Trump appoints housing official as acting director of intelligence, raising legal concerns
President Donald Trump plans to install Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as acting director of national intelligence, prompting questions about the use of acting officials and compliance with vacancy laws.
President Donald Trump announced that Bill Pulte, the Senate-confirmed head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, will assume the role of acting director of national intelligence next week. The appointment, which Pulte will hold on a temporary basis, has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and governance experts who say it tests the limits of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998.
The law requires that acting officials in senior positions be drawn from a limited pool of senior deputies or other Senate-confirmed officials and limits the duration of such appointments to 210 days, with additional periods only if a permanent nominee is submitted. Critics note that Pulte does not possess a security clearance or the extensive national-security experience mandated for the permanent director of national intelligence, and that the principal deputy director, a former CIA officer, is the statutory acting official.
Max Stier, chief executive of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, said the practice of assigning officials without relevant expertise to multiple agencies could lead to inefficiency and undermine the rule of law. He added that the increasing reliance on acting officials allows the president to bypass the Senate’s advice-and-consent role, a constitutional check on executive appointments.
The administration’s broader staffing pattern includes several other acting assignments, such as the U.S. Trade Representative also overseeing the Office of Government Ethics and the Office of Special Counsel, and a shortage of confirmed members on the Federal Election Commission. According to Stier’s tracking, more than 800 key federal positions remain unfilled, with over 270 lacking a presidential nominee and about 100 nominees awaiting Senate confirmation.
Legal scholars point out that while presidents of both parties have occasionally exceeded the Vacancies Act’s provisions, the current concentration of acting officials in unrelated agencies raises questions about compliance with statutory limits and the spirit of the Constitution’s appointment process.
