US Senate confirms Ratcliffe as director of CIA

The US Senate on Thursday confirmed John Ratcliffe with overwhelming bipartisan support as director of the CIA, filling a key post in President Donald Trump's national security team.

The upper house of the US legislature voted 74-25 to approve Ratcliffe, who served as the director of national intelligence from 2020-2021 during Trump's first term in office.

Ratcliffe said during his confirmation hearing last week that under his leadership, the agency would "produce insightful, objective, all-source analysis, never allowing political or personal biases to cloud our judgment or infect our products."

He also zeroed in on Beijing, saying the CIA needs to "continue and increase in intensity the focus on the threats posed by China and its ruling Chinese Communist Party."

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And he emphasized the importance of having the agency focus on technology as a target, saying that understanding adversaries' capabilities on that front "is more important than ever."

Ratcliffe, a former federal prosecutor, was a US representative for Texas from 2015-2020 -- a period in which he helped defend Trump during the first impeachment proceedings against him.

Trump then appointed Ratcliffe to serve as the director of national intelligence, leading the US intelligence community and serving as the president's main advisor on that topic.