Senate Confirms Ratcliffe as New CIA Director

A bipartisan majority in the Senate voted 74–25 on Jan. 23 to confirm the former intelligence director as the next head of the CIA.

Vice President JD Vance swears in newly confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe while his wife, Michele Ratcliffe, looks on during a ceremony in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House on Jan. 23, 2025. Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

The Senate has approved John Ratcliffe to serve as the next director of the CIA.

A bipartisan majority in the Senate voted 74–25 on Jan. 23 to confirm the former intelligence director as the next head of the CIA, following a brief delay in the confirmation process.

Ratcliffe is the second of President Donald Trump’s appointees to be confirmed by the Senate, following Marco Rubio’s unanimous confirmation as secretary of state on Jan. 20. Ratcliffe was sworn in shortly after the vote.

Although Ratcliffe’s appointment was swiftly approved by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a 14–3 vote, a small group of Senate Democrats sought to torpedo the nomination in the eleventh hour, forcing the vote open to a lengthier debate process.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Vice Chair Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) previously urged the Senate to take up Ratcliffe’s nomination with haste following the committee’s approval.

In a joint statement shared with The Epoch Times, the pair said that the global geopolitical situation was “far too dangerous” to delay Ratcliffe’s nomination.

Speaking on the Senate floor on Jan. 21, however, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said that he “strongly opposed the nomination.” He said he believed Ratcliffe was overly inclined to partisanship and would prioritize “doing what would please Donald Trump” over being truthful and enforcing the law.

Cotton rebuffed Warner on the floor, accusing the small group of Democrats of conspiring to delay the confirmation of the president’s appointees in order to undermine Trump’s ability to realize his policy platform.

Despite the hiccup, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said that Ratcliffe had wide bipartisan support and a sound track record on intelligence matters.

“Mr. Ratcliffe, like Secretary Rubio, earned bipartisan support after his confirmation hearing last week,” Thune said on Jan. 21.

“He will bring valuable knowledge and experience to his new post, including from his time on the House intelligence committee and as director of national intelligence under Trump’s first administration.”

In addition to serving as director of national intelligence during the first Trump administration, Ratcliffe has also served as a U.S. representative for Texas. While in Congress, he was a member of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Judiciary Committee.

Ratcliffe comes to the post at a time of immense geopolitical volatility and will face mounting crises and competing interests for his attention.

Among those issues is the Chinese Communist Party’s massive, decades-long hacking campaign against the United States, which has touched nearly every domain of U.S. society.

Likewise, Ratcliffe will have to contend with growing economic, political, and military cooperation among the Chinese regime, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, as well as concerns about drone sightings over sensitive U.S. sites, fragile cease-fires between Israel and its enemies in the Middle East, and the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war.

To that end, Ratcliffe said during his confirmation hearing earlier in the month that he would prioritize intelligence collection and the development of an offensive cyberstrategy against U.S. adversaries.

He added that geopolitical volatility was being magnified by the increasingly all-or-nothing competition for next-generation technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

“These threats converge at a time of rapid technological change,” Ratcliffe said. “Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing will define the future of national security, geopolitical power, and human civilization.”