The United States currently has a housing finance regulator overseeing all 18 of its intelligence agencies. That sentence is not a joke, a hypothetical, or a fever dream. It is the actual state of American national security right now, in the year of our lord 2026, and senators on both sides of the aisle are so alarmed by it that they are rushing to confirm literally anyone else.
The Man Running American Intelligence Has Never Touched Intelligence
His name is Bill Pulte. His job, officially, is running the Federal Housing Finance Agency. His other job, the one he apparently has now, is serving as interim Director of National Intelligence for the most powerful country on earth.
Pulte is, by all accounts, a Trump loyalist without a shred of national security experience, according to The Guardian. He has spent his time in the DNI chair not building up the intelligence apparatus but cutting staff at it. The agency created after September 11 to make sure America's spy networks actually talk to each other is being hollowed out by a man whose prior expertise involves mortgage-backed securities.
This is the state of things. Eighteen intelligence agencies. One acting director who got the job because he is loyal and available. Senators in both parties are apparently so unsettled by this arrangement that they are treating Jay Clayton's confirmation like a five-alarm emergency.
So Who Is Jay Clayton, Exactly?
Clayton is Trump's pick to replace Tulsi Gabbard, who stepped down in June after a tenure that The Guardian describes as marked by clashes with congressional Democrats over her alleged habit of advancing Trump's political agenda and promoting debunked election claims. She was, in other words, bad at the job in a very specific and ideologically motivated way.
Clayton currently serves as Manhattan US attorney. Before that, he ran the Securities and Exchange Commission. He is, by the standards of this administration, a relatively conventional pick with actual relevant credentials. The Senate is expected to hold a procedural vote Monday evening on whether to advance his nomination, Reuters reported, with a final confirmation vote possible later in the week.
Trump's Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate and rarely break with the White House, so Clayton is expected to get through. The fact that many senators are described as eager for him to take the role, per The Guardian, tells you everything you need to know about how bad the Pulte situation actually is.
Meanwhile, the US Military Has a New Casualty Category
While the Senate rushes to install a grown adult to oversee American intelligence, the Pentagon quietly updated its official war casualty database over the weekend. The Defense Casualty Analysis System added more than 140 wounded service members and introduced a brand new casualty category called "Overseas Operations" for personnel killed and wounded starting July 7, according to The Guardian.
The earlier phase of the US-Iran war, called Operation Epic Fury, now has an official toll of 14 service members killed and more than 400 wounded in action. The creation of a new, separate category for post-July 7 casualties suggests the operational picture has changed in ways the Pentagon has not fully explained publicly.
This is the backdrop against which the DNI confirmation is happening. The country is at war, the intelligence community is being run by a housing regulator, and the White House is posting TikToks of missile strikes set to Katy Perry's Firework. Perry, for her part, told the Trump administration in no uncertain terms that she never approved the use of her music. The White House video, captioned "Iran has been warned," had racked up more than 6 million views.
Democrats Smell Blood 100 Days Out
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries went on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday and said Republicans have "nothing to run on" heading into the November midterms. He made those comments exactly 100 days before the November 3 elections, which is either a coincidence or the kind of thing a communications team writes on a whiteboard six weeks in advance.
Jeffries argued that Trump broke his promises to lower costs and keep America out of foreign wars. Given that there is now an official military operation called Epic Fury and a separate new casualty category that starts on July 7, the "no foreign wars" promise does appear to have hit some turbulence.
Democrats are aiming to flip both the House and Senate. Whether they can is a different question. But if you were going to pick a moment to be running against the party in power, "ongoing war, housing regulator running the CIA's boss, and Katy Perry is mad at us" is not a terrible moment to have.
The Rest of the Bulletin, Which Is Also Quite Something
Elsewhere in the week's news: Benjamin Netanyahu said New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is "fomenting hate" after Mamdani called Netanyahu a war criminal who should be arrested if he shows up in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, according to The Guardian. The UN General Assembly, you will recall, meets in New York City. This is shaping up to be a very normal diplomatic visit.
Tom Homan, the administration's border czar, went on CNN to address an ICE officer involved in a fatal shooting in Maine, telling host Dana Bash that the officer "should have never cleared vetting" following reports that two ex-wives had accused him of abuse. This was an admission that the administration's own vetting processes failed. Homan said it out loud on television.
And New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed a law banning surveillance pricing, making New Jersey the third state to prohibit businesses from using shoppers' personal data to charge different prices for the same product. The Fair Price Protection Act targets the practice of retailers using location, browsing history, and purchasing data to arbitrarily adjust what you pay. One genuinely normal piece of consumer protection news, tucked in among the rest of it.
The Dingo Take
Let's just sit with the Bill Pulte situation for one more moment. The Director of National Intelligence oversees the CIA, the NSA, the DIA, and fifteen other agencies that collectively employ tens of thousands of people and spend roughly $100 billion a year. The position was created specifically because the September 11 attacks revealed what happens when intelligence agencies don't coordinate. And the person currently doing that job runs the Federal Housing Finance Agency. This is not a minor staffing gap. This is the kind of thing that, in a functioning political press environment, would be the lead story every single day until it was resolved.
The fact that senators are treating Jay Clayton's confirmation as urgent is the tell. These are people who normally treat everything as negotiable and nothing as actually urgent. When the Senate moves fast on a confirmation, it means the alternative is genuinely alarming them. They are looking at Pulte, a man cutting staff at the DNI while the country fights a war with Iran, and they are scared. That fear is appropriate.
Clayton will almost certainly get confirmed this week, and the housing guy will go back to housing, and this entire episode will be filed away as a quirky footnote. But it is not a footnote. It is a window into exactly how this administration treats institutions it finds inconvenient: hand them to loyalists, let them atrophy, and wait for someone else to notice. Someone always notices. Usually too late.
