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 demands around the SAVE America Act), 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.Read about the ruling that enabled Trump: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.More about Lorenzo Salgado Araujo: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.Video shows the moments before ICE shot a worker who lived for 35 years in the United States. It appears to show it was ICE attempting to initiate contact with his vehicle, not the worker attempting to "ram" ICE agents pic.twitter.com/Rv8KsHPf8J— David J. Bier (@David_J_Bier) July 9, 2026 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.