Senate clears way for Trump's top spy as key anti-terror program remains in limbo

President Donald Trump’s pick to run the nation’s intelligence agencies is one step closer to clinching the job, and puts the Senate ever-closer to jump-starting a key counter-terrorism tool in the process.

The Senate advanced Jay Clayton through a key hurdle Monday night to be the next Director of National Intelligence (DNI). It comes after former DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s sudden exit from the position to care for her cancer-stricken husband.

The largely partisan 51-43 vote to move Clayton, who formerly chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during Trump’s first term, comes after he narrowly squeaked out the Senate Intelligence Committee on a 9 to 8 vote.

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., challenged Democrats to support Clayton during the broader, final vote, but expected them to resist as they have with several other Trump nominees through his second term.

"One might think that we'd be seeing some bipartisanship from Democrats on this nominee," Thune said. "But Democrats are playing the same partisan games with this qualified nominee as they have for so many of President Trump's picks."

"It's a funny thing because Democrats have made no secret of their disdain for the current acting Director of … National intelligence," he continued. "In fact, Democrats were so worked up over the president's temporary choice for this position, they allowed our nation's most important counterterrorism tool to go dark for the first time ever."

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The Senate will now vote on confirmation Tuesday, putting an end cap on an arduous process to replace Gabbard. When she announced her exit from the position, Trump hastily installed Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte to lead the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies in the interim.

That came as the Senate was nearing a vote on a bipartisan deal to keep the nation’s top counter-terrorism tool, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), running ahead of its expiration.

But Democrats, who railed against Pulte and accused him of being an unqualified loyalist who would weaponize the intelligence community against the president’s enemies and try to dismantle it, walked away from the deal after Trump torpedoed Clayton’s previously scheduled confirmation hearing.

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Less than 24 hours before Clayton's penultimate test, Pulte announced on X that he had completed his fourth round of layoffs as DNI.

"Since becoming Acting Director of National Intelligence, our team has been smartly, and carefully, reducing the size of ODNI, re-focusing ODNI on national security, the law, and the statute," Pulte said. "As of this evening, we just finished a 4th round of thoughtful, measured layoffs. Thank you!"

The Section 702 program has since been steadily going dark, with new authorizations caught in a legal void until lawmakers reauthorize the program that has been used to thwart deadly terror attacks, including halting a mass-casualty terror plot at a Taylor Swift show in Vienna, Austria.

Last week, only Republicans on the panel voted Clayton out of committee after he failed to satisfy Senate Democrats’ questioning on who won the 2020 election, his knowledge of Gabbard’s raid on the Fulton County, Georgia election offices, and subpoenas against New York Times reporters that his were submitted by him in his role as the top prosecutor in New York’s Southern District.

Those subpoenas were voluntarily withdrawn by the Department of Justice last week, two days after Clayton was confirmed by the panel.