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Senate to begin voting on Trump spy nominee Clayton
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
The Senate is due to begin voting as early as Monday on the nomination of Manhattan US attorney Jay Clayton, Donald Trump’s pick to be the top US spy, and he is expected to be approved within days despite a tense confirmation hearing.
If approved to be the director of national intelligence, Clayton would fill a role vacated in June when Tulsi Gabbard stepped down after a tenure marked by clashes with congressional Democrats, who accused her of advancing Trump’s political agenda and promoting debunked election claims.
The Senate is due to hold a procedural vote Monday evening on whether to advance Clayton’s nomination for the job overseeing the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, Reuters reported.
The position of DNI was created after the 11 September 2001 attacks to coordinate the country’s sprawling intelligence apparatus.
Many senators are eager for Clayton to take up the post because they are unhappy with the interim director of national intelligence, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, a Trump loyalist without national security experience who has been cutting staff at the agency.
If Clayton wins a majority in the 100-member Senate on the procedural vote, a final confirmation vote is expected later in the week.
Trump’s Republicans, who have a 53-47 majority in the chamber and rarely break from the White House, are expected to provide Clayton with enough votes for confirmation.
In other developments:
The Pentagon updated its official war casualty database over the weekend, adding more than 140 wounded service members. The Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) also introduced a new casualty category labeled “Overseas Operations” for personnel killed and wounded “starting July 7”. According to the updated database, the official toll for the earlier phase of the US-Iran war, known as Operation Epic Fury, now stands at 14 service members killed and more than 400 wounded in action.
Donald 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.
Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, is “fomenting hate” by calling the Israeli prime minister a war criminal who should be arrested over Israel’s war in Gaza if he visits the city for the United Nations general assembly.
Tom Homan, the Trump administration “border czar”, on Sunday said he did not believe the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer at the center of a recent fatal shooting in Maine “should have ever cleared vetting”. Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union, Homan was asked by host Dana Bash about the officer’s eligibility to serve following reports that two of his ex-wives had accused him of abuse.
Pop star Katy Perry has condemned the Trump White House after it used her hit song Firework in a TikTok video showing US military strikes on Iranian targets, saying she never approved the use of her music. The White House video, which featured Firework playing over footage of a missile striking an Iranian naval ship, has amassed more than 6 million views. The post was captioned: “Iran has been warned.”
New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill recently signed a new law prohibiting businesses from using shoppers’ personal information to charge different prices for identical products, making her state the third in the US to ban the practice. The Fair Price Protection Act passed by New Jersey’s legislature seeks to protect consumers from surveillance pricing, in which retailers can use data including online activity, location and purchasing history to arbitrarily change prices for individual shoppers.
Key events
Democratic senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed likened the potential defeat of his opponents in the coming Michigan primary and November election as a stark exercise in progressive messaging, according to Politico’s Playbook.
“You’re gonna spend $60 million to beat me — OK, two can play at that game,” he said on a Zoom call with donors, Politico reported. “And then what happens is, ideally, you put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message, and all of a sudden starts to sound a lot different.”
El-Sayed, a Rhodes Scholar, physician and former public health official in Michigan, faces US Rep Haley Stevens in 4 Aug. primary for the US Senate, a seat Democrats almost certainly must hold to take control of the chamber in 2027. Retiring two-term Democratic senator Gary Peters currently holds the swing-state seat.
The contest pits El-Sayed, a progressive who has called for abolishing ICE and is aggressively opposed to US policy on Israel, against a relative moderate who last week voted against a bill amendment to end American financial support for Israel. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has spent nearly $30m in the Michigan Democratic primary in support of Stevens.
El-Sayed described the contest in Biblical terms.
“What they don’t really realize is that in spending so much money, they’re turning me into David, right?,” El-Sayed said. “So, like, if I’m the guy who came through and beat Goliath, now all of a sudden you just gave me the best platform in the entire U.S. Senate, which I love because then guess where all eyes are going to be?”
Former US Rep. Mike Rogers is the presumptive Republican nominee.
The White House released an AI-generated video on Sunday night on the social media platform X, depicting President Donald Trump as Rick Sanchez from the Cartoon Network series Rick and Morty. In the video, Trump as Rick is running around the grounds of the White House, with what appears to be Vice-President JD Vance depicted as his grandson Morty. The video makes a reference to Trump taking a third term in office, which the president joked about at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner on Friday night.
The video has, at this moment, 6.3 million views on X.
President Donald Trump plans to tout his handling of the economy during a visit to suburban Detroit today, defending sweeping tariffs in a swing state where their effects have hurt many businesses as midterm election season heats up.
Trump is visiting a General Motors facility in Milford, home to tracks and proving grounds for new models and vehicles. Early voting is underway for Michigan’s 4 August primary, which features fierce nomination fights in both major political parties, AP reported.
Republican Mike Rogers is unopposed in the Senate primary, but the GOP gubernatorial contest pits Trump-backed John James against Perry Johnson, a businessman turned politician who has launched unsuccessful campaigns before, including for president in 2024.
Johnson is now trying to style himself in the president’s mold – despite missing out on his endorsement.
Ramon Antonio Vargas
Donald 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.
Asked to discuss the elections, Jeffries alluded to how Trump and other Republicans quickly seized on a 21 July announcement from Mike Sherrill, the Democratic New Jersey governor, that 6,600 noncitizens in the state had registered to vote because of a software error.
Fewer than 400 of them voted before the identification and correction of the error. But the president and his allies nonetheless used the disclosure to boost false claims that there are scores of noncitizens on voter rolls who could compromise the integrity of the midterms, during which Republicans are predicted to lose seats.
Jeffries on Sunday argued that was because it is a more comfortable strategy to adopt rather than confront how the US and Israeli militaries began warring with Iran in February after Trump won a second presidency in 2024 having promised “not to start … endless wars in the Middle East”.
The costs of the war have included the deaths of 18 US troop members as of Sunday, along with injuries to hundreds more. Gas and grocery prices have also soared amid the conflict, leaving 95% of Americans believing that the US is suffering an affordability crisis, according to exclusive polling conducted for the Guardian.
Senate to begin voting on Trump spy nominee Clayton
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
The Senate is due to begin voting as early as Monday on the nomination of Manhattan US attorney Jay Clayton, Donald Trump’s pick to be the top US spy, and he is expected to be approved within days despite a tense confirmation hearing.
If approved to be the director of national intelligence, Clayton would fill a role vacated in June when Tulsi Gabbard stepped down after a tenure marked by clashes with congressional Democrats, who accused her of advancing Trump’s political agenda and promoting debunked election claims.
The Senate is due to hold a procedural vote Monday evening on whether to advance Clayton’s nomination for the job overseeing the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, Reuters reported.
The position of DNI was created after the 11 September 2001 attacks to coordinate the country’s sprawling intelligence apparatus.
Many senators are eager for Clayton to take up the post because they are unhappy with the interim director of national intelligence, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, a Trump loyalist without national security experience who has been cutting staff at the agency.
If Clayton wins a majority in the 100-member Senate on the procedural vote, a final confirmation vote is expected later in the week.
Trump’s Republicans, who have a 53-47 majority in the chamber and rarely break from the White House, are expected to provide Clayton with enough votes for confirmation.
In other developments:
The Pentagon updated its official war casualty database over the weekend, adding more than 140 wounded service members. The Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) also introduced a new casualty category labeled “Overseas Operations” for personnel killed and wounded “starting July 7”. According to the updated database, the official toll for the earlier phase of the US-Iran war, known as Operation Epic Fury, now stands at 14 service members killed and more than 400 wounded in action.
Donald 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.
Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, is “fomenting hate” by calling the Israeli prime minister a war criminal who should be arrested over Israel’s war in Gaza if he visits the city for the United Nations general assembly.
Tom Homan, the Trump administration “border czar”, on Sunday said he did not believe the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer at the center of a recent fatal shooting in Maine “should have ever cleared vetting”. Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union, Homan was asked by host Dana Bash about the officer’s eligibility to serve following reports that two of his ex-wives had accused him of abuse.
Pop star Katy Perry has condemned the Trump White House after it used her hit song Firework in a TikTok video showing US military strikes on Iranian targets, saying she never approved the use of her music. The White House video, which featured Firework playing over footage of a missile striking an Iranian naval ship, has amassed more than 6 million views. The post was captioned: “Iran has been warned.”
New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill recently signed a new law prohibiting businesses from using shoppers’ personal information to charge different prices for identical products, making her state the third in the US to ban the practice. The Fair Price Protection Act passed by New Jersey’s legislature seeks to protect consumers from surveillance pricing, in which retailers can use data including online activity, location and purchasing history to arbitrarily change prices for individual shoppers.
