TULSI TUMBLE: Senate Democrats are pumping the brakes on Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for Director of National Intelligence. Axios reported that Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is pushing back on GOP requests to hold a hearing for the former Hawaii congresswoman early next week. Warner says the committee hasn’t received Gabbard’s FBI background check, ethics disclosure, or a pre-hearing questionnaire. A reserve lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard, Gabbard holds an active security clearance, and a source working with the nominee says she completed the background check process last week. The Associated Press reported last month that nearly 100 former senior U.S. diplomats and intelligence and national security officials urged Senate leaders to schedule closed-door hearings on Gabbard, focusing on “the protection of our intelligence sources and methods.”
SPEAKING OF WHICH: The onetime Democrat-turned-Independent-turned full-throated Trump supporter has reversed course on an issue that was sure to further trip up her run to the bureaucratic summit of U.S. intelligence: Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which “authorizes targeted intelligence collection of specific types of foreign intelligence information—such as information concerning international terrorism or the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.” Gabbard had once vigorously opposed the controversial practice, but told Punchbowl News in a statement Friday that she now believes that the program is “crucial” and “must be safeguarded to protect our nation while ensuring the civil liberties of Americans.” She must have heard the growing grumbling of GOP security hawks. In 2022 she co-sponsored legislation to repeal the act.
HEGSETH’S HEARING: Dems are also trying to slow down the confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick to run the Defense Department.