Trump Names Housing Official as Acting Intelligence Head
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Trump administration is abandoning its $1.8 billion, quote, anti-weaponization fund. Plus, President Trump names Housing Chief Bill Pulte as the acting director of national intelligence. And the year of the blockbuster IPO is changing up the world of indexes like the S&P 500.
the companies that calculate which stocks go into which market benchmarks have been making all kinds of changes to accommodate mega IPOs like SpaceX and OpenAI and Anthropic.
It's Tuesday, June 2nd. I'm Alex Osola for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. President Trump today said he was appointing Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence, succeeding Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned last month. Pulte is a close ally of President Trump's who leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency and is chairman of the boards of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, roles that Trump said Pulte would remain in while serving as acting director of national intelligence, or DNI.
Who is Bill Pulte and what is his new role?
WSJ White House reporter Natalie Andrews says Pulte has been a polarizing figure at the White House.
Donald Trump named him as an acting director meaning they're not going to go through the Senate confirmation process. He can serve for 210 days as acting director so this appointment does come with an expiration date. Pulte does not have national security experience especially at this level. This is Fair to say out of left field. People sometimes refer to Pulte as little Trump. Democrats have almost universally criticized this appointment. John Thune, who is the top Republican in the Senate, was critical of it. He said he didn't want a weaponized DNI.
Natalie says Pulte has urged investigations into the president's perceived enemies.
Pulte has accused a lot of Trump's foes with wrongdoing on mortgage fraud, such as Lisa Cook, who is on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Senator Adam Schiff, who prosecuted Donald Trump during his first term. None of them have been formally prosecuted for any sort of wrongdoing, and the charges have resulted in some blowback for Pulte himself.
The Trump administration is abandoning its $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund. Speaking at a congressional hearing today, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch told lawmakers that, quote, were not moving forward with the fund, period. The fund has drawn condemnation from many GOP senators, and the issue has threatened to sink an unrelated immigration enforcement bill. Separately, the president today signed an executive order to increase government oversight over artificial intelligence. The order asks AI companies to give the administration access to review AI models 30 days before they're released to the public. National security officials are supposed to work with companies to address any cybersecurity concerns.
Two weeks ago, Trump ditched another version of the executive order. It would have asked companies to let the government review models for a longer period, up to 90 days. Trump said then he didn't want to set the U.S. back in the tech race with China. The president is struggling to balance competing factions within the White House. One side wants more oversight over AI, and the other wants to tear down all barriers to AI deployment. As we've been discussing on the show, this is shaping up to be a huge year for IPOs. SpaceX could come next week, Anthropix filed for an IPO likely in the fall, and OpenAI isn't far behind. These IPOs are likely to get a lot of attention from investors who think they're a hot stock.
But they're also getting attention from the companies behind indexes like the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100, which are supposed to present a broad view of the U.S. economy. The indexes are tweaking their rules so they can integrate IPOs faster. So what does that mean for investors? Jason Zweig writes the Intelligent Investor column at the Journal and joins me now. Jason, can you give me some examples of those changes that I referred to that these index providers are making?
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