The U.S. should threaten to sink Iranian ships if the Houthis keep attacking American troops in the Red Sea, a Armed Services GOP senator recommended Friday.

In a letter to President Joe Biden, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) argued the Iran-backed, U.S.-designated terrorist group in Yemen has not been deterred from targeting commercial ships, despite numerous U.S. attacks to destroy their capabilities. The only way to stop the Houthis’ assaults, Sullivan wrote: Let Iran know it would face direct consequences for continued violence.

“Tell Iran that the next Houthi missile or drone launched at an American ship will result in the sinking of Iran’s spy ships that target our Navy,” the senator wrote in the letter. “If we ever expect Tehran to call off its terrorist proxies and make deterrence more than a temporary respite, Iran must be made to pay a price.”

Sullivan’s demand comes after a SASC hearing last week where Gen. Erik Kurilla, chief of U.S. Central Command, said Iran was not deterred from assisting Houthi strikes on U.S. military and civilian targets.

“They are not paying the cost,” he said. “There has to be cost in position on Iran.”

Last week, the Houthis struck a commercial vessel, killing three of its crew members. In a separate attack two days later, American forces also shot down 28 drones and missiles. No U.S. or allied vessels were damaged.

Sullivan suggested Kurilla could order attacks to sink Iranian vessels after such an event, since Iran is arming and financing the Houthis. The general said that wasn’t accurate and that Biden would have to issue an order for the operation.

Sullivan asked the CENTCOM commander if he had recommended sinking Iranian ships to Biden. “I provide options ranging everything from cyber to kinetic,” Kurilla answered, “and I also identify the risk of escalation and all of those options.”

Speaker Mike Johnson is planning to hold a vote next month on a stand-alone bill to reauthorize a controversial spy power, he told POLITICO in an interview Thursday.

It appears to be the first time Johnson has specified a timeline for bringing back up a floor vote on a bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He’s already had to punt on the legislation two times, given deep divisions within his own ranks, and Republicans acknowledge persistent splits over the issue haven’t faded.

Congress has until April 19 to extend or make changes to the foreign surveillance power, which targets non-citizens outside of the United States but has come under fire because of its ability to sweep in American information.

“The current plan is to run FISA as a standalone the week after Easter,” Johnson said during an interview at the GOP retreat at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. That timing would put a vote the week of April 8, when the House is slated to return from a two-week recess.

That commitment runs contrary to some fears that Johnson might attach a short-term extension of Section 702 to a government funding bill that leaders hope to clear next week. That possibility has caused significant heartburn for privacy hawks, who are hoping to make changes to the current law before reauthorizing.

During the interview, the speaker said his current plan is to stick with legislation that was negotiated by leadership and members of the Judiciary and Intelligence committees.

Under that deal, Republicans on the two committees were expected to get amendment votes on their biggest priorities that weren’t included in the bill. But Johnson pulled the bill after Republicans on the Intelligence Committee threatened to block it from getting to the floor, citing two amendments proposed by privacy hawks. Those sticking points haven’t been resolved.

“The current deliberation is how to handle the two major amendments that are still pending,” Johnson said, referring to the two amendments.

One of those proposals would require a warrant, with some built-in exceptions, before searching the data for any information related to Americans — a higher standard that security advocates argue would neuter the authority. The second amendment would prevent data brokers from selling consumer information to law enforcement.

Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell isn’t ruling out an eventual vote on the House-passed TikTok bill that could eventually ban it from app stores. But she’s still considering possible changes to the text.

Cantwell (D-Wash.) said she hopes to move legislation “soon,” though she indicated she would prefer “more robust” legislation, like her own alternative proposal she unsuccessfully tried to add to a defense bill last year. That legislation would have empowered the Commerce Department to ban foreign-owned apps like TikTok. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has publicly backed that proposal.

“We were trying something a little more robust and long term, but we’ll consider this and hopefully we’ll figure out how to get the American people something that minimizes data collection and protects them,” she told reporters.

“We want something that’s constitutional that could do the job,” Cantwell said. “We haven’t heard from everybody.”

Asked about some of her former aides who are now lobbying on behalf of TikTok, Cantwell laughed: “I didn’t even know that.”

Cantwell indicated she hasn’t yet spoken to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer following the overwhelming bipartisan House vote on the TikTok bill, which would force the Beijing-based ByteDance to either sell it or face a ban from app stores. She also wanted to speak with the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee — Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — both of whom have said they support the House bill.

The Senate confirmed Dennis Hankins to become ambassador to Haiti, as the Caribbean nation faces a crisis of gang violence and a vacuum of elected leadership.

The Senate voted 89-1 to confirm Hankins. John Kennedy (R-La.) was the only vote against.

A 38-year U.S. foreign service veteran, Hankins has worked in Sudan and Congo and served as ambassador in Mali and Guinea. He is currently a foreign policy adviser in the National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon.

Haiti is viewed as one of the toughest diplomatic postings. Earlier this week, the U.S. dispatched an elite unit of Marines to help secure the U.S. Embassy in Haiti as the country faces a turbulent political transition and widespread violence at the hands of powerful gangs. Nonessential embassy staff were airlifted out of Haiti last weekend.

Biden nominated Hankins back in May 2023 after the embassy had already been without a Senate-confirmed leader for 19 months.

The last ambassador, Michele Sison, ended her tour of duty in October 2021 after three years. And the former Special Envoy to Haiti Daniel Foote resigned in 2021 after disagreement with what he called the Biden administration’s “inhumane” deportation policy on Haiti.

This is the second time in recent months that the Senate has moved to confirm an ambassador as a nation erupted in crisis. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew was confirmed with a tight margin on Oct. 31, weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, West Virginia — The head of the House GOP campaign arm has some advice for Republicans who aren’t sure how to handle Donald Trump in battleground districts: “embrace him.”

Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) isn’t personally pressuring anyone to do so, saying in an interview with POLITICO that candidates need to decide how to handle their own individual races. But generally, he said boosting the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee is a winning strategy across districts.

“I was one of the first people that endorsed Trump this cycle, and I’m proud to run with him. I think he’s a net positive everywhere for us. So if somebody asked, I tell them, ‘embrace him, he’s our nominee.’ I mean, he’s wildly popular everywhere right now. He’s winning every battleground state,” Hudson said.

Top GOP leaders, including the House Republican Congressional Committee chair, have been bullish about their chances of retaking the majority at the annual GOP policy conference this week at Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia. They’ve cited President Joe Biden’s low polling numbers in battleground states and his struggles to address the influx of migrants at the border.

Hudson declined to say how many seats he predicts Republicans will win, calling such a question a “gotcha” if they fall short — likely remembering the embarrassment former Speaker Kevin McCarthy suffered after estimating the House GOP would win more than 60 seats in 2022, a “red wave” forecast that never materialized.

Both Hudson and Speaker Mike Johnson have so far avoided making any such grand claims, apart from projecting they will retain control of the chamber. Instead, Hudson merely said he thought they’d be fighting Democrats for “somewhere between 25 and 30 seats.” Johnson has said he believes as many as 37 races are in play this cycle.

To help win those seats, Hudson said the party needs to handle the abortion issue differently. In presentations to members and candidates, Hudson has recommended they clearly state their position on the matter, arguing that it was a “mistake” for the party to stay silent on it last cycle and allow Democrats to define their abortion stances.

“Last cycle, Democrats spent over $500 million telling voters what their voting position was. And Republicans kept quiet on it, and looking back on that — that was a big mistake,” Hudson said.

After doing some polling and hosting focus groups in battleground districts, he said Republican leaders concluded: “We don’t have a policy problem, we have a branding problem.”

“We have a wide variety of positions on this that range from states rights to some reasonable limits on abortion. So, we’re kind of across the spectrum, just like the American people are,” Hudson said.

House Republican leaders spent a reported $40,000 in January to replace the official pin given to all members to show they had been sworn into the 118th Congress — a midterm expense driven by a confluence of factors, including that members on both sides of the aisle didn’t like the color.

Behind the decision to throw out the pin issued to 435 lawmakers: politics. Republicans believed that the outgoing Democratic majority of the 117th Congress picked the bright green color in honor of the Green New Deal, a progressive policy conservatives revile.

“I heard some guys and gals grumbling that it’s an environmental tribute or something like that — which, hey, I like the color green, I have a lot of John Deere equipment in that color,” said Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), a rice farmer who serves on the committees on Agriculture and Natural Resources.

“But those of us in resource-based districts get really tired of how big environment groups are already kicking our heads in over how bad we are. … I think there’s some fatigue about the environment being used as a weapon.”

Those suspicions were echoed by more than a half-dozen other lawmakers, who were granted anonymity to share details of private conversations. It turns out the suspicions were right.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who was chair of the House Administration Committee in the previous Congress, helped choose the pin design for the current Congress. The committee has jurisdiction over developing and issuing the pins.

She told E&E News she had, in fact, picked green for its environmental connotations.

“The first time I was chair of the committee, I asked kind of too late and was told, ‘It’s already been done, the sergeant-at-arms did everything,’” said Lofgren, referring to the House’s chief law enforcement officer. “So the next time I was chair, I decided I was going to ask in advance to be involved.”

She said the pins typically “all look kind of boring, and the other thing is, they’re either red or blue, and it’s like, OK, we divide up the country as red and blue — why don’t we do something that is not red and blue, but is neutral, right? And I thought, something that is a symbol for a clean environment. So I thought, green.”

Lofgren is now the ranking member on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and a co-sponsor of a nonbinding resolution expressing federal support to institute a Green New Deal.

Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), the ranking member on the House Interior-EPA Appropriations Subcommittee, upon learning of Lofgren’s motivations, said, “That makes me like it even more.”

Some ditched pins altogether

Pingree still wears the green pin, as does Lofgren and many other lawmakers.

While House members are required to wear official pins to move freely about the Capitol, gain access into restricted areas, and walk onto the House floor to vote and participate in legislative business, they don’t technically have to wear the pins issued at the start of the current Congress.

The pin they choose just have to have been issued by Capitol law enforcement, and long-serving lawmakers have an assortment to choose from in their personal collections.

According to current House Administration Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), the problem with the green pin was that members weren’t wearing it — or any pin.

“I know a lot of members weren’t wearing them, and that puts a challenge on the police force,” Steil said in an interview, adding it was “a decision by the sergeant-at-arms” to change the color to something more members would want to display, for whatever reason — for politics or personal preference or otherwise.

Unlike Lofgren, Steil intimated he wasn’t closely involved in the redesign process but that he thought the new, dark blue pins “look great.”

This explanation — that it was the sergeant-at-arms’ decision to acquire new pins — at least partially contradicts previous assumptions that the House GOP majority had followed a year of historic congressional dysfunction by spending a massive amount of money on accessories based on a style preference.

“Every Congressional session we get a new pin — it’s our ID on the floor for the next 2 years. Today we’re getting a new pin, half way through the term because the @HouseGOP didn’t like the color,” Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) tweeted at the time. “Big congrats to them on their first tangible accomplishment of the 118th.”

A representative from the House sergeant-at-arms did not return multiple requests for comment for this story, or for confirmation that the pin switch cost $40,000, as previously reported by Semafor and The New York Times.

‘I’m proud of my green one’

Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, now the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, could not confirm Steil’s explanation because he said Democrats were not consulted about the decision.

Still, Morelle said, he did frequently have to tell colleagues last year not to wear “counterfeit pins” — badges individual members had had made by a third party they liked better for whatever reason.

“There were a number of members who had self-styled pins that they were wearing that hadn’t been issued by the House,” he said. “I encouraged a number of them not to wear pins that were not issued by the sergeant-at-arms, for security reasons.” Morelle did not specify whether these were Democratic or Republican colleagues, or both.

Pingree also said she heard rumors of “somebody who manufactured a bunch of pins on their own and were handing them out to people — one of my colleagues … someone who went somewhere and got their own pins because they didn’t like the green.”

Yet even with the distribution of new pins, complaints have persisted. Some lawmakers have questioned the quality control on the pins, saying they are flimsily made. Others are still incensed about the decision to issue replacements on principle.

Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), when encountered recently in a Capitol Hill hallway, was visibly angry and shaking his lapel on which his green pin remained fastened. He said he “earned” his pin with each election to the House, and has, for every Congress, named his pin for the opponent he defeated.

In the 118th Congress, that name was “Corey” for Republican challenger Corey Gustafson.

“I feel very strongly we should stick by our security traditions,” he said. “I’m proud of my green one.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling for new elections in Israel, describing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as an “obstacle to peace” amid his country’s ongoing war in Gaza.

Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in U.S. history, urged Israel to “do better,” citing the estimated tens of thousands of Palestinian civilian casualties caused by the Netanyahu government’s military offensive aimed at neutralizing the terrorist group Hamas.

The New Yorker said Israel “must make some significant course corrections” as the conflict nears the half-year mark, according to excerpts of remarks his office released ahead of his Thursday floor speech on the matter.

“The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7,” Schumer said in floor remarks. “The world has changed — radically — since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.”