Donald Trump abruptly diverted the confirmation process for Jay Clayton as the US’s top intelligence chief early Wednesday, in a move that will allow the president’s controversial selection for acting director of national security, Bill Pulte, to assume the role and remain in place for at least several weeks until Clayton is confirmed.
Trump pushed the Senate to confirm Clayton after his appointment of Pulte as acting director sparked bipartisan pushback and stalled his administration’s push for renewal of the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa).
Democrats and some Republicans have decried Pulte’s nomination, saying that his background as the chair of a federal mortgage regulation agency is insufficient to lead America’s intelligence community.
In a surprising post on Truth Social in the early morning hours on Wednesday, Trump declared: “we are cancelling the Senate Hearing RE: DNI today.”
Israel’s position in American politics has shifted, dramatically and permanently. This is clear not only in opinion polls of US voters, but in the rhetoric of political campaigns, which are more focused than ever on foreign policy - yet go out of their way to avoid any mention of Israel.
‘This would have been a wild dream a year ago,” says Andrea Ceccolini, standing on Arctic sea ice just a 4-mile snowmobile ride from the Inuit town of Cambridge Bay, northern Canada. To his left are sky blue ponds of meltwater created in the last few days by a sun that no longer sets in the high north summer. To his right, the sea ice is still a brilliant white, the light dusting of snow on top continuing to sparkle.
Republican governor Mike DeWine, the who co-wrote the bill to reinstate Ohio’s death penalty more than 45 years ago, has called for the state to abolish capital punishment, saying it did not improve public safety and could no longer be morally justified.
