Already a subscriber? Make sure to log into your account before viewing this content. You can access your account by hitting the “login” button on the top right corner. Still unable to see the content after signing in? Make sure your card on file is up-to-date.

President Trump has directed his acting intelligence chief to immediately downsize the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Some shit you should know before you dig in: If you’re unaware, the office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, is the body that sits at the top of the US intelligence community and is responsible for coordinating its 18 separate agencies, from the CIA and NSA to the FBI’s intelligence arm. Congress created it in 2004 in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, after investigations found that the various spy agencies had been operating in silos, hoarding what they knew and failing to share critical information with one another. This led to warning signs scattered across the government that nobody connected before the attacks. The whole point of the ODNI was to fix that, putting one office in charge of making sure intelligence actually flows between agencies rather than getting gatekept or buried. The director also serves as the president’s principal intelligence adviser and oversees the President’s Daily Brief, the highly classified rundown delivered to the president each morning that pulls together input from across all the agencies.

What’s going on now: In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump said he had asked Bill Pulte to “execute the immediate and needed downsizing” of the office, reverting staff to their home agencies, calling the ODNI “too big” and pointing to Obama- and Biden-era holdovers as targets for cuts. Pulte, the 38-year-old head of the federal housing finance agency who has no intelligence, military, or law enforcement background, is set to take over as acting director on June 19, succeeding Tulsi Gabbard, and can serve up to 210 days without Senate confirmation.

The pick has drawn fire from both parties, with critics casting him as a Trump loyalist unqualified for the role and warning he could wield intelligence powers against the president’s enemies. As a housing regulator, Pulte brought mortgage-fraud referrals against Trump adversaries, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff, and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, cases that were dismissed or yielded no charges.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries branded him a “partisan political hack,” and even Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, “We don’t need a weaponized DNI. We need professionals here.”

Pulte’s appointment has also become a flashpoint over the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, widely seen as the government’s most powerful surveillance tool, which expires Friday at midnight. The program lets agencies collect the communications of foreign targets abroad without a warrant, but it also sweeps up Americans’ messages, fueling long-standing privacy objections. Democrats are now refusing to renew it until Trump withdraws Pulte, with Senator Mark Warner calling the pick a “live hand grenade” tossed into negotiations after all but one Senate Democrat and seven Republicans blocked a three-year extension last week.

Despite the calls, Trump dug in and accused Democrats of trying to “take our National Security hostage” and to “extort” the country, while pushing for a short-term extension to buy time for a permanent nominee.