The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will reduce its workforce by 40 percent and cut its budget by more than $700 million annually, the Trump administration announced.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said the move was necessary to overhaul an agency she described as bloated and politicised.
"Over the last 20 years, ODNI has become bloated and inefficient, and the intelligence community is rife with abuse of power, unauthorised leaks of classified intelligence, and politicised weaponisation of intelligence," Gabbard said in a statement.
She added that the intelligence community "must make serious changes to fulfil its responsibility to the American people and the US Constitution by focusing on our core mission: find the truth and provide objective, unbiased, timely intelligence to the President and policymakers."
The reorganisation is part of a broader Trump administration push to scale back agencies dealing with election security, a politically charged issue since intelligence agencies concluded Russia interfered in the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf.
In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded an FBI task force focused on investigating foreign influence operations.
The administration also cut resources for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which oversees critical infrastructure including election systems.
Gabbard’s downsizing reflects the administration’s cost-cutting mandate dating back to its earliest days, when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency oversaw mass federal layoffs.
Her move follows Trump’s directive this week to revoke the security clearances of 37 current and former intelligence officials.
The changes include a shift in priorities for the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which ODNI created under the Biden administration in 2022 to coordinate intelligence on foreign election interference.
Gabbard criticised its "hyper-focus" on elections, saying it had been "used by the previous administration to justify the suppression of free speech and to censor political opposition."
The ODNI has previously worked with other agencies to expose disinformation, including a widely circulated Russian video in 2024 that falsely depicted mail-in ballots being destroyed in Pennsylvania.
Sen. Tom Cotton, the Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, praised the overhaul, calling it a step toward making ODNI a "stronger and more effective national security tool for President Trump."
