Senate to begin voting on Trump intelligence nominee Jay Clayton – US politics live | US news

Hello and welcome to the live blog of US politics.

The Senate will begin voting on Monday on the nomination of Manhattan US attorney Jay Clayton, whom Donald Trump has singled out as America’s top spy, and is expected to be confirmed within days despite a tense confirmation hearing.

If confirmed as director of national intelligence, Clayton would fill the post vacated by Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned in June following clashes with congressional Democrats who accused her of advancing Trump’s political agenda and promoting debunked election claims.

The Senate will hold a procedural vote on Monday evening on whether to advance Clayton’s nomination to oversee the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, Reuters reported.

The DNI position was created after the September 11, 2001 attacks to coordinate the nation’s expanding intelligence apparatus.

Many senators are eager for Clayton to take office because they are unhappy with the interim director of national intelligence, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, who is a Trump loyalist, has no national security experience and has laid off staff at the agency.

If Clayton wins a majority in the 100-member Senate on a procedural vote, a final confirmation vote is expected within the week.

Trump’s Republicans, who hold a 53-47 majority in the House and are rarely out of touch with the White House, are expected to provide Clayton with enough votes for confirmation.

In other developments:

• The Pentagon updated its official combat casualty database over the weekend, adding more than 140 wounded soldiers. The Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) also introduced a new casualty category The “Overseas Operations” label was placed for the dead and injured personnel “as of July 7”. According to updated databaseThe official death toll for the previous phase of the US-Iran war, known as Operation Epic Rage, now means 14 soldiers were killed and more than 400 were injured during the operation.

• Hakeem Jeffries said Donald Trump’s Republican party has “nothing to buy” for the midterm congressional elections after Donald Trump made good on promises to cut costs and refrain from starting wars abroad. The House minority leader, a New York congressman, made the comments on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, exactly 100 days after the Nov. 3 midterm elections, as Jeffries and his fellow Democrats aim to wrest control of the U.S. House and Senate from their Republican rivals.

• Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was “inciting hatred” by calling the Israeli prime minister a war criminal. He is the person who should be arrested for Israel’s war in Gaza if he visits the city for the United Nations general assembly.

• Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s “border czar,” said Sunday that he did not believe the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer at the center of a recent deadly shooting in Maine “should have approved the review.” Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union, host Dana Bash asked Homan about the officer’s suitability for the following duties: reports owned by two of his ex-wives. accused for harassing her.

• Pop star Katy Perry slammed the Trump White House for using her hit song Firework in a TikTok video showing US military strikes against Iranian targets, saying she never approved the use of her music. white house videoThe video of the fireworks display over the footage of the missile hitting an Iranian navy ship was watched more than 6 million times. The post was titled: “Iran warned.”

• New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill recently signed A new law banning businesses from using shoppers’ personal information to charge different prices for the same items has made his state the third state in the United States to ban the practice. The Fair Price Protection Act, passed by the New Jersey legislature, aims to protect consumers from surveillance pricing, where retailers can use data such as online activity, location and purchasing history to arbitrarily change prices for individual shoppers.