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Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte announced a fourth round of layoffs at the nation’s top intelligence office this weekend.

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. That left 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 post on X, Pulte confirmed the latest cuts, framing them as measured. “Since becoming Acting Director of National Intelligence, our team has been smartly, and carefully, reducing the size of ODNI, re-focusing ODNI on national security, the law, and the statute,” he wrote. “As of this evening, we just finished a 4th round of thoughtful, measured layoffs. Thank you!”

He attached no numbers to the announcement, no breakdown of which roles were cut, and no word on whether staff were terminated outright or simply sent back to their home agencies.

The scale is significant regardless. The Washington Post reported the office shed roughly 200 people between June 1 and late last week through a mix of firings and reassignments, a count that predates this fourth round. Congressional aides put the current headcount at just above half of the roughly 2,000 employees ODNI had at the start of Trump’s second term.

The timing lines up with a handoff at the top. Trump has nominated US Attorney Jay Clayton to run ODNI permanently, and the Senate Intelligence Committee advanced his nomination on a party-line vote, with Democrats withholding support after he declined to say at his confirmation hearing whether Biden won the 2020 election. Clayton has backed a leaner, “board of directors” role for the office, casting it as an overseer rather than an operator.

This all comes as the office’s future direction stays contested, with some Republicans looking to cap ODNI at 650 staff and Democrats warning that cuts this deep will leave gaps in US national security.