Trump cancels – President Donald Trump said he is delaying Jay Clayton’s nomination to serve as director of national intelligence and abruptly canceled a Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing scheduled for Wednesday, keeping Bill Pulte as acting DNI for now. Trum
By the time President Donald Trump posted his latest order on Truth Social, the immediate question in Washington wasn’t just who would run the intelligence community next—it was whether a planned Senate confirmation hearing would even happen at all.
Trump announced that Jay Clayton’s nomination to serve as director of national intelligence is being delayed, and he said a Senate confirmation hearing scheduled for Wednesday will not move forward. In the same post, he said Bill Pulte will remain acting DNI for now.
Trump’s decision landed with sudden force because the timeline he disrupted had been accelerated in hopes of shortening Pulte’s tenure. Senate Republicans had moved to push Clayton’s confirmation process forward, a step Trump sharply criticized. In his post. Trump argued that Republicans had reached a bargain with Democrats: he said the intent was to remove Pulte from the acting role in exchange for Democratic support for reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. or FISA.
Trump wrote that Republicans agreed “to remove very fair. and talented. William Pulte. from serving as Acting DNI in return for getting FISA approved. ” adding that Republicans then “moved so fast with the hearings of the Great Jay Clayton” that Pulte would be gone before Democrats could vote on FISA.
That dispute now sits at the center of Trump’s explanation for why Clayton’s hearing won’t proceed. Trump also pointed to another reason for the delay: he said he does not want Clayton to leave his current job as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York until his successor, Jamie McDonald, is confirmed.
Clayton was positioned to step in after a scheduled handoff—Pulte was set to take over as acting DNI on Friday. Trump’s post does not say when Clayton’s confirmation hearing will be rescheduled.
It is unclear whether Trump discussed the cancellation with Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., before announcing it. What is clear from the legislative atmosphere around the nomination is that lawmakers in both parties have already criticized Trump’s choice to install Pulte as acting DNI.
Democrats, in particular, have attacked the move on multiple grounds, pointing to Pulte’s lack of intelligence experience. They also accused Pulte of using his role as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency to target Trump’s perceived adversaries. The criticism did not stop Trump’s administration from moving forward with the plan to place Pulte in the acting role.
For Democrats, FISA was the other pressure point. The post says Democrats refused to support an extension of FISA while Pulte was slated to lead the intelligence community. The political math inside Congress became tangled in those conditions. with lawmakers now locked into competing leverage—whether the intelligence community’s leadership schedule can be used as a bargaining chip.
Trump’s position on FISA has also hardened. He said he will not support a FISA extension unless Congress passes the SAVE America Act, a Republican-backed bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
Outside the intelligence fight, Trump’s post also made clear he wants Clayton to stay put in Manhattan while the next U.S. attorney transition is finalized.
McDonald was nominated to the position Saturday. Trump’s stated reason for delaying Clayton’s confirmation is that Clayton should not leave the U.S. attorney role until McDonald is confirmed by the Senate.
That puts the Senate’s next steps in a holding pattern: a Wednesday hearing canceled. no new date offered. and an acting DNI role expected to continue longer than originally planned. For lawmakers already frustrated by how quickly Republicans had tried to move Clayton’s confirmation. the delay turns a planned procedural milestone into another open-ended fight—this time over timing. leverage. and who gets to control the schedule.
Trump Jay Clayton acting DNI Bill Pulte Senate Intelligence Committee Tom Cotton FISA Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act SAVE America Act Jamie McDonald U.S. attorney Southern District of New York confirmation hearing