Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are expressing frustration that President Donald Trump directed Jay Clayton, his nominee to be director of national intelligence, not to appear at a scheduled confirmation hearing on Wednesday afternoon, upending plans for the Senate to quickly confirm Clayton and renew lapsed federal surveillance authorities.

“It’s regrettable that the president has directed Jay Clayton not to appear at his confirmation hearing today,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on X, announcing the hearing was postponed after initially indicating he planned for it to continue despite Trump’s objections. “Mr. Clayton is a patriot and a highly qualified nominee, as the president has said repeatedly. While today’s hearing is now unfortunately postponed, I look forward to proceeding with his confirmation in the near future.”

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said he agreed with Cotton, while Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said that if Trump was aware of the consequences of his decision to pull Clayton from the hearing and went ahead anyway, “he made a colossal mistake.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said that she was “surprised” by Trump’s decision to upend Clayton’s confirmation and “concerned that this slows down the renewal of FISA, which is vital to our national security,” referring to foreign surveillance authorities under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) said that it’s Trump’s “prerogative” to pull Clayton from the hearing “but it complicates” matters on the Hill.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-ND) said he was still confident that the nomination would move through eventually, but “it may take a little bit longer, it may delay some things, it puts the country at risk, because FISA 702 is really important.”

“If that goes dark on us because we don’t have it extended, that’s a serious problem that our Democrat colleagues have got to wrestle with,” Rounds continued. “So they need to come around on this particular issue. But at the same time, the sooner we get Jay Clayton, who is absolutely the right guy for the job right now … that takes care of a lot of the other issues.”

The Senate had been attempting to confirm Clayton before Friday, when federal housing chief Bill Pulte, whom lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have criticized as unqualified for the position of DNI, is set to take the reins at the agency.

At a press conference, Senate Democrats blasted Trump for again interfering in bipartisan plans and said they’re unclear whether Clayton’s nomination will proceed.

“It’s on our Republican colleagues to work with us to find a capable director, not someone who’s a menace, and second, then to work with us on renewing FISA,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said, demanding that that Senate Republicans “have the courage to buck the president who clearly doesn’t want a DNI director and doesn’t want FISA renewed, all he wants is Pulte.”

Asked for clarity, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, told Jewish Insider that he is “not sure whether Jay Clayton has simply been postponed or withdrawn. I wonder whether Jay Clayton knows whether he has been postponed or withdrawn.”

Warner said that “‘debacle’ [is] an understatement” to describe the current state of play, and warned that having Pulte in the role could further endanger intelligence sharing by U.S. allies, which he said has already been put at risk by outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard.

Schumer warned that providing Pulte with further authorities by renewing Section 702 would be “dangerous to America.”

President Donald Trump upended an expedited effort to confirm Jay Clayton as director of national intelligence before the end of the week with a Wednesday morning Truth Social post announcing that he was “cancelling” Clayton’s planned confirmation hearing later that afternoon — but Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the Intelligence Committee chairman, insisted the hearing would go on as scheduled unless Clayton fails to appear.

Though Trump doesn’t have the ability to unilaterally cancel a Senate hearing, he could instruct Clayton not to appear as scheduled. Senate lawmakers were rushing to confirm Clayton before the end of the week to prevent federal housing chief Bill Pulte from serving as acting DNI, a choice lawmakers on both sides of the aisle view as problematic and unqualified for the role.

“Jay Clayton is a pending nominee before the Intelligence Committee. We will proceed with his hearing as scheduled unless the president directs him not to appear or withdraws his nomination,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said on X following Trump’s post.

Republicans have been trying to clear a path to rapidly confirm Clayton before Pulte is set to take over as acting DNI on Friday.

Confirming Clayton and blocking Pulte from the DNI role would also unlock Democratic support for renewing federal foreign surveillance authorities under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which lapsed last week amid Democratic opposition.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, lambasted the “extraordinary display of dysfunction from a president who seems determined to turn America’s national security into a political bargaining chip.”

“At every turn, the president has injected more uncertainty into a process that should be focused on one thing: keeping the American people safe,” Warner continued. National security cannot be governed by social media post. The president’s latest intervention only underscores a simple reality: the biggest obstacle to resolving these issues has not been Senate Democrats or Senate Republicans. It has been the chaos and confusion coming from the White House itself.”

Trump asserted that “Dumocrats broke the Deal” on FISA and Pulte, and also demanded that James McDonald, who Trump said he would nominate to replace Clayton as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, be confirmed before Clayton is confirmed for DNI.

But McDonald’s nomination hasn’t yet been transmitted to the Senate, according to congressional records.

Trump also indicated that he would veto the FISA renewal unless Republicans attach the SAVE America Act, which aims to impose new national voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements at the ballot box and limit mail-in and online voter registration, to it — a proposal that cannot pass the 60-vote threshold in the Senate.

“To add a slight bit of intrigue but, for the Good of the Nation, and the People of our Country, I will not approve FISA without THE SAVE AMERICA ACT going along with it,” Trump said. “Not complicated, actually, the Republicans fell into a trap.”

President Donald Trump named Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, as his nominee to replace Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, after a two-week furor over his plans to name federal housing chief Bill Pulte to the role in an acting capacity.

But the nomination likely comes too late to prevent a lapse on Friday of federal foreign surveillance authorities under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Democrats have refused to reauthorize in protest of the Pulte pick.

Clayton is also a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and partner at  Sullivan & Cromwell. “Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay. I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible,” Trump said in his announcement on Truth Social.

Though his career hasn’t been focused on national security issues, Clayton’s time at the SEC and the SDNY gave him background in law enforcement, security and counterterrorism issues, which could help assuage concerns on the Hill.

Clayton signed the U.S. indictment of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro ahead of Maduro’s capture by U.S. forces in Caracas.

After his time in the first Trump administration, among other roles, Clayton served as an advisor to Fireblocks, an Israeli-based cryptocurrency firm.

Trump initially said that Pulte would begin as acting DNI at the end of the month, but subsequently moved his start date earlier, to June 19. It’s unlikely that Clayton could be confirmed before the end of next week, so it remains unclear whether Trump still intends to put Pulte in the role at all.

Trump said Thursday afternoon that Pulte will be DNI for “a little while” and “he’s running it for a short while we get a very talented person, Jay Clayton, in.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters, “Pulte’s got to go. The DNI role is too important for him to be there. He has got to go, period. No matter what else they do.”

Asked whether he would support Clayton, Schumer responded, “I support getting rid of Pulte. That’s unequivocal.”

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY) told Jewish Insider he was “encouraged by the president’s decision to name someone permanently for that role, and it’s the right move.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on X that Clayton is an “outstanding choice” who has “real-world experience, the complete confidence of the President and has performed every task in the public and private sectors in an exemplary manner.”

Some Democrats worried by Trump’s pick of Pulte appear to be at least somewhat relieved by the Clayton nomination.

“[It’s] a vast improvement. I’ll need to look at his record,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told reporters. “I’ll need to look at his record … whether he has experience in the area of national intelligence.”

Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on X he has “known and respected Jay Clayton for decades” and that he will be a “terrific DNI.”

“Had this nomination been made a week ago, lots of pain might have been avoided,” Himes said.

Others remain on guard.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) said he needs to research Clayton further before forming an opinion on him but said that he believes Trump “hasn’t changed on the whole idea of using the DNI to effectively screw with the 2026 elections.”

The Clayton nomination seems to come too late to salvage FISA talks before the Section 702 authorities lapse. Both chambers rejected efforts for a short-term extension of surveillance authorities — which Republicans warn creates national security and terrorism risks, especially ahead of the World Cup.

A bill requiring a two-thirds majority in the House was opposed by a majority of the House on Thursday, with Democrats and several Republicans voting against it. The House has now left Washington for a scheduled recess until June 23. 

Senate Democrats blocked efforts to unanimously pass an extension of Section 702 authorities shortly before Trump announced Clayton’s nomination.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “I’ve never been a fan of Director Gabbard, but if Director Gabbard were to stay until he was confirmed, that could be a path out. But again, if there was any level of serious concern about this in the White House — the House has already left town.”

But Warner said he has “great respect” for Clayton.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) told reporters, “Quite frankly, I wish we were talking about the substance of the bill, how we balance national security concerns on the one hand and civil liberties on the other. Instead, once again, Donald Trump is the fly in the ointment, and he’s put forward someone [Pulte] that demonstrates that he’s much more interested in having a political operative over our intelligence agencies than preserving our national security.”

Asked about Clayton, Warnock said, “Pulte has to be out of the equation.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is resigning effective June 30, citing her husband’s recently diagnosed “extremely rare form of bone cancer,” she wrote in a resignation letter.

“Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,” she wrote in her letter, which was first reported by Fox News Digital. “My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer.”

President Donald Trump posted Gabbard’s resignation letter publicly, and thanked Gabbard for her service.

“Unfortunately, after having done a great job, Tulsi Gabbard will be leaving the Administration on June 30th,” Trump said. “Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her.”

He announced that Gabbard’s principal deputy director of national intelligence, Aaron Lukas, will take Gabbard’s place in an acting capacity. Lukas, a longtime Central Intelligence Agency officer, served in the first Trump administration for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Council.

Citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter, Reuters reported that Gabbard had been forced out of her role.

Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, has been one of the most prominent isolationist members of Trump’s inner circle, but has not been part of various key meetings related to the war in Iran.

Trump publicly broke with Gabbard over her public assessments of Iran’s nuclear program: She testified in March 2025 that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, which Trump said ahead of the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025 was “wrong.”

Top lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have long been skeptical of the former DNI. During her term, Democrats accused her and her office of politicizing intelligence and her role.

Gabbard’s staffing choices have also raised eyebrows. Earlier this year, one of her top deputies, Joe Kent, resigned as head of the National Counterterrorism Center, claiming that Israel had tricked Trump into the war in Iran and blaming Israel for U.S. operations in Syria.

Kent has since become a prominent right-wing opponent of the war in Iran, including spreading false Iranian propaganda at one juncture.

Gabbard has staffed up the ODNI with a series of other isolationist figures. Daniel Davis, an anti-Israel commentator, was briefly tapped as a deputy director of national intelligence, but the administration backed away from hiring him amid public scrutiny and criticism.

She ultimately hired William Ruger, another outspoken opponent of military operations against Iran’s nuclear program, for the same role.

And Dan Caldwell, a vocal Republican critic of the administration’s Middle East strategy and isolationist, was also hired to a job under Gabbard earlier this year.

One former administration official told Jewish Insider earlier this year they saw Ruger and Gabbard as undermining Trump, the U.S. operations against Iran and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, who served in three roles as a senior aide to Gabbard, in the Office of Management and Budget and on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, resigned earlier this week. Kennedy is the daughter-in-law of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy sought to become the deputy CIA director, but ran into opposition from top Republican senators.

“I thank Tulsi Gabbard for her service in this administration and in uniform, and I wish her the very best as she supports her husband Abe in his battle with cancer,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the committee’s ranking member, offered his prayers to Gabbard’s husband, but also told a reporter, “this position, now more than ever, needs to be an experienced intelligence professional that will know their lanes; that understands the Director of National Intelligence should be focusing on foreign intelligence and not involving himself or herself in domestic election incidents.”

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, also offered condolences over Gabbard’s husband’s illness but said, “Tulsi Gabbard’s only positive contribution [to] our nation’s national security is her resignation. She politicized intelligence. She dismantled critical agencies keeping Americans safe. She weaponized the IC to pursue baseless election fraud claims. And more.”

This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.

📡On Our Radar

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard distanced herself — to a degree — from two of her isolationist-minded aides, Joe Kent and Dan Caldwell, who have taken a hostile stance to the U.S.’ Middle East policy, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. 

Gabbard affirmed, after being pressed at a House Intelligence Committee hearing today, that the conspiratorial views about Israel espoused by Kent in his resignation letter earlier this week did concern her, and said about Caldwell that he would have no influence over intelligence reports at her agency.

Gabbard, who has previously been a vocal critic of military engagement with Iran, further acknowledged that her current position requires her to “check” her personal views “at the door”…

Reports of a potential $200 billion emergency funding request from the Pentagon for the war in Iran are drawing firm Democratic opposition and hedged responses from Republicans on the Hill: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he’ll “look at” the request “but obviously it’s a dangerous time in the world and we have to adequately fund defense,” while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he’d “hate to be the senator that denied the request if it made sense.” Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) responded with a simple “No,” while Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called it a “nonstarter”…

The Senate is set to hold another round of votes on blocking U.S. arms transfers to Israel, after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) filed three new joint resolutions of disapproval against $658.8 million in sales of over 20,000 bombs to Israel, JI’s Marc Rod reports.

A majority of the Democratic caucus — 27 lawmakers — voted to block at least one arms sale in July of last year, a significant jump in support from previous similar efforts; Israel’s standing in the party has largely declined since then amid Democratic criticism of the war with Iran…

During a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi at the White House today, President Donald Trump reiterated that he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Iranian oil facilities, after an Israeli strike on the South Pars gas field yesterday: “I told them, don’t do that. We didn’t discuss. … It’s coordinated, but on occasion, he’ll do something.”

Trump also put pressure on Takaichi to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, while European leaders released a joint statement “express[ing] our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait,” after repeatedly declining to get involved. A team of British military planners is now consulting with CENTCOM on options to assist short of military action, The New York Times reports…

Asked if he will deploy more U.S. troops in the region, Trump told reporters he’s “not putting troops anywhere. If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you — but I’m not putting troops”…

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth compared Iran to Hamas in a briefing today, saying that, “just like Hamas and their tunnels,” Iran has “poured any aid, any economic development … into tunnels and rockets”…

A group of congressional Democrats is urging the State Department to restart chartered evacuation flights out of Israel and take additional steps to help U.S. citizens who wish to leave the country amid the ongoing war with Iran, JI’s Marc Rod reports. 

The lawmakers described the State Department’s current partnership with El Al, which launched on March 13 with a limited number of special evacuation flights for U.S. citizens, as insufficient. The Israeli airline has currently suspended registration for the flights, and government-imposed security restrictions are limiting passenger capacity on each flight and reducing airport operations…

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the U.S. may lift sanctions on Iranian oil already at sea in order to blunt rising gas prices. “In essence, we will be using the Iranian barrels against the Iranians to keep the price down for the next 10 or 14 days as we continue this campaign,” he explained on Fox News…

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan warned the kingdom is reaching a breaking point after continued Iranian attacks, saying “what little trust” Riyadh had with Tehran has “completely been shattered.”

On a potential Saudi military response, Prince Faisal said, “Do they have a day, two, a week? I’m not going to telegraph that.” It’s a notable shift for Riyadh, which had been pivoting away from its traditional allies and towards Iran and other Islamist countries prior to the war…

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker condemned AIPAC after a primary cycle in which the pro-Israel group spent millions backing — and opposing — candidates across the state, calling it “an organization that was supporting Donald Trump and people who follow Donald Trump.”

Pritzker, a Jewish Democrat who was once an AIPAC donor himself, said it “really is not an organization that I think today I would want any part of.” He further echoed far-left sentiments that Israel dragged the U.S. into conflict with Iran, claiming Trump “simply follow[ed] Netanyahu into that war”…

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) details his experience with a would-be assailant, a man described by authorities as a “ticking time bomb,” who was arrested near his home last year after police discovered an arsenal of weapons and a handwritten list of targets that included Jewish sites and Moskowitz.

“Besides the police presence outside his house, Moskowitz himself will not appear in parades and says he won’t speak at outdoor staged events. ‘It’s not worth it. I’d rather lose my election,’” the lawmaker told Roll Call…

Temple Israel in suburban Detroit released photos of the devastation to the building caused by an attacker last week, noting that it had “chosen thus far not to make [the photos] public” but are doing so now “to take back control of our narrative” after several were leaked to the media.

“We share these images because our community deserves to see our building through eyes of love, not through the lens of spectacle. This is our sacred space, and we will be the ones to tell its story,” the synagogue wrote…

The University of California, Berkeley reached a settlement in its lawsuit with the federal government, agreeing to pay $1 million and make changes to its discrimination policy following accusations that the university had failed to properly address campus antisemitism. 

Among the policy changes, the school will clarify that the word “Zionist” cannot be used as a proxy for Jew or Israeli. The claims in the lawsuit predate the recent campus unrest over Israel’s war in Gaza, stemming from an incident in 2022 when student groups adopted policies saying they would not host Zionist speakers…

⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a look at the struggles facing international broadcasters Voice of America and Radio Free Europe in reaching Iranian citizens during the ongoing war due to budget cuts and roadblocks from the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

The House Appropriations Committee will hold a field hearing at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. in New York City on “accountability and reform” at the U.N. 

We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat Shalom!

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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard distanced herself — to a degree — on Thursday from two aides who have taken hostile stances toward the U.S.’ Middle East policy: the recently departed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, and the recently hired Dan Caldwell.

Kent resigned from the administration this week with a conspiratorial letter condemned by many as antisemitic, claiming that there was no imminent threat from Iran and that Israel and pro-Israel advocates in the U.S. had tricked the administration into joining it.

“He said a lot of things in that letter,” Gabbard said, when first asked at a House Intelligence Committee hearing if she agreed with Kent’s letter. “Ultimately, we have provided the president with the intelligence assessments, and the president is elected by the American people and makes his own decisions based on the information that’s available to him.” 

Pressed again on whether Kent’s comments blaming Israel concern her, Gabbard affirmed that they do.

Regarding Caldwell — a prominent GOP isolationist who was reportedly hired to serve in the ODNI, Gabbard’s agency, after being fired amid a leak investigation from the Pentagon last year — Gabbard denied personal knowledge of him and claimed he would have no influence over intelligence products.

“My understanding is one of my elements sought to hire Dan Caldwell months ago for a purely administrative role that would not have any position over the intelligence analysis or assessments on any topic,” Gabbard said.

Pressed on her own personal views on the war in and threat from Iran, Gabbard declined to specify. The intelligence chief was previously outspoken as a member of Congress and then as a political commentator against a conflict with the Islamic Republic, which she had said would be unconstitutional and devastating on a scale not seen this century.

Gabbard said Thursday that her job requires her to set aside her own personal beliefs to prevent politicization of the U.S. intelligence products.

“The cost of war weighs very heavily upon me and my colleagues here, especially for those of us who have experienced and seen the cost firsthand,” Gabbard said. “My own personal and political views, as I mentioned earlier, I was asked and required by Congress and by the president in this role as the director of national intelligence to check those views at the door, to ensure that the intelligence assessments are not colored by my personal views.”

Pressed on the reasoning for the war in Iran, CIA Director John Ratcliffe affirmed that Israel did not force the U.S.’ hand in starting the war, an assessment with which Gabbard agreed.

Ratcliffe emphasized throughout the hearing that, regardless of whether the Iranian government theoretically maintained an edict prohibiting the development of nuclear weapons, it was stockpiling uranium enriched to 60% purity, for which there is no civilian purpose and which no other country has done without subsequently trying to obtain nuclear weapons.

“Much has been made by some about a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons. Notwithstanding the fatwa, what we know — the intelligence community is in agreement on this — is that Iran possesses at least 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to weapons grade 60%,” Ratcliffe said. “The only use for that would be the development of nuclear weapons.”

“​​Our intelligence is also clear that they have not lost their ambition and that the activities to rebuild or reconstitute their nuclear facilities and centrifuges [continued],” he added.

Gabbard said that the intelligence community has “high confidence” that it knows where Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is located.

Prior to last summer’s U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, Gabbard had said that Iran was not actively building a nuclear weapon, an assessment that President Donald Trump later dismissed as incorrect. She also said that lawmakers had mischaracterized her past remarks and assessment.

During the hearing, Gabbard said that, given the elimination of many in Iran’s top echelons, current U.S. intelligence and understanding of the Iranian leadership and its intentions is less clear than before the war, but described the new supreme leader, Mojataba Khamenei, as more extreme than his father.

“To be clear on Mojtaba, the son who has been named to replace [former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei], it is unclear of his status or his involvement,” Gabbard said. “He was injured very severely through Israeli strikes, and so the decision-making is unclear about what’s happening in the Iranian leadership.”

Gabbard emphasized that the Israeli government’s own goals for its operations are not necessarily the same as those of the Trump administration — noting that the Israeli military has focused on eliminating Iranian leaders, while the U.S. is focused on Iranian military capabilities.

She said she does not know Israel’s own position on a potential deal with Iran, or have any information on Israel’s decisions to strike Iranian energy infrastructure. “I’m not privy to any of their deliberations or into their calculus and launching this or other attacks. I’m not, we are not involved with the operational element of this,” Gabbard said.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) said that he supported the action by the U.S. and Israel to eliminate Iranian leaders and missile capabilities, but said that the administration needs to explain its actions and goals more fully to the American public.

Under questioning from Gottheimer, the intelligence officials affirmed that Trump had been briefed on the possibility of disruptions to global energy markets and a potential hard-line shift in Iranian leadership as a result of the war.

Gabbard said that, while the FBI has been having success in disrupting attempted terrorist attacks at home, those efforts have been stymied by the fact that some homegrown extremists may not have direct contact with foreign terrorist organizations.

FBI Director Kash Patel pushed back on accusations from Democrats that he had undermined and crippled U.S. counterterrorism efforts against Iran. Democrats repeatedly highlighted the firing of agents assigned to counter-Iran efforts, reportedly due to their past involvement in investigations of Trump.

Patel initially declined to comment on the firings pending litigation, but later said that any firings would be the result of internal misconduct investigations by career officials, regardless of other circumstances. Despite ongoing efforts to push officials connected with investigations of Trump out of the government, Patel largely downplayed his personal knowledge of the agents in question.

He also insisted that the FBI’s Iran team is strong, noting that it has tracked a 43% increase in Iranian espionage and attempted attacks, and that it has more than 300 ongoing terrorism-related investigations on Iran.

And Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) took a swipe at conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, who has claimed he’s under investigation by the federal government. Crenshaw, questioning witnesses about federal foreign surveillance authorities, surmised that Carlson’s communications with Iranian officials had likely been captured through existing targeting of those Iranians — not by efforts targeted at Carlson himself.

“When somebody, and let’s say their name rhymes with, I don’t know, ‘Tucker Carlson’ is claiming that the CIA is spying on him — I’m going to guess here, because I don’t know — I’m going to guess that the most likely scenario is that, in the process of him speaking with Iranian intelligence officials, it is incidentally collected,” Crenshaw said. “Nobody is spying on Tucker Carlson, or his inbox — to my knowledge, at least.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that the U.S. and Israeli operations against Iran have largely destroyed Tehran’s “power projection capabilities” in the region, but that the regime remains standing, if weakened.

“The [intelligence community] assesses that Operation Epic Fury is advancing fundamental change in the region that began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and continued with the 12-day war last year, resulting in weakening Iran and its proxies,” Gabbard said at a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on worldwide threats on Wednesday. 

“The IC assesses the regime in Iran appears to be intact but largely degraded due to attacks on its leadership and military capabilities,” she continued. “Its conventional military power projection capabilities have largely been destroyed, leaving limited options. Iran’s strategic position has been significantly degraded.”

If the Iranian regime survives the current war, Gabbard said that it would “seek to begin a yearslong effort to rebuild its military, missiles and UAV forces.”

She further said that, if the regime remains standing, internal tensions and resistance to the regime inside Iran are likely to increase as the country’s economy continues to struggle under U.S. and international sanctions.

Gabbard said in her opening statement that Iran “was trying to recover from the severe damage to its nuclear infrastructure sustained during the 12-day war, and continued to refuse to comply with its nuclear obligations” to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Democratic senators pressed her throughout the hearing on apparent differences between those comments and her written remarks provided to the committee before the hearing, in which Gabbard said that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was “obliterated” and that it had made “no efforts since then to try to rebuild” its enrichment capacity.

Under questioning, Gabbard affirmed that stance, but said Iran “maintained the intention to rebuild” its nuclear capabilities. She said she had omitted those remarks from her oral testimony for time reasons.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe throughout the hearing appeared to take a more aggressive and assertive stance on Iran than Gabbard, an isolationist and longtime opponent of war with Iran, offering a clear explanation and justification for the U.S. strikes. 

Ratcliffe said that Iran was continuing its nuclear and ballistic missile development, and that he disagreed with an assessment by former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent that Iran did not pose an imminent threat, which Kent alleged in his resignation letter.

“I think Iran has been a constant threat to the United States for an extended period of time, and posed an immediate threat at this time,” Ratcliffe said.

Ratcliffe said that the U.S. operation was “detailed” and “thoughtful” with specific goals to address a long-running and growing threat.

He said that Iran was continuing to build and develop missiles “at alarming rates” such that its offensive capabilities were on track to outpace and overwhelm the U.S.’ ability to build defensive weaponry.

At the same time, Ratcliffe said the U.S. strikes last summer were a “wild success” and that Iran was “unwillinging and incapable” of enriching uranium to 60% purity since those strikes.

Gabbard, meanwhile, repeatedly declined to say whether the intelligence community had assessed Iran to be an imminent threat to the United States, asserting that only the president has the ability to determine whether any threat is imminent, to the frustration of committee Democrats.

In her opening statement, Gabbard also said that Iran’s space launch capabilities would allow it to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035, if Iran decided to pursue that, though that assessment is pending updates after U.S. military operations.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chair of the Intelligence Committee, suggested in his question that the timeline was much shorter, and that Iran actually could have had an ICBM that could threaten the homeland in six months.

Ratcliffe did not explicitly confirm that timeline, but emphasized that Iran’s missile program was a present and growing threat, which “if left unimpeded … would have the ability to range missiles to the continental U.S.”

“It’s one of the reasons why degrading Iran’s missile production capabilities that is taking place right now in Operation Epic Fury is so important to our national security,” Ratcliffe continued.

Pressed repeatedly by Democrats on whether the intelligence community had warned the President Donald Trump of the likelihood — as previously assessed by intelligence officials — that Iran would attack Gulf states and close the Strait of Hormuz in the event of a war, Gabbard and Ratcliffe both emphasized that the administration was aware of and had taken steps to prepare for those threats, despite comments by Trump that such moves by Iran were unanticipated.

Gabbard also described “the spread of Islamist ideology, in some cases, led by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood” as “a fundamental threat to freedom and the foundational principles that underpin Western civilization.”

She said that Islamists are using such ideologies to recruit and solicit financial support for terrorism globally, and that such activity has been increasing in Europe.

Gabbard called the Trump administration’s designation of certain Muslim Brotherhood branches as terrorist organizations, “a mechanism to secure Americans.”

Ratcliffe said the CIA is “very focused” on counterterrorism, including the Muslim Brotherhood, and that the administration has had significant success, which he could share further in a classified setting.

Amid growing speculation that the U.S. will become directly involved in Israel’s military campaign against Iran, President Donald Trump dismissed a public assessment by his Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard earlier this year that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.

“I don’t care what she said, I think they were very close to having it,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One en route home from the G7 Summit in Canada, which he left early to address the situation in the Middle East.

U.S. and Israeli leaders have emphasized in recent days that Iran was quickly increasing its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium in recent months, which would have allowed it to move quickly to a bomb. Some have also disputed Gabbard’s assessment, which was consistent with past assessments by Republican and Democratic administrations in recent years.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said over the weekend, “The intel[ligence] we got and we shared with the United States was absolutely clear, that they were working on a secret plan to weaponize the uranium. They were marching very quickly. They would achieve a test device and possibly an initial device within months, and certainly less than a year.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Iran was “very close to having enough pure weapons-grade uranium for several weapons” and that there were “signs” it was “once again exploring” weaponization.

Gabbard denied any dispute between herself and Trump and appeared to stick by her previous assessment, telling reporters, “What President Trump is saying is the same thing I said in my annual threat assessment in March to Congress.”

Trump also said he is “not looking for a ceasefire” between Israel and Iran, adding “we’re looking for better than a ceasefire.” He said he’s instead looking for “a real end … a complete give-up.”

Asked if he’s still interested in negotiating with Iran, Trump responded, “I don’t know. I’ve been negotiating. I told them to do the deal, they should have done the deal. Their cities have been blown to pieces and they’ve lost a lot of people. They should have done the deal. … I’m not too much in a mood to negotiate now.”

Trump said he “may” attempt to send Vice President JD Vance and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to negotiate with Iran, but that will depend on “what happens when I get back” to Washington. Trump arrived in Washington early Tuesday morning.

But he also said he hopes that Iran’s nuclear program is “going to be wiped out long before” the U.S. would have to get involved in the campaign.

Asked about his call Monday night for the population of Tehran to evacuate, Trump denied any imminent threat adding, “I want people to be safe. That’s always possible. A thing like that could happen.”

He added later, “there’s a lot of bad things happening there. I think it’s safer for them to evacuate.”

The president said that U.S. troops in the region are well-protected, and that the U.S. would retaliate forcefully if Iran attacked U.S. troops.

With a cryptic video that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard posted on X on Tuesday morning, the Democratic-congresswoman-turned-America-First-advocate reignited simmering concerns about the unorthodox intelligence chief among both her longtime detractors and some Republicans who voted to confirm her earlier this year.

“She obviously needs to change her meds,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Jewish Insider of Gabbard. Kennedy, like all Republicans except Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), voted to confirm Gabbard in February. 

“I only saw a post that she did, which I thought was a very strange one since many people believe that, unfortunate though it was, the nuclear bomb that was dropped in World War II at Hiroshima actually saved a lot of lives, a lot of American lives,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told JI of Gabbard’s video. 

In the social media video, Gabbard describes a recent visit to Hiroshima, Japan, where she learned about the toll of the atomic bomb dropped on the city by American troops in 1945, which spurred a Japanese surrender and the end of World War II. She warned that the world faces another “nuclear holocaust” unless people “reject this path to nuclear war.”

“This is the reality of what’s at stake, what we are facing now, because as we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” said Gabbard, not specifying who she was referring to by “political elite warmongers” or which countries she may have been calling out. 

Gabbard’s video decrying “warmongers” prompted concern from Republicans seeking a more traditionally conservative foreign policy worldview. 

“She seems to be doing her best audition to be head of the Quincy Institute,” a senior employee at a pro-Israel advocacy group said of Gabbard.

One Senate Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity, questioned Gabbard’s logic in raising the human toll of Hiroshima and her “warmongers” comment.

“I’m not sure I understand why the DNI would even need to make that point,” the senator said of the Hiroshima focus, later adding: “I don’t seek nuclear war. I don’t know anyone who wants nuclear war. There’s plenty of ideological diversity here, but pretty much universal opposition to that.”

Since taking office, Gabbard, who in 2020 was a surrogate for progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) presidential campaign, has generally been aligned with the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, which is increasingly ascendant in the Trump administration. William Ruger, the official she tapped for the high-level position that prepares the president’s daily intelligence briefing, came from Koch-affiliated institutions and has called for “American restraint” on the world stage. 

During her nomination battle, Gabbard faced criticism, including from some Republicans — focused in particular on a congressional trip to Syria in 2017 when she met with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, her parroting of Russian propaganda about the country’s war with Ukraine and her defense of Edward Snowden, the former intelligence official who leaked classified information before fleeing the country. 

“It defies belief that someone would be criticizing [President Harry] Truman’s act of winning a war. We really need to get back to winning wars when we fight,” Eric Levine, a prominent Republican fundraiser in New York who urged senators to oppose Gabbard’s confirmation, told JI on Tuesday. 

Levine raised concerns about Gabbard’s ability to influence President Donald Trump’s approach to Iran, as nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran are set to continue this weekend. He said that if Trump does the “right thing” — meaning he ends the Iran negotiations and supports a strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure — then the U.S. will “save a lot of lives, just like Harry Truman did, and will not require the dropping of a nuclear bomb.” 

“I’m very concerned about the isolationist wing of the Republican Party,” Levine continued. “I don’t know who’s winning out, because we don’t know what the end result is in Iran yet.”

Several Republican senators questioned why Gabbard would make the video in the first place.

“I thought it was not appropriate,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told JI.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) described the impact of the bomb as “horrible” but said it was necessary to end the war, in which his father had fought. 

“Dropping those bombs probably saved a million servicemen’s lives. If you don’t want to get nuked, don’t start barbaric wars,” Graham told JI. “I think it’s a horrible thing to happen to people, but it was brought on by Japan, and if I were Harry Truman, I would have done the same thing because the casualty estimates were a million dead Americans invading mainland Japan.”

Alexa Henning, Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, declined to say whether Gabbard was referring in the video to a specific nation or to specific people. 

“Acknowledging the past is critical to inform the future. President Trump has repeatedly stated in the past that he recognizes the immeasurable suffering, and annihilation can be caused by nuclear war, which is why he has been unequivocal that we all need to do everything possible to work towards peace,” Henning said in a statement. “DNI Gabbard supports President Trump’s clearly stated objectives of bringing about lasting peace and stability and preventing war.”

Despite the criticism coming even from some allies, Gabbard’s views do not appear to have gone outside the realm of what Trump hopes to see from her. 

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a personal friend of Gabbard’s from their shared time in the House, defended Gabbard’s post and her service as DNI. 

“I think she’s doing a great job … She’s doing exactly what the president wanted her to do,” Mullin told JI. “People have been critical of her, and this is D.C., right? You’re going to get criticized for walking down the stairs wrong, so criticism is part of the job.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Tuesday that the intelligence community maintains its assessment from prior years that Iran is not currently actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, but that open discussion of nuclearization has increased inside the regime.

“The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” Gabbard said in her opening remarks at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

But, Gabbard added, “In the past year, we have seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus. Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”

Gabbard also said that the full impacts of renewed sanctions on Iran are not yet in effect, but that the “message … is certainly heard.”

The intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, released in conjunction with the hearing, predicts that Iran will continue efforts to threaten U.S. citizens globally and develop networks and conduct operations inside the United States.

It also describes Iran’s military capabilities and proxy armies as an ongoing threat to the U.S. and its allies, despite Israeli successes in degrading those capabilities.

“The IC assesses Iran’s prospects for reconstituting force losses and posing a credible deterrent, particularly to Israeli actions, are dim in the near-term,” the report continues.

The report suggests that Iranian political and economic struggles could be fodder for renewed domestic political unrest and protest inside Iran, unless Iran is granted sanctions relief.

The intelligence community also assessed that Hamas is a continued threat to Israeli security and is “capable of resuming a low-level guerilla resistance and to remain the dominant political action in Gaza for the foreseeable future.” It notes that Hamas’ popularity in Gaza has decreased but it remains popular in the West Bank.

The report warns that resumed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah would “threaten Lebanon’s fragile stability” and could prompt a range of negative outcomes inside Lebanon.

It also states that Syria could again devolve into violence, and that even if the new government is able to form a durable coalition across the various ethnic and sectarian groups, “governing Syria will remain a daunting challenge amid the country’s economic problems, humanitarian needs driven in part by millions of internally displaced Syrians, rampant insecurity, as well as ethnic, sectarian, and religious cleavages.”

Protesters affiliated with the far-left group Code Pink disrupted the hearing to advocate against U.S. support for Israel. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the committee chair, citing reports of Chinese funding to the group, said that its activism against Israel reflects the coordination among U.S. adversaries.

In a series of heated exchanges, Democratic lawmakers repeatedly pressed the intelligence community leaders about the recent revelation that U.S. officials had discussed plans for U.S. strikes on the Houthis in Yemen on a commercial messaging app in a group chat that inadvertently included a reporter.

Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who were members of the chat, provided a series of largely evasive and sometimes inconsistent responses on the situation. They at points denied that classified information had been shared in the chat, while at other times said they did not recall details of what had been discussed and suggested that only Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth could say whether the information involved had been classified. 

Multiple Republican senators indicated they also had concerns about the revelations, but planned to question the officials about them in a subsequent classified session.

The threat assessment report released Tuesday did not include a section on the threats from transnational racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists — a category that includes violent white supremacists — which intelligence officials in the previous administration had characterized as a major threat.