WASHINGTON — The appointment landed on Truth Social just after 9 a.m., and within hours the pushback came not from Democrats but from the most powerful Republican in the United States Senate.
President Trump on Tuesday named William “Bill” Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as acting director of national intelligence, bypassing the Senate confirmation process to install a close ally at the head of the country’s sprawling intelligence apparatus. Pulte will simultaneously hold all three of his current positions, an arrangement that drew immediate scrutiny for its concentration of authority in a single official with no known background in intelligence work.
“We don’t need a weaponized DNI; we need professionals there,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday, choosing words that cut to the center of the concern. Thune, a South Dakota Republican, acknowledged he had only just heard of the appointment and added that if Pulte were to be nominated permanently, “he’s got a – as you all know – a lengthy road ahead of him.”
The exchange on Capitol Hill captured something the Truth Social post did not: within the president’s own party, the pick is not a straightforward win.
Pulte, 36, is the heir to the family that founded one of the country’s largest homebuilding companies, Pulte Homes. He was confirmed by the Senate in March 2025 in a 56-43 vote to lead the FHFA, where he has since made his name not through housing policy but through a series of aggressive mortgage fraud referrals targeting prominent Democrats. His targets have included New York Attorney General Letitia James, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and Sen. Adam Schiff of California. Each referral has advanced the White House’s broader campaign against perceived political adversaries, and none has resulted in a prosecution.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, created after the intelligence failures of September 11, 2001, coordinates the work of 18 agencies including the CIA and the National Security Agency. Its director receives daily classified briefings and advises the president, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council. That it will now be led, on an acting basis, by someone with no discernible intelligence background was not lost on Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.
“I have no knowledge of this individual at all,” Collins, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday. Asked specifically whether Pulte had any background in intelligence, she said: “I truly don’t know him at all.”
Pulte succeeds Tulsi Gabbard, who announced her resignation from the DNI post on May 22, citing her husband Abraham’s diagnosis with a rare form of bone cancer. Her departure, effective June 30, created a vacancy Trump had initially said would be filled by the principal deputy director of national intelligence, Aaron Lukas. The switch to Pulte was abrupt enough that it was not immediately clear what Lukas’s status would be.
Trump’s post on Truth Social framed the appointment in terms of financial management rather than national security experience. “William has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the Markets, and over 10 Trillion Dollars at Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac,” the president wrote. He offered no assessment of Pulte’s intelligence credentials because, by most accounts, none exist to cite.
The reaction from Democrats was, predictably, sharper. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Pulte’s record at the FHFA made him unfit for the role. “Americans have already seen Mr. Pulte use the powers of his office to pursue the president’s grievances and lend credibility to dubious prosecutions of President Trump’s perceived political opponents,” Warner said. Elevating him to oversee the intelligence community, he added, signaled that the president was not looking for someone who would “speak truth to power” but for someone willing to shape intelligence around the president’s preferences.
That critique had traction even where Democrats did not expect it to. Thune’s remarks represent the clearest public break from any Senate Republican over a Trump national security appointment since the administration’s second term began. Whether his warning translates into actual resistance during a potential confirmation process is a different question, and one Tuesday’s events left open.
The acting appointment itself requires no Senate vote. As CNBC reported, the DNI role is a Cabinet-level position that ordinarily demands confirmation, but an acting designation allows the president to bypass that requirement indefinitely. Historically, presidents have used acting appointments to fill vacancies quickly during transition periods; the Pulte arrangement, in which he retains full authority at FHFA while also heading the intelligence community, goes further than most precedents suggest.
What the appointment does not answer is whether Trump intends to nominate Pulte permanently – and, if so, whether the Senate would confirm a figure whose most notable public acts have involved deploying regulatory power as a political instrument. The intelligence community itself has faced sustained pressure from the White House over the past 18 months, and senior career officials have watched the department’s independence erode through a series of personnel and structural changes.
Collins and Thune both stopped short of saying they would vote against him. Neither, notably, said they would vote for him either.
— Input From Sputnik.
