Closing summary
The Senate passed a short-term spending bill to keep the government open till mid-December and avert a shutdown, potentially giving lawmakers space to spend the next few weeks campaigning ahead of the 8 November midterms. Meanwhile, Ginni Thomas, wife of conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas and a promoter of conspiracy theories around the 2020 election, testified before the January 6 committee.
Here’s what else happened today:
Six Republican-governed states are suing the Biden administration over its student debt relief plan.
Some Republicans fear a potentially damaging standoff over the US debt limit if Kevin McCarthy becomes speaker of the House in a GOP-led chamber next year.
President Joe Biden spoke with Florida’s governor and potential 2024 opponent Ron DeSantis as the state reels from Hurricane Ian.
Washington’s rivalry with Iran is long running and well known, but independent security researchers and Reuters today found concerning trends in how the CIA handles informants in the country, Stephanie Kirchgaessner reports:
The CIA used hundreds of websites for covert communications that were severely flawed and could have been identified by even an “amateur sleuth”, according to security researchers.
The flaws reportedly led to the death of more than two dozen US sources in China in 2011 and 2012 and also reportedly led Iran to execute or imprison other CIA assets.
The new research was conducted by security experts at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which started investigating the matter after it received a tip from reporter Joel Schectmann at Reuters.
The group said it was not publishing a full detailed technical report of its findings to avoid putting CIA assets or employees at risk. But its limited findings raise serious doubts about the intelligence agency’s handling of safety measures.
