ICE agents ‘looking for someone else’ when they killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo | First Thing
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were reportedly seeking two people from Guatemala. Plus, readers recommend the best films of 2026 so far
Good morning. 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 (DHS) has said. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were reportedly seeking two people from Guatemala when they attempted to stop Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who had lived in the US for 35 years.
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. It was reported that he was still in an immigration detention center.
How have authorities justified the killing? The ICE agents who stopped Salgado Araujo claimed he “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer” who then fired his weapon “in self-defense”, but did not provide evidence to corroborate that account. It is a defense the agency has used in other high-profile incidents, including when Renee Good was killed in Minneapolis, when video evidence later contradicted the description. The officers involved in shooting Salgado Araujo were not wearing body cameras, DHS said.
Maine progressives race to find Platner replacement as centrists call for ‘normie Democrat’
Progressive groups and lawmakers who rallied behind Graham Platner’s insurgent bid for a US Senate seat are now racing to decide where to transfer their support after his withdrawal from the Maine race following yet another allegation of sexual assault.
“Maine’s progressives didn’t win the primary by a fluke,” the group’s executive director, Joseph Geevarghese, said in a statement, arguing that the primary’s mandate – Medicare for All, a campaign free of corporate money, an end to “forever wars” – survives Platner’s departure even if he does not. “That mandate deserves to be honored.”
How is Trump endangering the midterm elections? The US president has terminated the remaining members of the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials nationwide just a few months before the midterm elections. The remaining three commissioners of the four-member bipartisan commission were forced out on Thursday. The one Republican appointee resigned and the other two, Democratic appointees, were notified of their terminations via email.
OpenAI releases latest ChatGPT model after delay over White House cybersecurity concerns
OpenAI released its latest advanced AI model, called ChatGPT 5.6, after earlier delaying the public rollout over US government concerns about cybersecurity. The Trump administration had requested last month that OpenAI limit the release to a small group of government-approved users.
The Trump administration has largely spurned domestic calls for reining in the AI industry and encouraged companies to advance their models as quickly as possible, often citing an AI arms race with China and the need for US dominance over technology. More recently, the threat of destabilizing, AI-driven cyber-attacks has caused the White House to increase its intervention.
Why is Meta’s latest AI release causing concern? Users of Meta’s Muse Image AI tool, released Tuesday, can tag public Instagram profiles and generate pictures that pull from faces of people featured in these posts. Meta directs Instagram users who want to opt out of having their photos fed into their AI image generator to go to the “sharing and reuse” section of settings, and toggle a button that allows people to reuse your content, but privacy advocates argue that expecting users to proactively turn off this feature is unfair.
In other news …
The Monaco bomb mystery has deepened as Ukraine’s security services have been linked to the murder of the prime suspect. Anastasia Berezovska’s body was found in woods near Kyiv.
Eight people have been charged in Ohio with murder conspiracy over an alleged White House UFC attack plot that was to involve drones and snipers.
US lawmakers have called for stricter monitoring of medically assisted suicide in hospices amid fears that older adults and people with disabilities risk being pressured to end their lives.
Mexico has launched an investigation into whether the US lied about its involvement in the capture and secretive transfer of a top Sinaloa cartel member, in what would be a potential violation of the country’s sovereignty.
Donald Trump’s plans to build a skyline-altering arch in the nation’s capital won initial approval from a key federal commission.
Stat of the day: South Korea chipmaker SK hynix rides AI boom
The South Korean chipmaker SK hynix set pricing for its mega US listing on Friday, aiming to raise $26.5bn as it takes advantage of the AI boom in what will be one of the world’s biggest ever stock sales.
Culture pick: ‘I saw it seven times in the cinema’: readers’ favourite films of 2026 so far
Let me hand today’s culture pick over to you, the reader. Backrooms, The Bride!, Nouvelle Vague and Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie are among the movies highlighted.
Don’t miss this: The California universities stockpiling AR-15s, grenades and submachine guns
CalMatters used annual reports to create a mass inventory of the equipment found at California higher education institutions, which includes hundreds of semi-automatic rifles, thousands of munitions containing the same chemical as chilli peppers, and hundreds of thousands of rifle munitions. According to California state law, campus police can only own military equipment if the college believes there is no other way to uphold civilian safety.
… or this: How conflict, aid cuts and health-worker attacks are helping Ebola spread in DRC
Experts say the spread of the disease has been intensified by several factors, including ongoing conflict, aid cuts and attacks on healthcare workers and treatment centres. They also warn that the outbreak could become the deadliest on record. Lucy Swan and Carlos Mureithi explain the issue in charts and maps.
Climate check: Historic El Niño able to supercharge extreme weather looks increasingly likely
El Niño is strengthening and the risks of a historic event with the power to supercharge extreme weather around the world are rising, according to the latest analysis from the US National Weather Service. Models show an overwhelming chance that this year’s El Niño will rank among the largest going back to 1950.
Last Thing: Wally Funk, aviation pioneer and oldest woman to go into space, dies at 87
Wally Funk, a trailblazing aviation pioneer, has died aged 87. She trained in the 1960s with 12 other US women to be among the first astronauts during the space race, but Nasa decided not to admit women until 1978. Funk, who dedicated her whole life to flying, eventually went into space in 2021, at the age of 82, onboard Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket.
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