{"id":20188,"date":"2026-03-18T12:17:04","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T12:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-tulsi-gabbard-takes-the-hot-seat\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T12:17:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T12:17:04","slug":"capitol-agenda-tulsi-gabbard-takes-the-hot-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-tulsi-gabbard-takes-the-hot-seat\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol agenda: Tulsi Gabbard takes the hot seat"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Tulsi Gabbard heads into Senate Intelligence on Wednesday facing one of the most fraught moments of her tenure as director of national intelligence.<\/p>\n

The longtime anti-interventionist is set to be the main character at Wednesday morning\u2019s worldwide threats hearing when she appears with other administration officials, after former top aide Joe Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center over the Iran war.<\/p>\n

Kent\u2019s resignation has raised the question of how much longer Gabbard will serve in the administration. She\u2019s largely been silent since the U.S. and Israel began striking Iran in late February, and she\u2019s been kept out of military planning on Iran since the U.S. struck nuclear sites in the country last summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth Kent and Gabbard have had less and less influence,\u201d one House Republican granted anonymity to speak openly said<\/a>. \u201cThey\u2019ve been sidelined.\u201d Gabbard will appear before House Intelligence Thursday.<\/p>\n

Gabbard\u2019s testimony last March that downplayed Iran\u2019s nuclear weapons program \u2014 prompting a \u201cshe\u2019s wrong\u201d<\/a> from President Donald Trump \u2014 is poised to be revisited by senators at Wednesday morning\u2019s hearing, as are her anti-war positions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president made the right move based upon the information that we\u2019ve all seen in classified sessions,\u201d said South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, an intel committee Republican. He signaled that Gabbard could be asked about her previous assessment at the hearing.<\/p>\n

Around the same time in Dirksen this morning, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) will be in the hot seat as he testifies on his nomination to replace Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary.<\/p>\n

Senate Homeland Security is expected to quickly approve the nomination Thursday, though it\u2019s TBD to what extent Mullin will get bipartisan support beyond Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.). <\/p>\n

\u201cWe actually have a pretty good working relationship, and have worked on projects together, but we do have a lot of questions,\u201d said Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, a committee Democrat who has yet to say how he\u2019ll vote. \u201cLargely it\u2019s like, who really is in charge of DHS? \u2026 Is it going to be Stephen Miller\u2019s in charge?\u201d<\/p>\n

What else we\u2019re watching:\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2014 House gets a FISA briefing: <\/b>Trump officials will host a classified briefing for House members at 3:30 p.m. on the administration\u2019s push for a clean reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, due to expire April 20, as conservatives threaten to tank the effort.<\/p>\n

Speaker Mike Johnson said he believes his members who are currently opposed to a clean, 18-month extension will ultimately vote for the party-line rule. But two House Republicans are already publicly vowing to oppose the procedural rule to tee up a clean FISA reauthorization, which leaders are aiming to put on the floor next week.<\/p>\n

\u2014 DOJ officials brief House Oversight: <\/b>Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche will be on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to brief House Oversight Committee members on the Justice Department\u2019s ongoing Jeffrey Epstein investigation.<\/p>\n

It comes the day after the chair, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), subpoenaed Bondi to testify under oath as part of the committee\u2019s own Epstein probe. But a GOP spokesperson for the committee said that Wednesday\u2019s briefing, which was scheduled at DOJ\u2019s request, won\u2019t be a substitute for Bondi\u2019s future testimony.<\/p>\n

John Sakellariadis, Meredith Lee Hill, Mia McCarthy and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tulsi Gabbard heads into Senate Intelligence on Wednesday facing one of the most fraught moments of her tenure as director of national intelligence. The longtime anti-interventionist is set to be the main character at Wednesday morning\u2019s worldwide threats hearing when she appears with other administration officials, after former top aide Joe Kent resigned as director […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}