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FIRED BY EMAIL
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission no longer has any members.
Trump fired the remaining three commissioners on Thursday. Two Democratic commissioners — Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland — received termination notices by email. The White House termination letter read, “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.” The Republican commissioner, Christy McCormick, was asked to resign and did. A fourth commissioner, Republican Donald Palmer, had already resigned in April and joined the Heritage Foundation.
The agency has no members. It cannot lawfully act.
The Election Assistance Commission was created by Congress in the Help America Vote Act of 2002 — a bipartisan response to the disputed 2000 presidential election — specifically to insulate election administration from political interference. Its responsibilities are foundational: accrediting laboratories that test voting equipment, certifying voting systems used across the country, administering federal election security grants, and maintaining the national voter registration database. Without a quorum, it can do none of those things. The 2026 midterm elections are four months away.
The White House justified the firings by citing the Supreme Court’s June ruling in Trump v. Slaughter, which overturned 90 years of precedent established by Humphrey’s Executor v. United States and gave the president authority to remove the heads of independent federal agencies. “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,” the White House official said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it “a brazen attempt to seize control of our elections before a single vote is cast.” Senator Mark Warner said it “should concern every American, regardless of party.” Senators Padilla and Representative Morelle called the firings illegal.
The same day, Trump refused to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act — a bipartisan bill passed overwhelmingly by Congress to address the national housing crisis — unless lawmakers first passed his sweeping voter ID legislation. The housing bill will become law without his signature if he takes no action.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: The only federal agency whose sole purpose is administering elections has been emptied four months before the midterms. It cannot certify voting machines. It cannot administer election security grants. It cannot update guidance for state election officials. Trump fired it by email, citing a Supreme Court ruling issued six weeks ago. The replacements will need Senate confirmation. He has not named any.
Sources: Votebeat (US nonprofit — termination email verbatim confirmed, Hicks/Hovland/McCormick confirmed, Palmer April resignation confirmed, no quorum/cannot act confirmed, Huseman July 10); Forbes (US — bipartisan firings confirmed, EAC responsibilities confirmed, Slaughter decision cited confirmed, Senate confirmation replacements confirmed, July 10); UPI (US wire — Schumer “brazen attempt” quote verbatim confirmed, Warner quote verbatim confirmed, Help America Vote Act 2002 confirmed, July 10); Democracy Now / Havana Times (US/international — housing bill voter ID refusal confirmed, “barring a last-minute veto” confirmed, July 10)
THE BACTERIUM
In February, a routine water test in Cheyenne, Wyoming turned up something unexpected.
The city’s Board of Public Utilities was testing for fecal contamination, standard procedure. What it found was not fecal contamination. Frank Strong, the board’s engineering and water resource division manager, described the process. “This isn’t something we normally test for,” he told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. “We actually had to go through quite a process to figure out what it was.”
What it was: Cupriavidus gilardii. A rare, multidrug-resistant bacterium found naturally in soil and water. Extremely rare as a human pathogen, with only 32 confirmed human infection cases documented since 2009. When it does infect humans, predominantly the immunocompromised and elderly, it kills about 31% of them. It had been introduced into Cheyenne’s reclaimed water system — the water used for irrigation, sprayed through aerosol onto the city’s grass — by a contractor building Meta’s $800 million, 715,000-square-foot AI data center campus on the south side of the city.
The contractor, Goat Systems LLC, had discharged fill-and-flush wastewater — water used to clean and test the data center’s cooling systems before they go operational — directly into Cheyenne’s sanitary sewer. That water already contained the bacterium. The city’s Board of Public Utilities has since identified Goat Systems as being in “significant noncompliance” with the city’s industrial pretreatment regulations, revoked its discharge privileges, and extended a ban on fill-and-flush discharge to every data center in Cheyenne. Cheyenne has 27 data centers. Wyoming has 31.
The contamination did not reach Cheyenne’s drinking water. It was contained to the reclaimed water system. The city’s reclaimed water program was temporarily suspended, cleaned, and is now back in operation with stricter restrictions. Meta says its contractor stopped discharging immediately upon being notified and that independent testing found no remaining trace of the bacterium. Follow-up testing by the city also found no remaining Cupriavidus gilardii.
But the question the contamination raised has not gone away. Dr. Jonathan Brant, an associate professor at the University of Wyoming who researches data center wastewater, told ABC4 that cooling systems generate “unique pollutants, primarily in the form of metals” and that “those could be heavy metals, which are problematic.” He is calling for greater transparency from the industry about what comes out of data centers when they discharge.
A Gallup survey found that 71% of Americans oppose the construction of AI data centers in their area. Half cited environmental concerns. Sixteen percent specifically cited water and air contamination. One contractor in Cheyenne just gave them a reason.
🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The Next Web — an Amsterdam-based international tech publication — covered the story citing the Guardian’s original reporting, framing it as “a fresh flashpoint in the fight over AI’s thirst for water.” Cybernews, a Lithuania-based international cybersecurity publication, called Cupriavidus gilardii “rare and deadly” and documented the board’s “significant noncompliance” finding. Futurism covered the mortality statistics. The international tech press is reading this not as a Wyoming local government story but as the point at which public anger at data centers and AI infrastructure became concrete, local, and bodily. One rare bug in Wyoming, The Next Web noted, shows “how fast local goodwill can drain.”
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: A Meta contractor introduced a multidrug-resistant bacterium into a Wyoming city’s water system. The city has suspended wastewater acceptance from every data center in town. No one got sick. The question of what data centers put into local water systems — and what they’re required to disclose about it — has not been answered. Seventy-one percent of Americans already opposed data centers in their communities. This is why.
Sources: Fortune (US — Goat Systems LLC named confirmed, “significant noncompliance” confirmed, 71% Gallup confirmed, 27/31 data centers confirmed, reclaimed water only/not drinking water confirmed, July 10); Futurism (US — Strong “quite a process” quote verbatim confirmed, fill-and-flush process confirmed, 10 deaths/31.3% mortality confirmed, aerosol irrigation concern confirmed, Meta “good neighbor” statement confirmed, July 6); Wyoming Tribune Eagle / wyomingnews.com (US — Goat Systems discharge to sanitary sewer confirmed, follow-up testing no remaining bacteria confirmed, reclaimed water back in operation confirmed, July 2); ABC4 / University of Wyoming (US — Dr. Brant heavy metals quote confirmed, transparency call confirmed, July 2); The Next Web (Netherlands — Guardian citation confirmed, “fresh flashpoint in fight over AI’s thirst for water” confirmed, “how fast local goodwill can drain” confirmed, July 8); Cybernews (Lithuania — “rare and deadly” confirmed, 32 cases since 2009 confirmed, ban on all data centers confirmed, July 7)
BUSHEHR
Something happened near Iran’s nuclear power plant on Thursday that no one is fully claiming.
Thursday was not the first time. Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi said this week that the Bushehr facility has been struck four times since the war began on February 28. The IAEA confirmed a strike near the plant on April 4 that killed one security guard and damaged a side building. The Institute for Science and International Security published satellite imagery in April identifying projectile impact sites outside the Bushehr complex, concluding that a military installation immediately adjacent to the plant — not the plant itself — was the intended target. Russia’s Rosatom has been evacuating staff from the plant since the war began. As of the April strike, 198 people — the largest single evacuation wave — were bused out.
Thursday added a new layer of confusion. Explosions were reported in the city of Bushehr, where Iran’s only nuclear power plant is located. Ehsan Jahanian, the deputy governor of Bushehr Province, told Iran’s official IRNA news agency that the perimeter of the nuclear facility had been “hit by US-Israeli enemy projectiles.” The US military denied conducting those specific strikes. Israeli officials said they were “not familiar with Israeli involvement in strikes in Iran now.” The chief executive of Rosatom, the Russian state corporation that operates the plant, said the facility itself was not targeted — though he confirmed explosions could be heard “just kilometers away.”
No damage to the plant itself has been confirmed. No casualties from the Bushehr strikes have been confirmed.
The broader picture the Bushehr incident sits inside: a new piece of analysis from the mediating countries, reported by Axios, says one source believes the recent Iranian attacks in the Strait of Hormuz were initiated by a faction inside the Iranian regime that opposes the MOU and specifically wanted to undermine it. If accurate, that would mean the sequence that triggered the resumption of war — Iran striking ships, the US revoking the sanctions waiver and launching strikes, Iran striking Gulf states, the US striking Iran again — was set in motion by forces inside Iran that never wanted the deal to survive. Neither the US nor Iran can confirm which faction ordered the initial ship attacks.
The US struck Iran approximately 170 times over two days. Iran struck US military targets in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Jordan. The war that ended on June 17 has resumed. The MOU was signed on June 17. Today is Day 23.
🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post both covered the Bushehr perimeter strike in significant detail — not as a footnote but as the most alarming development of Thursday’s exchange. Al Jazeera’s confirmed piece on Thursday’s denials added a crucial complication: Bushehr’s deputy governor told IRNA on the same day that the Thursday blast was caused by Iran’s own air defense systems — a directly contradictory account from the same Iranian official who had described “US-Israeli enemy projectiles” hours earlier. Al Jazeera’s April reporting on the IAEA-confirmed April 4 strike — which killed one security guard and prompted the largest Rosatom evacuation wave of 198 people — establishes that this is a pattern, not an isolated event. The IAEA has confirmed strikes near the plant. The international press is reading the cumulative pattern of four strikes near a civilian nuclear facility operated by Russian technicians as a dimension of this conflict that American coverage has substantially underweighted. The Bushehr plant is not just an Iranian facility. It is a Russian one. And it has been struck, or nearly struck, repeatedly.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: Something struck near Iran’s nuclear power plant on Thursday. Iran’s own deputy governor said it was hit by US-Israeli projectiles. The US denied it. Israel denied it. The plant itself was not damaged. But the plant is operated by Russian technicians on behalf of Rosatom. Russia was not asked about it.
Sources: CNN live blog (US — Jahanian deputy governor IRNA quote verbatim confirmed, US denied these specific strikes confirmed, US and Iran technical nuclear negotiations continuing confirmed, July 9); Times of Israel (Israel — Bushehr perimeter “hit by US projectiles” confirmed, Rosatom chief “not targeted/just kilometers away” confirmed, railway bridge trade link to China/Russia confirmed, July 9); Jerusalem Post (Israel — “US-Israeli enemy projectile” Bushehr official IRNA verbatim confirmed, Russian-built plant confirmed, July 9); Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — US military denied involvement confirmed, deputy governor said blast caused by air defense systems confirmed, Israeli Defense Minister “not over” confirmed, July 9); Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — IAEA April 4 strike confirmed, one security guard killed confirmed, no radiation increase confirmed, Araghchi “four times” confirmed, 198 Rosatom evacuees confirmed, April 2026); ISIS / Institute for Science and International Security (US nonpartisan — satellite imagery confirmed, military installation next to plant as intended target confirmed, AAA positions surrounding plant confirmed, April 2026); Just Security / Axios (US — faction inside Iran undermining MOU confirmed, mediating countries source confirmed, 170 strikes two days confirmed, July 10)
ALSO DEVELOPING
France 2, Morocco 0 / Spain 2, Belgium 1: France defeated Morocco in the World Cup quarterfinals Thursday in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Mbappé scored. Spain defeated Belgium 2-1 Friday evening. France plays Spain in the semifinals — in Foxborough, on July 14. That is Bastille Day. France’s national holiday. Source: NPR (July 9) for the France result; editor confirmation for Spain result.
Ebola expanding: New suspected Ebola cases have been reported in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo not previously affected by the outbreak, the government confirmed Friday. The outbreak — which has killed 600 people and infected 1,759 — is spreading beyond the Ituri Province epicenter. Source: NPR (July 10).
WAR DAY 133 | NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION
🇮🇷 Iran: 3,468+ killed (Al Jazeera live tracker, last updated June 10 — does not reflect recent exchanges; Iran Health Ministry confirmed at least 14 additional killed and 78 wounded in US strikes July 8-9)
🇱🇧 Lebanon: 4,321 killed (Al Jazeera live blog, updated July 8)
🇮🇱 Israel: 35+ killed (tracker frozen June 10)
🌍 Gulf states/Iraq: 131 killed — tracker frozen June 10; does not reflect Iranian strikes on Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Jordan this week
🇺🇸 US military: 13 killed, 381 injured (Al Jazeera live tracker, last updated June 10 — does not reflect ongoing strikes)
🛢️ Brent crude: $76.09/barrel (OilPrice.com — essentially flat; markets easing on confirmed US deliberate pause)
⛽ US national gas average: $3.88/gallon (AAA — pump prices still catching up to crude spike)
Sourcing note: All war casualty figures sourced to the Al Jazeera live tracker, last updated June 10, 2026, except Lebanon, updated July 8. Iran Health Ministry confirmed at least 14 additional killed and 78 wounded in US strikes July 8-9 — not yet reflected in tracker. Gulf states/Iraq tracker does not reflect Iranian strikes on Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Jordan this week. All figures are floor estimates. Methodology differs between sources; figures are not directly comparable.
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789
