Bill Pulte wasted no time. On just his second full day as acting Director of National Intelligence, the former housing agency chief began firing employees at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, with the National Counterterrorism Center expected to absorb the heaviest losses, ABC News reported on June 22.
The exact number of jobs affected remains unclear. But Pulte had promised to cut hundreds of positions at ODNI upon taking over, and President Trump made no secret of the marching orders. In a social media post earlier this month, Trump directed Pulte to "execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office."
The speed of the move, firings rolling out before Pulte had spent a full work week at the agency, signals that the White House views the intelligence community's bloated headcount as a problem that has festered long enough. Whether the cuts strengthen or weaken national security will depend on who gets shown the door and who stays. But the political class in Washington is already choosing sides.
The president has been explicit about what he wants from Pulte's temporary tenure. In a Wall Street Journal interview earlier this month, Trump said he wanted Pulte to "start the process" of removing intelligence personnel, describing the acting role as "less shackled" than a Senate-confirmed position. Fox News reported that Trump framed Pulte's outsider status as an asset, telling the Journal he could "do a lot of the hard work" before a permanent DNI is confirmed.
"I'd like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn't be there."
That was Trump's assessment of the intelligence community's workforce in the same interview. He also told reporters the size of ODNI has been "way too high for way too long" and said he wouldn't mind if cuts were made.
Pulte took over ODNI last Friday after Tulsi Gabbard stepped down as DNI following her husband's rare bone cancer diagnosis. The transition was anything but smooth, Gabbard's departure triggered a succession scramble and the lapse of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the authority that allows the federal government to collect communications of foreigners abroad without a warrant.
That lapse alone should concern anyone who takes counterterrorism seriously. Whether the authority has been reinstated remains unclear from available reporting.
Sources told ABC News that the National Counterterrorism Center is expected to be hit hard by Pulte's cuts. That detail will raise eyebrows on both sides of the aisle. The center was created after the September 11 attacks to ensure intelligence agencies shared threat information, a function that, in theory, no one in Washington wants to see degraded.
But the broader context matters. Former DNI Gabbard had already reduced ODNI's workforce by roughly 40 percent before Pulte arrived, Newsmax reported. That prior round of cuts means the agency Pulte inherited was already leaner than the one Trump first encountered. Whether additional reductions reflect genuine fat-trimming or start cutting into operational muscle is the question neither the White House nor ODNI has publicly answered.
ODNI did not immediately respond to ABC News's request for comment. The White House referred reporters to the intelligence agency.
Democratic lawmakers moved quickly to object. Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes sent Pulte a letter arguing against sweeping changes by someone in an acting capacity.
"Making significant structural changes to ODNI, to include a reduction in force, is not an appropriate course of action for anyone in an acting capacity."
The objection carries a certain procedural logic. But it also carries the unmistakable scent of a party that spent years defending the intelligence community's sprawl and now wants to freeze the status quo until a friendlier political moment arrives. Warner and Himes did not raise similar concerns when Gabbard used her final hours in office to declassify documents and the succession battle at ODNI was already underway.
Trump, for his part, has shown no interest in waiting. He nominated Jay Clayton, currently the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to permanently lead ODNI. But then, last week, Trump abruptly announced that Clayton's Senate confirmation process would not continue until Jamie McDonald is confirmed as Clayton's replacement at the Southern District.
That sequencing decision effectively guarantees Pulte will remain in the acting role for weeks, if not longer. And it ensures the downsizing continues under someone the president views as unencumbered by the confirmation process, someone, in Trump's own word, "less shackled."
Before arriving at ODNI, Pulte served as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. His tenure there drew attention not just for housing policy but for a series of probes he launched into several of Trump's perceived political adversaries.
Those investigations targeted Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, and former Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell over allegations of mortgage fraud and possible misuse of authority. All four denied wrongdoing.
Critics cast those probes as politically motivated. Supporters saw them as overdue accountability for public officials who had long operated without serious scrutiny. Either way, the investigations established Pulte as someone willing to use institutional authority aggressively, a quality Trump clearly values as he tasks his acting intelligence chief with downsizing the CIA, FBI, and rooting out holdovers across the broader intelligence apparatus.
Pulte's appointment and the firings that followed did not happen in a vacuum. Trump had been weighing changes to intelligence leadership for months. Earlier reporting indicated the president considered replacing Gabbard after a policy clash over Iran, and the eventual transition, triggered by a family medical emergency rather than a political falling out, left the administration scrambling to install someone who would move fast.
Pulte has no intelligence experience. ABC News described him as "a Trump loyalist with zero intelligence experience." That framing will fuel Democratic attacks. But the president's calculation appears straightforward: the intelligence community's problems are not technical, they are institutional. Bloat, bureaucratic inertia, and a workforce that Trump believes harbors too many officials hostile to his agenda. You do not need a career spy to swing a budget axe.
Whether that theory holds depends on execution. Firing hundreds of employees at an agency responsible for coordinating the nation's intelligence product is not the same as trimming headcount at a housing regulator. The National Counterterrorism Center exists because the country once paid a catastrophic price for intelligence failures. Cuts there demand precision, not just speed.
The administration has offered no public explanation of how it will ensure operational continuity during the downsizing. ODNI's silence, no comment, no statement, no briefing, leaves that question hanging.
Several gaps remain. What mechanism is being used, termination letters, reductions in force, administrative leave? Has Section 702 of FISA been restored, or does the surveillance authority remain lapsed? How long will Pulte serve as acting DNI given the stalled Clayton confirmation? And what specific criteria are being used to decide which employees go and which stay?
These are not hypothetical concerns. They are operational ones. The intelligence community's mission does not pause while Washington reshuffles personnel.
Trump has every right to demand a leaner, more accountable intelligence apparatus. The agencies that make up the community have earned skepticism, from the Russia-collusion debacle to years of unauthorized leaks aimed at undermining elected leadership. Downsizing is not inherently reckless. But downsizing without transparency, without clear criteria, and without a confirmed director in place asks the public to trust a process it cannot see.
The president says the intelligence community has been too big for too long. He may well be right. The harder question is whether firing people at this pace, under these conditions, makes the country safer, or just makes a point.
