Senate committee approves Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination as national intelligence director
The Senate intelligence committee has approved former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination to serve as Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence.
The committee’s Republican chair Tom Cotton announced the outcome of the behind-closed-doors vote on X:
I’m pleased that the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to advance the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to be the Director of National Intelligence. Once confirmed, I look forward to working with Ms. Gabbard to keep America safe and to bring badly needed reforms to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
He did not reveal the tally of the vote. The panel’s Democrats were not expected to support Gabbard over her statements on foreign policy seen as deferential to US adversaries like Russia.
Gabbard awaits confirmation by the full Senate.
Key events
Trump proposes sending American criminals to foreign jails
Donald Trump said he would support sending US citizens to serve time in overseas jails, after El Salvador’s president told secretary of state Marco Rubio he’d be willing to house prisoners from the United States.
“In an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country, President Bukele offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals, including US citizens and legal residents,” Rubio said on X earlier today, after meeting with El Salvador president Nayib Bukele during his visit to the Central American country.
Asked about the idea in the Oval Office, Trump said:
These are sick people. If we could get them out of our country, we have other countries that would take them. They could. It’s no different than a prison system, except it would be a lot less expensive and it would be a great deterrent send them to other countries.
…
If we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat. I don’t know if we do or not. We’re looking at that right now, but we could make deals where we’d get these animals out of our country.
Trump backs ending education department, wants to ‘let the states run schools’
Donald Trump reiterated that his administration would seek to dismantle the US department of education and leave standards at schools up to the individual states.
Referring to Linda McMahon, his to-be-confirmed nominee to lead the department, Trump said to reporters in the Oval Office:
I told Linda, Linda, I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job. … So we’re ranked number 40 out of 40 schools, right? We’re ranked number one in cost per pupil, so we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, and we’re ranked at the bottom of the list. We’re ranked very badly. And what I want to do is let the states run schools.
Trump says he will ‘wind down’ USAid
Taking questions in the Oval Office after he signed executive orders, Donald Trump confirmed that his administration will “wind down” USAid, and alleged fraud at the agency tasked with implementing the United States’s foreign aid agenda, Reuters reports.
The president added that Elon Musk, who he has put in charge of the effort, is doing a “great job”.
Trump stops future US funding to Unrwa, ends cooperation with UN human rights council
Donald Trump just signed executive orders preventing the United States from providing support to the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, and ending its cooperation with the global body’s human rights council.
He also signed an order to impose “maximum economic pressure” on Iran as his administration renews efforts to curb its nuclear program.
The United States has had an on-again-off-again relationship with the UN human rights council, and is not currently a member. Trump’s executive order criticizes the body for anti-US bias.
Under Joe Biden, the US also froze funding to Unrwa amid allegations some of its employees participated in the 7 October attack, and the order Trump signed prevents future funding to the agency.
We have a separate live blog covering the latest news in the Middle East, and you can follow it here:
Trump to put nearly all USAid staffers at headquarters on leave – report
Politico reports that almost all USAid employees at its Washington DC headquarters will be put on leave on orders of the Trump administration.
The move comes after officials from Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” gained access to secure information in the organization, over the objections of two security officials who were subsequently put on leave. Hundreds of employees were then told they were on leave over the weekend, and the Trump administration plans to tell much of the rest of its staff the same in the hours to come.
Here’s more, from Politico:
A person familiar with the situation said some 1,400 people will be notified Tuesday, on top of about 600 who were placed on leave starting Sunday night. That amounts to the majority of Washington-based staff – many of them civil and Foreign Service officers, the person said.
A senior USAID official said the agency’s human resources department said in a meeting Tuesday morning that it had already revoked system access for more than 1,400 staffers – an indication that they are likely about to be notified they’re being put on leave.
Senate committee approves Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination as national intelligence director
The Senate intelligence committee has approved former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination to serve as Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence.
The committee’s Republican chair Tom Cotton announced the outcome of the behind-closed-doors vote on X:
I’m pleased that the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to advance the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to be the Director of National Intelligence. Once confirmed, I look forward to working with Ms. Gabbard to keep America safe and to bring badly needed reforms to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
He did not reveal the tally of the vote. The panel’s Democrats were not expected to support Gabbard over her statements on foreign policy seen as deferential to US adversaries like Russia.
Gabbard awaits confirmation by the full Senate.
The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee has condemned the Trump administration’s purge of top FBI officials, saying the move undermines national security and the bureau’s efforts to fight drug trafficking.
Several top officials, including assistant directors at the bureau in charge of intelligence, counter-terrorism and science and technology, were among those forced out last week, Virginia senator Mark Warner said in a statement.
“These are people who have served our country, protected Americans, and put criminals behind bars. Now they have been pushed out simply for doing their jobs. As we deal with a myriad of threats – to our homeland, to our cyber networks, to our economic competitiveness – this blatant abuse of power is making us all less safe,” Warner said.
CNN reports that the FBI has turned over to the justice department the names of thousands of FBI agents who worked on January 6-related cases, while officials connected to Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” have been seen at the agency’s headquarters.
The demand for the names came from Emil Bove, who is now the acting deputy attorney general after previously representing Donald Trump as he faced state and federal prosecutions during Joe Biden’s presidency.
Here’s more, from CNN:
The demand has caused consternation among FBI employees who fear it is meant to amass a list of personnel for possible termination by the Trump administration.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, in a Friday memo with the subject line “Terminations,” had given FBI officials a noon deadline Tuesday to submit the names of thousands of agents and analysts. Bove previously ordered the firing of eight senior FBI officials, including those who oversaw cyber, national security and criminal investigations.
More than 5,000 names were submitted, sources said. There are more than 13,000 agents and 38,000 total FBI employees.
Meanwhile, officials dispatched by Elon Musk have been seen at FBI headquarters. Musk has headed up efforts by President Donald Trump’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Unions representing federal workers have begun a legal counterattack to Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” accessing government computer systems, the Guardian’s Joseph Gedeon reports:
Three federal employee unions are suing the Trump administration, alleging that Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has been granted unprecedented and potentially illegal access to sensitive government records.
The lawsuit, filed on Monday in federal court, claims that the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, violated federal privacy laws by giving Musk’s team full access to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s confidential payment systems.
Within days of Bessent’s appointment, the bureau’s top career official, David A Lebryk, was placed on administrative leave after reportedly resisting Doge’s data access requests. Lebryk subsequently announced his retirement, according to the lawsuit.
The unions argue that millions of Americans’ personal data – including social security numbers, tax returns and payment details – could be at risk.
“The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented,” the complaint reads.
The Senate has confirmed Doug Collins as secretary of veterans affairs.
According to the Associated Press, Collins was confirmed on a 77-23 vote.
Collins, a former air force chaplain and former Georgia representative who defended Trump during his first impeachment trial, pledged during his 21 January hearing to “take care of the veterans” should he succeed in the confirmation process.
“I’m an Iraq war veteran,” he said during his hearing, “I understand burn pits because I slept next to one for many months. I understand this generation that went time and time and again, deployment after deployment in a different way than we’d seen many times before in our past wars.”
Collins served in the House of Representatives from 2013 to 2021.
FBI employees sue government over efforts to compile a list of employees who worked on Jan 6 or Trump cases
A group of anonymous FBI employees who were involved in cases related to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol or the criminal investigations of President Donald Trump have filed a class action lawsuit against the justice department and the acting attorney general, James McHenry, over efforts to compile a list of employees who worked on these cases, which the agents fear could be used for termination or disciplinary action.
The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, states that on 2 February, the FBI employees were instructed to fill out a survey that would identify their specific role in the January 6 and Mar-a-Lago cases.
It adds that some employees were required to fill out the survey themselves, whereas others were told that their supervisors would be filling out the form.
“Plaintiffs were informed that the aggregated information is going to be forwarded to upper management” the complaint reads, adding that they believe that “the purpose for this list is to identify agents to be terminated or to suffer other adverse employment action”.
The lawsuit states that the employees “fear that all or parts of this list might be published by allies of President Trump, thus placing themselves and their families in immediate danger of retribution by the now pardoned and at-large Jan. 6 convicted felons”.
The complaint alleges that the gathering, retention, and disclosure of the employees activities related to the acts of President Trump “is a violation of Plaintiffs’ rights under the First Amendments to the Constitution”.
The employees also allege that it is a “violation of Plaintiffs’ Fifth Amendment substantive and due process rights” and the “publication or dissemination of the information in these surveys would be a violation of the Privacy Act of 1974”.
“Accordingly, Plaintiffs seek to enjoin the publication or dissemination of these surveys, or any information derived therefrom,” it states.
This comes as last week, the FBI’s acting director, Brian Driscoll, said that he had been directed by the acting deputy attorney general to provide a list of names of all current and former agents who had ever been assigned to investigate or prosecute January 6 attack cases.
The assistant commissioner of a division within the General Services Administration (GSA) reportedly informed staff this week that layoffs across the federal government are “likely” after the resignation offer expires on Thursday, according an email obtained by the Washington Post.
In the email obtained by the Post, Erv Koehler, the assistant commissioner of general supplies and services at GSA, reportedly expressed that he empathized with the “tough decisions you each are having to make” and encouraged staff to “focus on making the best decision for you and your particular situation”.
He said that GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service “is being asked” to cut its program by 50%.
