Senate Confirms Jay Clayton as Intelligence Director in Party-Line Vote, Advances Graham Russia Sanctions Bill
The Senate confirmed Walter "Jay" Clayton as director of national intelligence on a 51-47 party-line vote Tuesday, then voted 86-12 to advance a long-stalled Russia sanctions package renamed for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. The House remained out of session.
The Senate's main action Tuesday was installing a new leader atop the U.S. intelligence community. The Senate approved President Donald Trump's choice to oversee the country's spy agencies, with the Republican majority voting Tuesday to install top federal prosecutor Jay Clayton as the next director of national intelligence. The final tally was 51-47, and the vote was more partisan than expected when Trump named Clayton in June, according to The Washington Post. Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, cleared a procedural hurdle Monday night on a 51-43 vote before Tuesday's confirmation.
The director of national intelligence oversees the 18 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community. Congress created the national intelligence director's position in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with the aim of ensuring that information was shared across the country's spy agencies. But Trump and some Republican lawmakers have called for scaling back the office, which they say has become a bloated bureaucracy. Clayton inherits a significantly downsized agency: acting DNI Bill Pulte, who also leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, oversaw repeated rounds of staff cuts during his brief tenure.
Clayton's confirmation ends an unusual standoff. The vote means the Senate booted acting official Bill Pulte from the role. Trump announced Clayton's nomination in June as senators of both parties fumed over Pulte being installed at the agency. Also the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte used his role there to refer four different Trump foes for criminal prosecution on allegations of mortgage fraud. Democrats had objected to Pulte serving as acting director following the resignation of former DNI Tulsi Gabbard. Republicans have said they hope Democrats will now drop a blockade on reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a key surveillance authority, once Clayton is sworn in. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the Intelligence Committee's vice chairman, voted no but said he hopes Clayton will resist political pressure from the White House.
The chamber also advanced a major foreign-policy measure. After the Clayton vote, senators capped off a day of tributes to their late colleague Lindsey Graham by advancing a sanctions bill he spent his final week of life negotiating. The measure, recently renamed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, is designed to give the Trump administration more tools to pressure Russia into ending its four-year war against Ukraine. The cloture vote on the motion to proceed to H.R.5334, the legislative vehicle, passed 86-12. The bipartisan bill is designed to deprive Vladimir Putin of the revenue financing Russia's war against Ukraine by imposing mandatory sanctions on Russia's political leadership, financial institutions, energy sector, and sanctions evasion networks, while using targeted tariffs to pressure the world's largest purchasers of Russian energy. Graham, a South Carolina Republican and chief architect of the legislation with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., died earlier in July.
Tuesday was heavy with memorial events. A ceremony commemorating the life and legacy of the late Senator Lindsey O. Graham was held in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol , followed by a funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Washington to attend, according to the AP.
The House of Representatives was not in session and conducted no roll-call votes. Per reporting from Tech Times, the House is not scheduled to return until Aug. 31, meaning the earliest the Russia sanctions bill could reach the president's desk is September even if the Senate passes it in the coming days.
Highlights: - Senate confirmed Clayton as DNI, 51-47, with - a party-line vote of 51-47, with no Democrats joining Republicans - , replacing acting director Bill Pulte. - Senate voted 86-12 to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R.5334, the vehicle for the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia (and Iran) Act of 2026. - Congress paused for tributes to Graham, who died in July; a Capitol Rotunda ceremony and National Cathedral funeral were held Tuesday.