President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that William Pulte will step in as acting director of national intelligence on June 19, and that his first order of business will be cutting the agency down to size. The move comes as Tulsi Gabbard prepares to leave the post this month, citing her husband's diagnosis with an aggressive form of cancer.
Trump made the announcement on Truth Social, framing the transition as both a personnel change and a structural mandate. He said he had asked Pulte to "execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office, reverting staff to their home agencies."
The directive is the clearest signal yet that the administration views the Office of the Director of National Intelligence not as a permanent fixture of the intelligence community but as a bloated layer of bureaucracy ripe for reduction. Conservatives have long criticized ODNI as redundant, an office created in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks that, a quarter-century later, critics say replicates much of the work performed by the 17 intelligence agencies it nominally oversees.
Gabbard had already begun the downsizing work. During her tenure as DNI, she reduced ODNI's workforce of roughly 1,800 people by 30 percent, a significant contraction aided in part by broader Department of Government Efficiency reductions. Her departure this month, driven by a personal family crisis, not a policy dispute, leaves the reform effort mid-stream.
Trump made clear that Pulte's role is temporary. In the same Truth Social post, he wrote that he is simultaneously "looking for a permanent ODNI Nominee with experience in National Security." But the interim period will not be a holding pattern. Trump wants cuts, and he wants them fast.
As the Washington Examiner reported, Trump told the Wall Street Journal last week that he had already asked Pulte to "start the process" of firing ODNI employees. In separate remarks to reporters, Trump was blunt about his view of the office's staffing.
"I'd like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn't be there."
Pulte currently serves as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairman of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. His background is in housing and finance, not intelligence, a fact that has drawn bipartisan scrutiny. Trump is contending with both Democratic and Republican opposition to his decision to install Pulte as acting spy chief. Critics on both sides of the aisle have raised concerns that the appointment could politicize the agency.
But the president's logic appears straightforward: Pulte is a cost-cutter and a reformer, not a career intelligence bureaucrat. The assignment is not to run intelligence operations. It is to shrink the office that sits on top of them.
That distinction matters. ODNI was never supposed to be an operational agency. It was designed as a coordination hub after the intelligence failures that preceded the 9/11 attacks. Twenty-five years on, the office has grown into something its architects may not have intended, a 1,800-person bureaucracy with its own institutional interests and a tendency, critics say, to duplicate the analytical and administrative work already being done across the intelligence community.
Trump told reporters last week that he was interviewing five candidates for the permanent DNI position. He described them in characteristically broad terms:
"Five different people, all very good, all people that you know very well, all people that do that kind of thing, and they're very respected people."
He did not name the candidates. But speculation has centered on a short list that includes several prominent figures: Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford of Arkansas, Vice Presidential National Security Adviser Cliff Sims, and former Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah.
Each brings a different profile. Stefanik has been one of the president's most vocal allies in Congress. Ellis has direct intelligence community experience at the CIA. Crawford chairs the House committee with primary oversight of the intelligence agencies. Sims works in the vice president's national security orbit. Chaffetz, a former House Oversight Committee chairman, built his reputation on government accountability, though he has been out of elected office for years.
The breadth of the list suggests the administration has not settled on a single model for the permanent role. What Trump has settled on is the interim mission: make the office smaller before the next director walks in the door.
The case for downsizing ODNI is not new, and it is not partisan in origin. The office was born from a genuine crisis, the catastrophic failure to connect intelligence dots before September 11. But the Washington pattern is familiar: a temporary fix becomes a permanent institution, the institution hires staff, the staff develops processes, the processes generate more staff, and within a generation the coordinating body is as large and unwieldy as the agencies it was meant to coordinate.
Gabbard's 30 percent reduction was a start. Trump's directive to Pulte signals that the administration considers it only a start. Reverting staff to their home agencies, the specific mechanism Trump described, would not eliminate intelligence jobs wholesale. It would move analysts and administrators back to the CIA, the NSA, the DIA, and the other agencies where the actual intelligence work originates. The overhead layer shrinks. The operational agencies remain intact.
That approach will face resistance. Any bureaucracy fights contraction. And the bipartisan criticism of Pulte's appointment gives opponents a procedural hook: argue that the acting director lacks the credentials to make structural decisions about the intelligence community. Expect that argument to intensify in the weeks ahead.
But the underlying question is simple. Does a 1,800-person coordination office, one that critics say duplicates the work of 17 agencies, serve the national interest? Or does it serve the interests of the 1,800 people who work there?
Trump has made his answer clear. Now Pulte has until the permanent nominee arrives to prove the president right.
Washington created ODNI to fix a problem. Twenty-five years later, the office may have become one. Fixing that is not reckless, it is overdue.
