Politics

The president just scrambled the last week of negotiations in Congress to abet his dead voter ID bill.

Donald Trump cancelled the Senate confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton via a Truth Social post Wednesday, just hours before it was set to take place. Trump had tapped Clayton earlier this month to run the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in place of acting Director Bill Pulte. Democrats had argued that even temporarily appointing Pulte, a housing regulator, was illegal, since he had no national security experience to bring to the job. (For the record, neither does Clayton.)

As a result, Democrats completely stalled negotiations over FISA Section 702, a statute that allows federal agencies such as the NSA and the CIA to surveil foreigners on U.S. soil without warrants. But even without Pulte’s name in the mix, negotiations had stalled over the FISA section as both chambers failed to pass an extension.

And Trump has undoubtedly only made matters worse by involving himself in the process. In a lengthy rant Wednesday, Trump baselessly lamented that Republicans had advanced Clayton’s nomination without any concrete assurances from Democrats. He then hitched the FISA section’s renewal onto his Save America Act, which Republicans have warned him dozens of times has no chance of passing the Senate. That legislation hinges on Trump’s conspiracy theory that noncitizens are voting (against him) in U.S. elections.