President Trump has pushed up Bill Pulte's start date as acting Director of National Intelligence and ordered him to begin cutting the office's workforce, setting off a Senate standoff that has put a critical surveillance law in jeopardy.
Trump is done waiting. The president announced this week that Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director he tapped as the country's next acting intelligence chief, will step into the role on June 11, earlier than previously announced, and has directed him to immediately begin shrinking the ODNI workforce, according to The Wall Street Journal. Pulte, who will simultaneously retain his duties overseeing FHFA and his chairmanship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, now inherits an office Trump has been publicly impatient to reshape.
"The DNI's office is unnecessary and/or too big," Trump told the Journal, framing the push as a long-overdue correction for an office he sees as bloated and filled with career officials loyal to the previous two administrations. The goal, Trump has made clear in multiple comments, is to remove Biden-era and Obama-era holdovers and reduce the agency's footprint before a Senate-confirmed permanent director ever walks through the door.
ODNI employed roughly 1,800 people at the start of Trump's second term, according to Fox News. Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had already cut that number by about 25 percent, according to reporting by The Hill. Trump is pressing for Pulte to go further. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas introduced legislation earlier this year that would cap ODNI at 650 employees, a figure that reflects the administration's view that the intelligence bureaucracy has expanded far beyond what national security demands. Which specific offices or positions face the deepest reductions has not yet been made public.
Because Pulte is serving in an acting capacity, he does not require Senate confirmation and can hold the position for up to 210 days. That window gives the White House time to execute the workforce overhaul before nominating a permanent director who would need to survive a confirmation fight. The acting arrangement, in Trump's framing, lets Pulte do the difficult work of downsizing so a permanent successor inherits a leaner operation.
Pulte's appointment has set off a parallel battle on Capitol Hill that now threatens one of the intelligence community's most valuable legal authorities. Senate Democrats, citing Pulte's total lack of intelligence or national security experience and his record at FHFA of targeting perceived political opponents of the White House, moved to block a long-term extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. According to The Hill, every Senate Democrat except Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted against advancing the House measure that would have served as the vehicle for the extension.
Section 702 allows the government to collect electronic communications of foreign targets and is considered a foundational tool for counterterrorism and foreign intelligence operations. Its expiration would create a gap that national security officials in both parties have long warned against. The timing of the standoff, with the deadline looming, has put Republican leaders in a difficult position as they search for a path that separates the surveillance authority from the broader fight over Pulte.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune muddied the waters for the White House when he told reporters that "we don't need a weaponized DNI, we need professionals there," a comment that tracked closely with Democratic criticism. Thune condemned the Democratic blockade of FISA reauthorization as unjustified, but his assessment of Pulte's fitness for the role made clear that Republican support for the appointment is shallow. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said Pulte has "no path in the Senate" for permanent confirmation, according to CNBC. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, a member of the Intelligence Committee, has also raised questions about whether Pulte meets the statutory requirements the role demands.
The White House has not budged. Trump told Speaker Mike Johnson this week that he is standing behind Pulte, according to CNN, treating the intelligence overhaul as a commitment he intends to see through regardless of the pressure from Congress. Thune said this week that the administration is separately weighing candidates for the permanent DNI nomination, a signal that Pulte is understood by all sides to be a transitional figure, according to The Hill.
What Comes Next
The FISA deadline is the immediate pressure point. Republican leaders are working to find enough votes to advance a reauthorization bill, but the standoff over Pulte has made a clean extension harder to secure. If the authority lapses even briefly, intelligence officials have said the operational consequences would be significant.
Inside ODNI, managers have already told staff to expect extensive cuts in the months ahead, according to U.S. News and World Report. The workforce that remains after Gabbard's earlier reductions will be watching closely as Pulte establishes his priorities and begins the review Trump has ordered. The scope of those cuts, and how aggressively Pulte moves in his first weeks, will define whether this restructuring looks like a deliberate reorganization or a rapid purge.
For now, Pulte steps into the most sensitive intelligence role in the federal government tomorrow, armed with a presidential mandate to cut, a skeptical Senate on both sides of the aisle, and a surveillance reauthorization fight that shows no signs of quick resolution.
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