Housing Finance Director Bill Pulte tapped by Trump to be acting director of national intelligence
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he’s appointing Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte as the acting director of national intelligence, with Tulsi Gabbard set to leave her post on June 30.
Trump said that Pulte will remain the director of Federal Housing Finance Agency and also continue as a chairman of the mortgage groups Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“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, a substantial increase from where it was just 12 months ago,” Trump posted to his social media platform.
Pulte does not appear to have a clear national intelligence background.
He is best known in the Trump administration for launching probes into several of the president’s perceived political enemies over allegations of mortgage fraud and possible misuse of authority. Targets of the investigations include Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and former Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell. They’ve all denied wrongdoing.
The Department of Justice had at one point investigated whether Pulte and his team were interfering in ongoing investigations. Pulte has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Gabbard announced her resignation last month because of her husband’s battle with bone cancer.
Trump praised Gabbard for having done an “incredible job” and adding that the administration will “miss her.” He said at the time that Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Aaron Lukas would serve as acting DNI.
But in his announcement on Tuesday, Trump said he was tapping Pulte for the temporary role. Pulte would need Senate confirmation if nominated to serve in the role full time.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on March 04, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The two top Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees are referring outgoing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to the Department of Justice for perjury due to her testimony to congressional committees earlier this month, according to a letter sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland allege that Noem’s statements on a variety of topics including DHS following judges’ orders and a controversial multimillion-dollar ad campaign “appear to violate criminal statutes prohibiting perjury and knowingly making false statements to Congress.”
In response to the letter, a DHS spokesperson said “Any claim that Secretary Noem committed perjury is categorically FALSE.”
A Justice Department spokesperson said, “The DOJ has received the latest political stunt from the Democrats who should instead vote to reopen the Department of Homeland Security.”
President Donald Trump fired Noem the day after her testimony concluded and announced that he was appointing her to a new role as special envoy to the Shield of the Americas, a coalition of Latin American countries the White House says is committed to cooperating with the U.S. in taking on drug cartels and securing the U.S. border. He said he had nominated Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin to head DHS when Noem’s tenure ended on March 31.
The Democrats allege that Noem misled Congress when she said that DHS had followed court orders while federal judges have ruled a number of times that it had not.
They also cited her testimony over contracts for a $220 million DHS ad campaign and her assertion that Trump had signed off on it. A day later, Trump told Reuters, “I never knew anything about it.”
“New public reporting, however, indicates that those statements may have been false. It has been reported that not only did the Secretary “handpick” four companies for the ad campaign, but procurement records show the “ad work was awarded using ‘other than full and open competition,'” and the four companies were politically connected to Noem and her allies,” according to the letter.
Durbin and Raskin also allege Noem misled Congress when she testified that top adviser Corey Lewandowski had “no authority” to make decisions for the department.
“Secretary Noem’s denial of Corey Lewandowski’s role in DHS contract approval may also have been false. It has been widely reported that Mr. Lewandowski asserts approval authority over contracts and grants that exceed $100,000.27 A similar approval process reportedly exists for policy decisions, and as a recently published document shows, Mr. Lewandowski’s signature is visible above Secretary Noem’s on a February 2025 document reversing temporary protected status for Haitians.”
Lewandowski is reportedly leaving his position as a special government employee. He did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment on his future at DHS.
The Democrats also allege Noem made false statements about conditions in ICE detention centers adhering to federal detention standards while ICE internal audits documented “significant failures to meet medical care standards.”
And they say her assertion that ICE did not detain U.S. citizens is false and cited 170 cases of citizens being detained in some cases for days without an opportunity to prove their citizenship.
“Making false statements to Congress, and making false statements under oath, are federal crimes,” the letter says. “While we have low expectations that you will pursue this matter given your partisan weaponization of the Department of Justice, we note that the statute of limitations for perjury and for knowingly and willfully making false statements to Congress is five years.”
President Donald Trump, joined by first lady Melania Trump, signs the Fostering the Future executive order in the East Room of the White House, Nov. 13, 2025. (Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is urging states to stop removing children from their homes over gender-identity disputes at the behest of child welfare agencies without their parents’ approval.
In a letter first obtained by ABC News, the Health and Human Services Department’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF) reminds state child welfare agencies that under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), they are barred from removing children from their home because a parent doesn’t agree with the child’s gender identity.
“When states overstep their bounds, ACF will take action to deter inappropriate policies that drive unnecessary interactions with child welfare systems. This is one such example,” ACF Assistant Secretary Alex Adams wrote in a statement Tuesday.
The Trump administration cited multiple examples — from Illinois to California — where children who may reject the sex they were assigned at birth and perceive themselves as a different gender were removed from their homes without parental consent and placed in the child welfare system.
However, Shannon Minter, vice president of legal at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights (NCLR), told ABC News that he is not aware of any state removing children from parents based on their response to a transgender child.
Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or expression is different from cultural expectations based on the sex they were assigned at birth, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Minter called the effort a broader push by the Trump administration to “eliminate” all protections for transgender young people.
“No one is advocating for removing children because a parent is struggling to understand,” he said, adding, “But child welfare professionals need the discretion to assess when rejection crosses the line into real harm — the same way they would for any other child.”
Morissa Ladinsky, a clinical professor in pediatrics at Stanford University in California, argued that children aren’t typically removed from their home without parental consent in this fashion.
“My experience tells me that there is likely more to the story,” Ladinsky told ABC News, adding that she has not seen removal over gender disputes fall under the domain of Child Protective Services.
As the division of HHS that promotes welfare assistance and supports the economic and social well-being of children and families, the agency has said ACF’s duty is to protect families and keep them together. ACF’s letter also stressed that parents hold the right to refuse removal according to their religious beliefs and moral convictions around gender identity.
The letter said breaking the law could violate the First Amendment and states could risk losing federal grant funding under CAPTA.
“What we’re doing with this letter is we’re putting states on notice,” Adams told ABC News.
“When policies are either increasing the number of kids committed to the system inappropriately or they’re deterring foster families from stepping up, I do think there was a role for ACF to weigh in,” he said, adding, “It does merit federal action.”
The letter to states bolsters an initiative to protect children from the foster-care system amid a shortage of facilities nationwide with only 57 foster homes for every 100 vulnerable kids coming into the system, according to Adams.
The letter comes at the directive of President Donald Trump’s Fostering the Future for American Children and Families executive order and follows the president’s call during his State of the Union address last week for a federal ban on gender transitions for minors.
“Surely, we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” Trump said during his address. “We must ban it and we must ban it immediately.”
Gender identity is described as how a child perceives and calls themself, which can be the same or different from the sex that was assigned to them at birth, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
However, if a child sees themself as different than the sex assigned at birth, parents have the right to reject this self-identification, the ACF letter says. Under federal law, CAPTA states that a child may not be removed from the home without proof of “abuse” or “imminent risk of harm.”
The Trump administration has stated that restoring power to parents is one of its top health, education and humanities priorities. But the letter warns that states are usurping parental rights and potentially misinterpreting the CAPTA law if they remove children from their homes without evidence of “abuse or neglect.”
Under ACF, the health department’s human services division administers the largest federal child care program and other federal services that helps millions of households nationwide.
Prior to ACF’s letter to states, lawmakers have taken several child care-related actions against the nation’s health agency under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In a previous letter to Kennedy first reported by ABC News, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other congressional Democrats said the agency’s alleged “disregard” for child welfare undermines the government’s core child-protection obligations amid federal immigration crackdowns.
Adams stressed Tuesday’s letter is supported by the whole organization, including Kennedy, and the secretary has demonstrated his commitment to improving child welfare outcomes across several different domains.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters during a news conference at Trump National Doral Miami on March 9, 2026, in Doral, Florida. President Trump spoke on his administration’s strikes on Iran. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said that he and Vice President JD Vance are “philosophically a little bit different” when it comes to U.S. war with Iran after ABC News previously reported that Vance internally expressed reservations about the strikes late last month.
When asked during his Monday evening news conference in Florida if there were any disagreements between him and Vance on action against Iran, Trump said he didn’t “think so.”
“We get along very well on this,” Trump said. “He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me. I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going, but he was quite enthusiastic. But I felt it was something we had to do. I didn’t feel we had a choice. If we didn’t do it, they would have done it to us.”
Trump’s comments about their differences on Iran come after ABC News reported that Vance, who has largely opposed U.S. intervention abroad, made his reservations about the strikes against Iran known internally, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Once it became clear that the decision had been made to move forward with the strikes, Vance shifted his focus to supporting the military operation, a source told ABC News.
This is not the first time Vance, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, has expressed concerns internally about possible U.S. foreign military intervention.
Last year, in the Signal group chat discussing the U.S. attack on Houthis in Yemen that a journalist was inadvertently invited to join, Vance appeared to break with Trump and questioned whether the president recognized that a unilateral U.S. attack on the Houthis to keep international shipping lanes open was at odds with his tough talk about European nations paying their share of such efforts.
A few days before the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, Vance told The Washington Post that there was “no chance” of a drawn-out war in Iran if the U.S. moved forward with the strikes.
Vance reiterated that same sentiment in a recent interview with Fox News, but also added that the operation against Iran “could go for a lot longer.”
“There’s just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi-year conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective. What is different about President Trump, and it’s frankly different about both Republicans and Democrats of the past, is that he’s not going to let his country go to war unless there’s a clearly defined objective,” Vance told Fox News.
“He’s defined that objective as Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and has to commit long-term to never trying to rebuild the nuclear capability. It’s pretty clear. It’s pretty simple, and I think that means that we’re not going to get into the problems that we’ve had with Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.
Ahead of his second term, Trump campaigned on “America First” policies, which attracted his MAGA base. After the strikes on Iran, there has been criticism from within his base — including former political adviser Steve Bannon, who called the it “a mistake not to put America first.”
Trump said Monday that the U.S. is making “major” progress in achieving its military goals and that the operation is “ahead of our initial timeline by a lot.”
“We’re achieving major strides toward completing our military objective. And some people could say they’re pretty well complete. We’ve wiped every single force in Iran out very completely,” Trump said.
