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tom cotton
Trump Doubles Down on Tying Warrantless Spying Renewal to GOP Voter Suppression Bill
This is now the second time Trump has derailed renewal of FISA’s Section 702, which US intelligence agencies have widely abused to spy on Americans without a warrant.
Jun 17, 2026
President Donald Trump threw a wrench into bipartisan efforts to renew the federal government's widely abused warrantless spying powers on Wednesday by demanding it be paired with the passage of Republicans' voter suppression legislation.
In a Truth Social post, Trump announced that he would not approve the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) "without THE SAVE AMERICA ACT going along with it," a reference to Republican-backed legislation that would create nationwide voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements.
Passing the SAVE America Act, which critics have warned could be used to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, would require scrapping the filibuster in the US Senate, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has said that there are not enough votes in his caucus to make this happen.
This is now the second time Trump has derailed renewal of FISA's Section 702, which allows for warrantless spying on noncitizens located outside the US. Intelligence agencies have routinely used the authority, which lapsed over the weekend, to collect Americans’ data without a warrant.
Earlier this month, Trump appointed Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte to be his acting director of national intelligence (DNI). Many critics expressed horror at Pulte's appointment, given that he has no experience working in intelligence and has been instrumental in pushing the US Department of Justice to prosecute the president's political enemies.
This led many Senate Democrats, including Senate Intelligence Committee vice-chairperson Mark Warner (D-Va.), to withdraw their support for a FISA extension until the president nominated a more acceptable permanent replacement for outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard.
FISA renewal appeared to be back on track last week after Trump nominated Jay Clayton, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to be DNI.
However, in the same Truth Social post where Trump announced his intent to veto a FISA extension without the SAVE America Act, the president said that he was "canceling" Clayton's scheduled Wednesday Senate hearing.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) announced shortly after Trump's post that the hearing for Clayton would still take place unless the president formally pulled the nominee.
"Jay Clayton is a pending nominee before the Intelligence Committee," Cotton wrote in a social media post. "We will proceed with his hearing as scheduled unless the president directs him not to appear or withdraws his nomination."
According to The New York Times, the latest chaos and drama caused by Trump "all but guarantee that Mr. Pulte... would take the job at the end of this week as the acting director of national intelligence."
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‘Beyond the Pale’: General Says US Military Will Create a ‘Camp’ at Gitmo to ‘Deal With’ Cubans Fleeing Trump Blockade
One foreign policy expert noted that fears of a "mass exodus" of refugees come "as the US starves Cuba of energy and food."
Mar 20, 2026
As the Trump administration sows chaos with a crushing fuel blockade of Cuba, a general told Congress that the military will "set up a camp" at Guantánamo Bay to detain those who try to flee the humanitarian crisis inflicted by the United States.
The phrase "humanitarian crisis" was used by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) to describe the situation in Cuba during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday, as he questioned US Marine Corps Gen. Francis Donovan, the commander of the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM).
Donovan, a 37-year Marine veteran, took command of SOUTHCOM in February after being tapped by President Donald Trump. His predecessor, Adm. Alvin Holsey, abruptly resigned in December reportedly after he'd raised concerns about the Trump administration's bombings of alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean, which have been widely described as illegal under international law.
On Thursday, Cotton asked Donovan, "Are we prepared for any kind of humanitarian crisis in Cuba—the possible flow of refugees, other civil disorder that may threaten our interests, especially if the decrepit, corrupt Castro regime finally falls or flees?"
"Senator, yes we are," Donovan responded. "SOUTHCOM... We have an [executive] order to be prepared to support [the Department of Homeland Security] (DHS) in a mass migration event. They would take the lead, we would follow."
Donovan said this would include using the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, "where we would set up a camp to deal with those migrants or any overflow from any situation in Cuba itself."
Trump signed an executive order during his first month in office last year directing DHS and the Pentagon to “expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay to full capacity," which the administration said meant scaling the facility up to more than 30,000 beds.
The base, which houses a prison infamous for the extrajudicial torture of detainees during the global War on Terror, was designated under Trump's order to hold "high‑priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”
But Donovan suggested it may now be used to hold Cubans fleeing chaos and deprivation following Trump's own acts of economic warfare.
Cotton's question followed a warning that same day from Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of a "possible mass exodus out of Cuba," which experienced an island-wide electricity blackout earlier this week following the Trump administration's blockade of fuel entering the island, which a group of UN rapporteurs said in January was “a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order.”
DeSantis, whose state is home to about 1.6 million Cuban-Americans, said, "[W]e don’t want to see a massive armada of people showing up on the shores of the Florida Keys."
He said he believed the Trump administration "would rather see people in Florida go help… hopefully get a new government going" in Cuba, possibly referring to the long-held hope of some right-wing Cuban exiles to take over the island.
Following more than 60 years of an embargo that has strangled Cuba's economic development, the Trump administration tightened the noose even more in January, signing an executive order that would slap harsh tariffs on any country that provides oil to Cuba.
As a result of the blockade, explained Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, "people don’t have reliable access to drinking water, hospitals can’t operate safely, basic goods are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, and garbage is piling up in the streets.”
Trump first described his blockade as part of an effort to carry out regime change against Cuba's Communist Party leadership, but this week, he made the imperialist declaration that he may seek to outright "take" the island and that he could "do anything I want" with the "weakened nation."
Erik Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, emphasized that the possible "mass migration event" described by Donovan was only coming "as the US starves Cuba of energy and food."
"Trump and [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio are to blame for any refugee crisis from Cuba, as the US intentionally harms civilians with an oil blockade," said Just Foreign Policy in a social media post responding to Republican warnings of Cuban mass migration. "US sanctions and meddling in Latin America have always been a leading cause of migrant flows."
Immigration journalist Arturo Dominguez explained that "What [Donovan] essentially said was, 'We're ready to accommodate the flow of refugees by putting them in camps.'" He added that "the way these military goons jump right in to 'accommodate' atrocity is beyond the pale."
Trump's blockade of Cuba is unpopular with the American public, according to a YouGov poll released earlier this week. Just 28% of adult US citizens said they approved of the US blocking oil shipments to the country, while 46% said they opposed it. The same survey found that just 13% want the US to use military force to attack Cuba, while 61% would oppose it.
Just Foreign Policy said, "The American people do not want their government to starve Cubans and cause a 'mass migration event.'"
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Push Back Against Sen. Cotton’s McCarthyite Lies About CODEPINK: Women for Peace
Sen. Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a U.S. congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends, and family.
Mar 27, 2025
On Tuesday, in the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats with the five heads of intelligence agencies of the U.S. government, Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton accused on national TV a group I have worked with for over 20 years, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, of being funded by the Communist Party of China.
During the hearing CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry stood up following the presentation of the Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard’s lengthy statement about global threats to U.S. national security and yelled, “Stop Funding Israel,” since neither Intelligence Committee Chair Cotton nor Vice Chair Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) had mentioned Israel in their opening statement, nor had Gabbard mentioned the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in her statement either.
As Capitol police were taking Barry out of the hearing room, in the horrific style of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, Cotton maliciously said that Barry was a “CODEPINK lunatic that was funded by the Communist Party of China.” Cotton then said if anyone had something to say to do so.
CODEPINK members have been challenging in the U.S. Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Sen. Cotton was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2014.
Refusing to buckle or be intimidated by Cotton’s lies about the funding of CODEPINK, I stood up and yelled, “I’m a retired Army colonel and former diplomat. I work with CODEPINK, and it is not funded by Communist China.” I too was hauled out of the hearing room by Capitol police and arrested.
After I was taken out of the hearing room, Cotton libelously continued his McCarthyite lie: “The fact that Communist China funds CODEPINK, which interrupts a hearing about Israel, illustrates Director Gabbard’s point that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are working together in greater concert than they ever had before.”
Sen. Cotton does not appreciate the responsibility he has in his one-month-old elevation to the chair of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee.
Sen. Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a U.S. congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends, and family. In today’s polarized political environment, we know that the words of senior leaders can rile supporters into frenzies as we saw on January 6, 2021, with President Donald Trump’s loyal supporters injuring many Capitol police and destroying parts of the nation’s Capitol building in their attempt to stop the presidential election proceedings.
CODEPINK members have been challenging in the U.S. Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Sen. Cotton was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2014. We have been in the U.S. Senate offices and halls twice as long as he has. We have nonviolently protested the war policies of former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump, Joe Biden, and now Trump again.
After getting out of the Capitol Hill police station, a CODEPINK delegation went to Sen. Cotton’s office in the Russell Senate Office building and made a complaint to his office staff.
We are also submitting a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee over the untrue and libelous statements Sen. Cotton made in the hearing.
The abduction and deportation of international students who joined protests against U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the scathing treatment of visitors who have wanted to enter our country, and now the McCarthyite intimidating tactics used by Sen. Cotton in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing of telling lies about individuals and organizations that challenge the policies of the U.S. government, particularly its complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza, must be called out and pushed back against.
And we must push back against U.S. senators who actually receive funding from front groups for other countries. Sen. Cotton has received $1,197,989 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to advocate for the genocidal policies of the State of Israel.
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