In early June, Sen. Mark Warner was preparing to argue that despite deep distrust of the Trump administration, his fellow Senate Democrats should take a risk and help renew a controversial surveillance law that was soon due to expire.
Then, hours before a meeting with his colleagues, the senator from Virginia learned that President Donald Trump had tapped Bill Pulte, a mortgage agency official and staunch loyalist, as his acting intelligence czar.
“I said: ‘Holy crap, I just didn’t think Donald Trump could still surprise me,’” said Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, in an interview.
Pulte’s appointment, which tanked the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is a glimpse into the frustrating life for national security Democrats in the second Trump administration.
Center-left lawmakers who built their political brands around support for the U.S. military and intelligence community are increasingly drawing red lines on Trump policies they see as dangerous or incoherent — including the war in Iran, lethal strikes against alleged drug traffickers around Latin America, and personnel moves like tapping Pulte, who has no national security experience, as the acting director of national intelligence.
In some cases, Democrats are voting to curtail the funding and authorities for these agencies — a trend that could have lasting consequences for one of Washington’s last areas of relative bipartisan consensus.
“It is a sign of the times,” said Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.), in an interview. “People who love this country, who have put their life on the line for the country — in uniform, in the intelligence community — are now pushing back on this president abusing it.”
Multiple Democratic lawmakers said that their constituents were urging them to take hard-line stances against the Trump administration, including on national security issues.
“It’s a reflection of where America is,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D., Colorado.), an Army veteran and member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees. “The vast majority of Americans do not want this war in Iran. The vast majority of Americans don’t think that just continuing to throw money at the [Defense Department] is the way to solve our problems.”
In response to a request for comment, the White House listed instances where Section 702 has helped protect U.S. citizens, including by thwarting a “mass casualty terror attack” at a Taylor Swift concert in Austria and stopping North Korean cyberattacks.
More than 60% of the information included in the president’s daily intelligence briefing contained information gathered through the program, the White House said.
“Democrats will oppose anything to attack President Trump,” said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly in a statement, noting the president “will continue to prioritize maintaining ‘peace through strength’ and safeguarding America’s national security as Commander-in-Chief — just as he was elected to do.”
Slotkin, a career CIA officer, is one of the few Democrats in Congress who has professionally relied on the information gathered under Section 702, which allows national security agencies to surveil the texts, emails, and calls from foreigners living abroad and suspected of posing a threat.
But when the Republican-led Senate sought to renew the program in June, she and other Democrats united against it, demanding that Trump first backtrack on appointing Pulte.
Joining a group of GOP civil libertarians who argued the program risked abusing Americans’ privacy rights, Democrats allowed the program to expire over the outcry of other Republicans, who argued the lapse would endanger U.S. citizens during the FIFA World Cup and conflict in Iran.
“The consequences, to be frank, could be fatal,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), the chairperson of the intelligence committee, in a speech last week. “Americans should not have to face that risk because of partisan game-playing.”
Democrats have instead argued that it is the Trump administration that is endangering Americans by launching military operations without the approval of Congress and appointing unqualified people to leading national security roles.
“To me, one of the only things more risky than letting FISA lapse is putting in a man with no experience and who is being sent to weaponize the DNI’s office against the American public,” Slotkin said.
Hours after a last-ditch effort to renew the program failed last Friday, Trump nominated Jay Clayton, a senior Justice Department attorney, as the director of national intelligence. Democrats have signaled they will support Clayton, whose confirmation hearing is Wednesday, potentially opening a path for Congress to reauthorize Section 702.
But the normally broad bipartisan consensus on core national security legislation is increasingly under pressure.
In the past two weeks, an extraordinary number of Democrats on the House and Senate armed services committees opposed their panel’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act, Congress’s must-pass defense policy bill.
Last year, only one Democratic senator voted against the bill in the committee’s markup. This year, nine did.
In the House, that number went from two to 12 in the same period. Half of the Democrats who opposed the bill are veterans.
The opposition came after Republicans voted down Democrat-led amendments that would have constrained the war in Iran and slashed the $1.15 trillion authorized in defense spending, a massive jump from last year’s budget.
“I’ve usually voted for the [National Defense Authorization Act] because I support the troops, but this is just totally out of control,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D., Mass.), a Marine Corps veteran who led multiple failed amendments in the committee’s markup.
Over the weekend, the administration announced a preliminary deal with Iran to halt the fighting and eventually reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for global energy supplies that has been almost entirely closed for months.
Some Democrats offered cautious support for the deal, while criticizing the Trump administration’s decision to launch the war without the approval of Congress in late February. Many have already signaled they will oppose any bid for supplemental funding to cover the costs incurred by the war.
The war, which according to Pentagon estimates has cost about $30 billion, has led to a spike in global energy prices.
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D., Pa.), an Air Force veteran, voted for the NDAA despite reservations that the committee was doing too little to rein in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Still, she argued, Democrats needed to find points of “leverage” to exert oversight of the administration. When the House voted last week on a last-minute bid to extend FISA, Houlahan, who also serves on the intelligence committee, opposed it.
In an interview, Houlahan described her discomfort in blocking what she considers a vital intelligence tool. Ultimately, she decided that she needed to help send a signal to the administration that Pulte’s appointment was unacceptable.
“There’s strong hope that this is going to not be the new norm,” said Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.), who worked in the Pentagon and State Department before being elected to Congress. “I’m somebody that’s still a deep believer that the last place that partisan politics belongs is in national security.”
