Senate to begin voting on Trump intelligence nominee Jay Clayton – US politics live
Source: US news | The Guardian · Bias: Center Left
Summary
The US president’s pick to be the country’s director of national intelligence is expected to be approved within days – but only after a tense confirmation hearingSign up for the Breaking News US emailDonald Trump’s Republican party has “nothing to run on” for the congressional midterm elections after the president broke promises to lower costs and avoid starting war overseas, Hakeem Jeffries has said.The House minority leader, a New York congressman, made those comments on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, exactly 100 days from the 3 November midterms, when Jeffries and his fellow Democrats are aiming to take control of the US House and Senate from their Republican opponents. Continue reading...
Senate to begin voting on Trump intelligence nominee Jay Clayton – US politics live
Center Left
The US president’s pick to be the country’s director of national intelligence is expected to be approved within days – but only after a tense confirmation hearingSign up for the Breaking News US emailDonald Trump’s Republican party has “nothing to run on” for the congressional midterm elections after the president broke promises to lower costs and avoid starting war overseas, Hakeem Jeffries has said.The House minority leader, a New York congressman, made those comments on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, exactly 100 days from the 3 November midterms, when Jeffries and his fellow Democrats are aiming to take control of the US House and Senate from their Republican opponents. Continue reading...
President Donald Trump has politicized America’s intelligence-gathering operations to an unprecedented degree, and a former CIA analyst who worked for Trump’s NSC is now raising the alarm.“In 2025, I watched from inside the White House and at the CIA as the intelligence community came under assault: senior officers fired in public, clearances revoked for dissent, decade-old assessments denounced by the CIA director in the press,” Julia Curlee, a former CIA analyst and an NSC director for Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, wrote for Lawfare on Monday. “Earlier this month, the campaign reached the raw intelligence itself, as the White House declassified selected reporting to sustain election interference claims that the intelligence community’s own finished analysis would not support.”As one example of Trump’s politicizing intelligence, Curlee described how members of the CIA with expertise in Venezuela were fired when they did not back the administration’s position on taking over that country.“Twenty years later, days after taking office, the second Trump administration tasked the National Intelligence Council (NIC) to assess whether the Venezuelan regime had directed Tren de Aragua—a criminal gang—to invade the United States,” Curlee wrote. “The question, from Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, matched nearly word for word the predicate for the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, last invoked in World War II to intern Japanese, German, and Italian nationals.”She added that she knows this firsthand because she tasked the Venezuela assessment.“I was the NSC’s acting senior director for intelligence programs across the transition—Biden’s last week, Trump’s first,” Curlee said. “I knew the NIC, the intelligence community’s most senior, most deliberate analytic body, would carefully weigh the evidence and reach a consensus position. How much rode on that judgment became clear when the administration carried out lethal strikes on alleged drug boats off Venezuela and, in January 2026, sent U.S. forces into Caracas to seize Nicolás Maduro himself.”She added, “The NIC did not give the answer the White House wanted, concluding that Tren de Aragua had not entered the country at Maduro’s direction, undercutting the administration’s case in court. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard denounced the finding, and her chief of staff, Joe Kent, pressed the acting NIC chair to “rethink” it. When he held firm, Gabbard had him walked out of the building, ending the career of one of the country’s most accomplished analysts.”From there, Curlee lists other ways that Trump has pushed out people in the CIA and other intelligence agencies for engaging in work that the president disliked for purely political reasons.“From its first days, the second Trump administration treated the intelligence community not as an instrument of the state but as an enemy within: a ‘deep state’ that had allegedly lain in wait for the president during his first term,” Curlee wrote. “The aim was explicit: Put career civil servants ‘in trauma’ to make them not want to come to work. At the CIA, that program arrived on schedule.”She continued, “First they came for the people. On day one, the president revoked the clearances of 51 former officers who had spoken on Russian election interference. A month later, amid the purge of trans service members, the DNI fired 100 trans intelligence officers from 15 agencies. In May 2025, she fired two senior analysts over the Tren de Aragua assessment. And in August 2025, Gabbard publicly revoked 37 more clearances—including that of one of the intelligence community’s most respected experts on Russia—seemingly without irony, for the ‘politicization or weaponization of intelligence.’”Curlee said that Trump then denounced findings that had previously been proven beyond reasonable doubt, from Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election to warnings about white nationalist terrorism, violence against LGBT people and assessments about women’s reproductive health.“And the threat did not stop at termination,” Curlee pointed out. “Former CIA Director John Brennan was referred for criminal investigation and interviewed by the FBI over the same analysis the administration had set out to discredit. The lesson reached every desk—a clearance, and with it a livelihood, could be revoked with a phone call; a career could end in front of a grand jury. By mid-2026, the president was describing intelligence that contradicted his preferred reality as ‘treason.’”Curlee also warned about Trump politicizing intelligence during his July 16th speech falsely claiming that China had meddled in the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Biden.“The president delivered a primetime address alleging that China had interfered in the 2020 election, built on a mass declassification of election-related intelligence assembled by the White House’s Government Transparency Task Force—a body created to comb the classified...
President Donald Trump is facing a huge problem in November, The Bulwark's Sam Stein told MS NOW's Jonathan Lemire on "The Moment" Wednesday.The problem, he noted, is compounded by Trump's inability to course-correct in a simple way that most candidates facing a huge backlash for their party would.The president is currently demanding Republicans cancel their Senate recess to force through the SAVE America Act, a voting restriction bill Trump has become obsessed with that has no path to passage in the upper chamber.Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Stein told Lemire, is "in a weird spot" since any attempt to follow Trump's command would end in the bill failing, making him look "feckless" and earning Trump's wrath anyway.The fundamental issue, said Stein, is that "every party in power in the midterm has to deal with this type of equation. Usually you want to sort of downplay how great things are, because you don't want voters to feel like you're out of touch or leaving them behind. But Trump is incapable of doing that. He continuously talks about this being a 'golden age' and how everyone's 401k is skyrocketing. So there's crosscurrents there."It further compounds the issue, Stein said, that Trump and his MAGA allies are sitting on a war chest of hundreds of millions of dollars and are doing nothing with it to save the party that polls warn is headed for doom."What you're seeing in the polls is that Republicans are, by and large, much less enthusiastic than Democrats to vote in this midterm election," said Stein — with some even threatening to vote for Democrats. "That is real poison for the Republican Party," he said, because the turnout they enjoy whenever Trump is on the ballot is set to vanish.The upshot of all of this, he said, is that between Trump's refusal to message defensively, his lack of spending and the "general malaise," Democrats "could really run up the numbers." - YouTube www.youtube.com
The Palm Beach Post — which happens to be the largest newspaper in Palm Beach, home of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Resort — has bad news for Trump and the Republicans. With the midterms looming, not only does the president and GOP face abysmal polling, but a new district created by Florida’s newly gerrymandered map appears to be more competitive than state Republicans hoped. “Trump's low approval rating is enough to raise alarms for Republicans in the midterm elections this fall,” writes the Post, noting that “new polls show a majority of voters are opting for Democrats on a generic ballot.” Trump has attempted to rig the congressional map by pushing for redistricting in Texas, which kicked off a multi-state redistricting battle that ultimately netted Republicans more potential seats to win, but as the Post explains, not only have “pollsters found that voters' enthusiasm and intention lean Democratic,” but one of Florida's new districts turned out to be a toss-up. While Florida’s 25th Congressional District, which includes the coast from Miami Beach to Delray Beach, was created by Florida’s Republican lawmakers specifically to result in a conservative-leaning district, the highly reputable, non-partisan Cook Political Report lists it as a toss-up leaning solidly Democrat. The Post notes that Representative Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), incumbent from the 23rd District, is running for the seat. What’s more, the Post pointed to a number of new polls that spell bad news for Republicans, writing, “An Emerson College Polling survey found 53 percent of Americans were more likely to vote Democratic in a generic 2026 congressional ballot, compared to 42% voting Republican.” The paper noted that Democrats’ “significant lead” was being driven by “women voters, who break for the Democratic candidate by a 27-point margin, 56 percent to 39 percent, while men are more split: 49 percent support the Democrat and 44 percent the Republican.” Meanwhile, “The poll gave Trump a 39 percent job approval rating, compared to 57 percent who disapproved.”The Post also cited a recent poll by Fox News, which found 68 percent of Democrats are extremely motivated to vote in November compared to 57 percent of Republicans. According to the paper, “The poll respondents were also more likely to say Democrats could better handle several issues, including the economy and inflation, issues Trump ran on in 2024.” Furthermore, “When asked if the election was held today, 53 percent of voters would back their Democratic candidate in the House race, compared to 46 percent who would vote Republican. Fox News said 53 percent is the highest percentage received by either party in their generic House ballot polls since 1996.”According to Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who works with Democrat Chris Anderson to conduct Fox News polls, "The best estimates I’ve seen suggest the GOP could retain the House even if the Democrats win the national vote by 2-3 points, but if Democrats win by 6-7 points, they probably take the House."
President Donald Trump is putting additional pressure on his fellow Republicans to pass his signature 'deep throated' voting reform bill, the SAVE America Act.
President Donald Trump’s former communications director has a news flash for the Republican’s supporters — none of the people who work for him actually like the man.“Getting fired after 11 days was brutal, but there was also a genuine sense of relief,” Anthony Scaramucci posted on X on Monday. “Yes I had a shortcoming. I failed at the job. There was humiliation in it, but there was also relief.”He continued, “Here's what I've observed about everyone around Trump. Nobody likes him. I don't think his family members like him. I don't think his cabinet members really like him. They kiss his a—— because he's powerful.”Scaramucci concluded, “The people who genuinely like him are one or two electron orbits away, close enough to feel the warmth, far enough to avoid the heat. I don't know a single person in his inner circle who came out unscathed.”Scaramucci has been an outspoken critic of Trump in recent years. Indeed, in July alone, he issued a warning to Trump’s staffers in which he argued on X that “there’s one thing every rising star in Trump’s orbit eventually learns the hard way. He eats his young. And if you don’t believe me, ask Pence, ask Pompeo, ask Nikki Haley.”Also in July, he blasted the Trump administration for engaging in insider trading.“Answer these questions: Are you allowed to insider trade in Congress?” Scaramucci posted on X. “Can the president do his so-called businessman’s deals? Is any of this actually legal?”He continued, “My opinion is: It smells terrible and it should be stopped. But we’ve lost our sense of shame. Trump said 2 things: 1. It’s peanuts and not that much money. 2. Nobody cares. That second one is the one that should keep you up at night.”Scaramucci finished by writing, “Hopefully people actually do care. Hopefully they show up in November and send these guys a message.”Similarly in July, Scaramucci opined that Trump may be compromised by his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin.“If Trump is disavowing NATO and breaking an 80 year tradition — something’s wrong,” Scaramucci speculated on X. “If Trump is praising Vladimir Putin, whose entire economy is slightly smaller than the state of Texas — something’s wrong. If Trump is disavowing the 1994 defense agreement where we told Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons and we’d protect them — the agreement that got him impeached in his first term — something is wrong.”He observed that while Trump frequently criticizes other world leaders, he keeps a wide berth from Putin.“It’s hard to watch as an American but it’s obvious,” Scaramucci said. “Why does he own him? That’ll probably come out someday.”In response to the AlterNet piece on Trump and Russia, White House spokesman Davis Ingle replied, “Anthony Scaramucci lasted 11 short days in the White House. He makes lightweights look credible.”Speaking with this journalist for Salon in 2018, Scaramucci argued that Trump was elected in 2016 because of Americans’ concerns with the cost of living.“What I saw was in a generation we went from aspirational working class families, like the one I grew up in, to [desperate] working class families,” Scaramucci said. “What I saw is a decline in wages causing some level of economic asphyxiation for a very large group of people. And so Trump being out there, going into those areas, explaining the policies that he’s going to put in place, and then executing on some of those policies. I mean it’s not me saying, it’s just go look at ‘The Wall Street Journal.’”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) appeared inclined Monday to rebuff President Donald Trump’s demand to cancel the upcoming August recess and continue trying to pass the GOP’s SAVE America Act in the latest escalation over the stalled proposal. Thune suggested the endeavor to advance the party’s House-passed voter ID and elections bill is futile after previous failed votes and in […]
The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on Monday to lift a judge’s block on President Trump’s executive order that seeks to restrict mail-in voting, calling the halt premature. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the courts have no power to intervene yet because the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and other involved agencies are still…
