecutive night of strikes on Iran hours after Donald Trump said Washington would reinstate a maritime blockade on the country and, in an apparently policy reversal, charge ships for safe passage. More here.

• The US defense secretary, ⁠Pete Hegseth, ​announced that the Pentagon and the US Department of Justice have created a “joint taskforce ​to identify and ​prosecute” what he called the “unauthorized disclosure ​of sensitive” information to the press, marking the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s effort to crackdown on leaks. More here.

• Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, launched a campaign to dismantle the international criminal court (ICC), claiming the global tribunal was interfering with US military and law enforcement operations at the risk of American sovereignty. More here.