The US Senate has confirmed Kash Patel as the next FBI director, handing oversight of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency to an official who has declined to explicitly say whether he would use his position to pursue Donald Trump’s political opponents.
Patel was narrowly confirmed on Thursday in a 51-49 vote, a reflection of the polarizing nature of his nomination and what Democrats see as his unwillingness to keep the bureau independent from partisan politics or resist politically charged requests from the president.
Notably, at his confirmation hearing, Patel refused to commit that he would not use his position to investigate officials he portrayed as Trump’s adversaries in his book, and affirmed that he believed the FBI was answerable to the justice department and, ultimately, the White House.
Patel’s responses suggest that his arrival at FBI headquarters will usher in a new chapter for the bureau as a result of his adherence to Trump’s vision of a unitary executive, where the president directs every agency, and willingness to prioritize the administration’s policy agenda.
You can read more about Patel’s confirmation here:
A vaccine policy committee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will not meet as scheduled next week, just days after vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr was sworn in as head of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy criticized the panel, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, during his confirmation hearings. The committee is currently on a list of advisory groups currently under review, according to an executive order issued by Trump yesterday.
Kennedy, who promised Senator Bill Cassidy that he would not touch the childhood vaccine schedule during the confirmation process, told HHS employees they would investigate the schedule when he began work this week. The vaccine schedule includes shots that prevent measles, polio and other dangerous diseases.
Attendees of the White House’s Black History Month reception have broken out into cheers of “four more years”, referring to Donald Trump’s suggestion that he should extend his presidency beyond the constitutionally allowed two terms.
Donald Trump has announced he will install a new statue of Prince Estabrook, an enslaved man who was wounded at the Battle of Lexington, in “our new National Garden of American Heroes”.
He added that “the Garden will predominantly feature incredible women like Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin and Coretta Scott King” alongside “some of the most beautiful works of art in the form of a statue for men like Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, Jackie Robinson, what a great athlete, Martin Luther King Jr, Muhammad Ali … and the late Kobe Bryant.”
Addressing guests at the White House, Donald Trump struck an uneasy tone celebrating Black History Month while also criticizing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
“We now have more Black Republicans serving in the US House than at any time since 1870,” he said. As the 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding approaches, he added “we’re going to look forward to honoring the contributions of countless Black Americans who fought to win, and protect and expand American freedom from the very, very beginning.”
Trump went on to say, “The last administration tried to reduce all of American history to a single year, 1619, but under our administration, we honor the indispensable role Black Americans have always played in the immortal cause of another date 1776.”
Trump’s mention of 1619 appeared to be a reference to the New York Times’ 1619 Project which marked the year enslaved Africans arrived in the Americas.
Donald Trump has just taken the stage at the White House’s Black History Month reception, alongside golfer Tiger Woods.
Woods said “it was an honor” to be at the White House with Trump. Trump gave Woods the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019, which Woods was wearing at the reception today.
“Today we pay tribute to the generations of Black legends, champions, warriors and patriots who helped drive our country forward to greatness. And you really are great, great people. What a great, nice group of … ,” Trump said.
Trump also shouted out Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Scott Turner, and Senator Tim Scott.
One of the more intriguing groups at CPAC this year is the Third Term Project, which says it is exploring the case for reconsidering presidential term limits – in other words, changing the constitution so Donald Trump can run again.“Drawing on historical examples like Franklin Delano Roosvelt’s four-term presidency and international cases such as Viktor Orban in Hungary, the discussion will highlight how sustained leadership fosters policy continuity, national stability, and long-term progress,” the project said ahead of a press conference on Thursday.
Republican congressman Andy Ogles of Tennessee has already put forward a bill proposing a constitutional amendment allowing for a president to serve up to three terms, provided that they did not serve two consecutive terms prior to running for a third.
Wearing a “Trump 2028” sticker, Amber Harris of the Third Term Project said: “You need more than four years to enact some of the things he wants to do and giving him the two consecutive terms to do it could get this country back on track.”
She dismissed concerns over Trump turning into an emperor or king as “fearmongering” and was unworried by the fact he would be 82 in 2028. “I’m not an ageist kind of person. I don’t worry about somebody’s age if they’re mentally competent to do the job. I would fully support it.”
However, an unscientific Guardian survey of eight CPAC attendees found little enthusiasm for the proposal, with most preferring the idea of Trump passing the torch to a rising star such as Vice-President JD Vance.
Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
The Senate confirmed Kash Patel as the next FBI director, handing oversight of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency to an official who has declined to explicitly say whether he would use his position to pursue Donald Trump’s political opponents. The Senate voted to confirm Patel in a 51-49 vote, with senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska the only Republicans to oppose Patel.
Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky, announced he will not run for re-election next year. McConnell formally announced his retirement in a Senate floor speech on Thursday, on his 83rd birthday, bringing an end to a decades-long career for a Republican leader who marshaled his party through multiple administrations with a singleminded focus on power that enraged his critics and delighted his allies.
Mike Waltz, the White House national security adviser, said Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy should sign a deal handing over half of the country’s mineral wealth to the US. Trump is “obviously very frustrated” with Zelenskyy, Walz said, adding that “some of the rhetoric” and “insults” about Trump were “unacceptable”. Waltz also noted that the US “fully supports” Article 5 of the Nato alliance but that its European partners need to increase their spending.
Donald Trump will host his first official cabinet meeting at the White House next Wednesday. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also confirmed that Trump will host the French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Monday and the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, on Thursday.
JD Vance marked the Trump administration’s one month since its return to power with a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The vice-president claimed uncontrolled immigration was “the greatest threat” to both Europe and the US, and suggested that the US’s military commitment to European allies could be contingent on their domestic policies, particularly targeting Germany.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will lay off thousands workers in Washington and around the country beginning on Thursday, according to reports. The layoffs reportedly affect probationary employees with roughly one year or less of service at the agency and largely include workers in compliance departments.
A Senate committee voted to advance Linda McMahon’s nomination as Donald Trump’s education secretary. The Senate committee on health, education, labor and pensions voted 12-11 along party lines to advance the nomination of McMahon, the billionaire co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), to the Senate floor.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, whose 18-year prison sentence following the 6 January 2021 attack was commuted by Donald Trump, is roving the corridors of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Wearing a black patch on his eye and a Trump tattoo on his arm, Rhodes told reporters:
I’m the new spokesman for Condemned USA to advocate for the other J6ers who are still in prison and then other political prisoners like Tina Peters, the election worker in Colorado, once again targeted simply for exercising her rights to question an election.
Last year Peters, a local elections official in Colorado, was sentenced to nine years in prison for leading a voting system data-breach scheme inspired by the rampant false claims that fraud altered the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Rhodes, 59, from Granbury, Texas, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy, told the Guardian that he owns the trademark for the Oath Keepers. “I can do what I want with it,” he said. “We’ll see what I want to do with it. I’m thinking about it.”
Richard Barnett, a January 6 rioter who put his feet on House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk and was sentenced to more than four years in prison, showed off his “certificate of pardon” from Trump.
The 64-year-old retired firefighter, wearing a sweater emblazoned with “J6” “political prisoner” and “376369”, said of Trump’s first month in office:
“Awesome, baby. Keep it coming. Keep it coming. Absolutely. Let’s get some arrests on the books. There’s a lot of treason going on in this country. It’s time to clean it up.
Donald Trump has appeared to embrace a proposal to share a portion of the cuts in US government spending made by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) with all US households in the form of checks.
Trump addressed the idea in a speech at an investment conference in Miami on Wednesday, telling attendees:
There’s even under consideration a new concept, where we give 20% of the Doge savings to American citizens, and 20% goes to paying down debt.
Trump suggested the policy would incentivize Americans to “participate in the process of saving us money” by reporting suspected government waste to boost their own share of the funding cuts.
The greatest challenge for recent FBI directors has been the delicate balance of retaining Donald Trump’s confidence while resisting pressure to make public pronouncements or open criminal investigations that are politically motivated or that personally benefit the president.
Kash Patel is unlikely to have difficulties, such is his ideological alignment with Trump on a range of issues including the need to pursue retribution against any perceived enemies like former special counsel Jack Smith and others who investigated him during his first term.
The new leadership at the FBI comes as questions about the far-reaching nature of his loyalty to Trump remain unresolved. At his confirmation hearing, Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee tried in vain to elicit answers about his role as a witness in the criminal investigation into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents.
During the investigation, Patel was subpoenaed to testify about whether the documents the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago had been declassified under a “standing declassification order”, as he had represented in various public comments at the time.
The Guardian reported at the time that Patel initially declined to appear, citing his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. He later testified after the chief US district judge in Washington authorized Patel to have limited immunity from prosecution, which forced his testimony.
That loyalty, to resist federal prosecutors, endeared him to Trump and is understood to have played a factor in him ultimately getting tapped for the FBI director position after Trump struggled for weeks to decide who he wanted at the bureau, a person familiar with the matter said.
As we reported earlier, Kash Patel has been narrowly confirmed by the Senate as the next FBI director.
The Senate voted to confirm Patel by a 51-49 vote. Two moderate Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, joined all Democrats in opposing Patel.
Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell, who earlier today announced he was not seeking re-election, voted to confirm Patel. He has voted against three of Trump’s most controversial nominees.
In a statement before the vote, Collins said Patel had made “numerous politically charged” statements discrediting the FBI.
These statements “cast doubt on Mr Patel’s ability to advance the FBI’s law enforcement mission in a way that is free from the appearance of political motivation”, she said.
Murkowski’s statement said her reservations with Patel “stem from his own prior political activities and how they may influence his leadership”.
“I cannot imagine a worse choice,” Democratic senator Dick Durbin said before the vote this afternoon.
Another Democratic senator, Richard Blumenthal, said he was “absolutely sure of this one thing: this vote will haunt anyone who votes for him. They will rue the day they did it.”
Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse had some harsh words for Kash Patel and his Republican colleagues who voted for his confirmation earlier today.
Whitehouse said Patel is the “first senior law enforcement official in American history to have plead the fifth, and he’s been unwilling to even explain to the judiciary committee what crimes it was that he was concerned about that caused him to plead the fifth.
“Kash Patel, mark my words, will cause evil in this building behind us. Republicans who vote for him will rue that day.”
Kash Patel’s confirmation was a close one.
If more than three Republican senators voted against him, Patel wouldn’t have been confirmed.
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski announced earlier today on X that she planned to vote against Patel’s nomination, largely due to his refusal to cooperate with January 6 investigations.
“My reservations with Mr. Patel stem from his own prior political activities and how they may influence his leadership,” Murkowski wrote.
“The FBI must be trusted as the federal agency that roots out crime and corruption, not focused on settling political scores. I have been disappointed that when he had the opportunity to push back on the administration’s decision to force the FBI to provide a list of agents involved in the January 6 investigations and prosecutions, he failed to do so.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
