August is not even out, but the closing days of summer are offering a preview of the upcoming wildness of the US midterm elections. While US president Donald Trump opened his week by embarking on a slanging match with Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney, his vice-president JD Vance spent Monday in the heart of Maine undertaking some regional election campaigning. The visit produced blowback.Among the subjects Vance touched on during a speech in Brewer was the fatal shooting, on July 14th, of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian living and working in the state, by a federal immigration agent following an encounter in Biddeford. Angus King, Maine’s long-standing independent senator, later said he was told by homeland security officials that Guerrero had “weaponised” his car before being shot, a rationale King believes lacked credibility. The immigration agents present were not wearing body cameras. Vance acknowledged that while many Mainers are “so worried about the situation”, he asked that they retain “a little bit of perspective” and argued that the administration can “absolutely investigate every shooting and we will, but we can also secure our border and ensure that poison stops coming into our country”.The point was part of Vance’s broader contention that the Republican border successes were responsible for a 20 per cent drop in overdoses across Maine in 2025, and that rents were falling for the first time in a decade because “we got people who shouldn’t be here the hell out of our country”.On Monday evening, Troy Jackson, the Democratic Senate candidate replacing Graham Platner, who resigned his candidacy following a series of sexual assault allegations, posted a video response to the vice-president’s call for perspective.“JD Vance is a dirtbag,” Jackson said by way of opening.“There was a young man who had a social security number, he had a job, I mean, he had a life. He had a family. To come here and say, ‘Have some perspective’? You ought to have some damn perspective. I mean, you don’t even know what the hell’s goin’ on. You got a rogue agency that’s going around, pulling people out of homes.”Troy Jackson, Democratic nominee for the US Senate in Maine. Phorotgaph: Sophie Park/New York Times