Bill Pulte, the acting Director of National Intelligence, announced Friday night that he has begun a third round of personnel reductions at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, continuing a rapid downsizing campaign that started barely a month ago. Pulte made the announcement on X, describing the cuts as targeting "redundant, or non-critical, personnel" and declaring the intelligence community is "operating more efficiently and effectively than ever before."
The scope of this latest round remains unclear. Pulte did not specify how many employees have been terminated across all three rounds or how many positions are on the chopping block now. What is clear: the man brought in to slim down ODNI is moving fast and showing no signs of slowing down.
Pulte's appointment was never about continuity. President Trump made that plain when he installed Pulte as acting DNI, replacing Tulsi Gabbard on an interim basis. Trump told reporters he wanted Pulte to "start the process" of firing employees, particularly those who served under the Biden and Obama administrations.
The Associated Press reported that Trump described Pulte's role in blunt terms, saying he wanted to see the office smaller and that "there are a lot of people in there that shouldn't be there." Trump added that it "might be good for him to shake it up before people come", a reference to the eventual confirmation of a permanent DNI director.
In other words, Pulte is the man with the broom. His job is to sweep out the bloat before the permanent leadership arrives.
The ODNI had already undergone significant reductions under Gabbard. AP News reported the office's budget was cut by over $700 million per year and its workforce reduced by roughly 40 percent during her tenure. Pulte's three rounds of cuts are layered on top of that already substantial drawdown.
When Pulte first showed up at ODNI headquarters, he did not ease into the role. Newsmax reported that his surprise arrival accelerated Gabbard's departure and rattled intelligence officials. He reportedly requested a full list of all agency employees as part of an effort to evaluate potential layoffs, a move consistent with sweeping personnel reductions that could affect hundreds of employees.
Critics inside the intelligence community raised eyebrows at Pulte's lack of traditional intelligence experience. But the Trump administration's calculation was never about pedigree. It was about willingness to act. Pulte, who also serves as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, brought an outsider's indifference to institutional inertia, exactly what the White House wanted.
The administration has faced legal resistance to some of its intelligence community firings, with courts citing due process concerns. But those rulings have not stopped the broader restructuring effort from advancing.
The timeline is compressed. Pulte began firing employees last month, shortly after replacing Gabbard. CBS News, as cited by Just the News, reported that Pulte sent 45 officers back to their home agencies during that initial period. Whether those 45 are counted separately from employees who were terminated outright is not clear from available reporting.
The first two rounds of cuts came and went without detailed public accounting. Now the third round is underway, and Pulte has again declined to put numbers on the record. The lack of specifics leaves open questions about the total scale of the restructuring, but the direction is unmistakable.
Pulte framed the effort in optimistic terms. In his X post, he wrote:
"DNI's future is exceptionally bright, and will be focused on following the law and the statute."
He did not specify which statute he was referencing. The original legislation establishing the DNI after the September 11 attacks created the office to coordinate the sprawling U.S. intelligence community, a mission that, in practice, meant adding layers of bureaucracy on top of existing agencies. Whether the office grew beyond what that statute envisioned is the central question animating the current cuts.
The downsizing has drawn predictable opposition. Hillary Clinton went so far as to call on federal employees to withhold intelligence from Pulte, a remarkable suggestion that a former secretary of state would encourage insubordination inside the national security apparatus.
That call did not go unanswered. Republican lawmakers pushed back sharply, with an Iowa congresswoman using Clinton's own prior statements against her to highlight the contradiction of someone who once demanded loyalty from intelligence professionals now urging sabotage.
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., acknowledged the transition is messy but emphasized the priority of getting a permanent director confirmed. "I think the most important thing for us is to get Jay in as quickly as possible as the director of national intelligence," Rounds said, referring to the administration's nominee for the permanent role.
The broader battle over Trump's effort to reshape the intelligence community's leadership has played out across multiple fronts, from personnel decisions to budget fights to courtroom challenges. Each front generates friction, but none has reversed the fundamental trajectory.
The biggest gap in the public record is the total headcount. How many people worked at ODNI before the cuts began? How many remain? How many positions will the third round eliminate? Pulte has not answered any of these questions publicly.
The 40 percent workforce reduction under Gabbard, reported by the AP, provides some baseline. If Pulte's three rounds are cutting further into an already reduced staff, the cumulative effect could be dramatic. But without hard numbers from the acting director himself, outside observers are left estimating.
What Pulte has made clear is his rationale. He views the remaining cuts as removing personnel who are redundant or non-critical, language that suggests the office accumulated staff who duplicated work done elsewhere in the 18-agency intelligence community. That is not an implausible claim. The ODNI was created as a coordination body, not an operational agency. If it grew into something larger than its original mandate, trimming it back to core functions is not recklessness. It is a return to purpose.
The question that matters most is not whether the cuts are popular with the Washington establishment. They are not, and they were never going to be. The question is whether the intelligence community delivers better results with a leaner ODNI overhead structure, or whether critical coordination gaps emerge in the months ahead.
Pulte is betting on the former. His critics are predicting the latter. Neither side will be proved right by press releases or X posts. The answer will come from the quality of intelligence reaching the president's desk and the speed with which threats are identified and communicated across agencies.
For now, the acting director is doing exactly what he was sent to do. Three rounds of cuts in roughly a month is a pace that would give any bureaucracy heartburn. That may be precisely the point.
Washington has spent two decades asking whether the intelligence community got too big after September 11. Pulte is the first person in a position to do something about it who actually seems willing to try.
