Trump’s pick for attorney-general faces Senate hearing later today – US politics live

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US officials are facing mounting calls to remove US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from American streets after federal agents killed two men who were not the target of enforcement action in less than a week.

Advocacy groups, including the National Police Accountability Project and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, described the fatal shootings of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas as extrajudicial killings.

“The bystander videos I watched make it clear that ICE agents carried out another extrajudicial public execution in Maine,” Lauren Bonds, the executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, said in a statement.

“It’s clear that the only way to prevent ICE from killing us in the streets is to remove ICE from the streets.”

Congress can do so, she added, by freezing funding to the agency and limiting their jurisdiction.

Details have emerged in recent days about how the two killings unfolded during operations that quickly turned deadly.

Trump's pick for attorney-general faces Senate hearing later today

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

President Donald Trump’s pick to be the next US attorney general – his former personal defense lawyer Todd Blanche – faces what is expected to be a contentious Senate nomination hearing today.

Blanche will come under tough questioning from Democrats and potentially some Republicans during his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A sole Republican “no” vote on the panel could be enough to torpedo the 51-year-old Blanche’s appointment to be the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, AFP reports.

Blanche has been serving as acting attorney general since Pam Bondi was fired by Trump and has been closely tied to what Democrats have dubbed a “retribution” campaign by the Republican president against his perceived political enemies.

It comes amid a flurry of confirmation hearings set to take place today. Jay Clayton, Trump’s pick to head the nation’s intelligence agencies, will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, weeks after Trump abruptly delayed his nomination.

And the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will hold nomination hearings for Dr Erica Schwartz to permanently head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an agency that has been without a confirmed director for most of Trump’s second term.

The committee could also confirm Sean Kaufman to lead emergency and disaster preparedness efforts as Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.

In other developments:

• Federal immigration officials have been instructed to stop pulling over vehicles until further notice, according to a homeland security source, following two recent deadly shootings in Texas and Maine during which officials shot and killed immigrants in vehicles. More here.

• Darline Graham, the sister of the late Republican senator Lindsey Graham, was sworn in to temporarily fill his Senate seat on Tuesday, just three days after his sudden death. Graham was appointed by Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s governor, to fill the remainder of her brother’s current term. More here.

• A person died during an encounter with federal immigration officials on Tuesday morning in Florida, marking the third death in one week linked to immigration enforcement operations. Officials with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which is a component of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), had an “encounter” with four men in a vehicle in the parking lot of a convenience store along a busy road in St Augustine, Florida, the highway patrol spokesperson said. More here.

• Supreme court justices requested $14.6m increase in security amid a rise in threats. Amy Coney Barrett told House lawmakers that a sharp rise in threats against her and other justices is increasingly affecting her personal and family lives. More here.