WSJ What’s News - Trump Names Housing Official as Acting Intelligence Head

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

P.M. Edition for June 2. President Trump has named Bill Pulte, leader of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as acting director of national intelligence. WSJ White House reporter Natalie Andrews discusses how Pulte has urged investigations into the president’s perceived enemies and lawmakers’ criticism of his appointment. Plus, the Trump administration is abandoning its $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund after it drew broad condemnation from GOP lawmakers. And, we hear from Jason Zweig, who writes WSJ’s Intelligent Investor column, about how the year of the mega IPO is triggering changes by index providers—the firms that compile market averages like the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100–to accommodate these titanic deals. SpaceX, one of those massive IPOs, is eyeing a valuation of around $1.75 trillion. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. 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 Open AI and Anthropic. It's Tuesday, June 2nd.

I'm Alex O'Sullough 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. 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 to weaponized DNI. Natalie says Pulte has urged investigations into the president's perceived enemy. 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 Blanche 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. Anthropics 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 refer to that these index providers are making? The most prominent change is what's called fast tracking, which is adding the stock to the index as soon as five days after the IPO. In the past, there was what was called a seasoning period of several months or in some of some of, some cases as long as a year before a new company would be included in an index. So why are these index providers looking to make these changes? What's the motivation? Money. These companies make billions of dollars a year through basically royalties that they charge index funds for the privilege of using the brand name of an index like the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ 100 or the MSCI World Index. All of those index names are intellectual property,

and they're probably the most valuable intellectual property in the stock market. How do these changes that index providers are making benefit the companies that are going public? If you're about to go public and you know that a sizable amount of your shares will go into the hands of index funds very quickly. That should help stabilize your stock, but also it gives you comfort for the longer term because the investors in index funds tend to stay put. So what does this mean for you if you own index funds? Index funds are generating a lot of profit for the companies that build indexes. And as an index fund investor, you and I need to monitor their behavior to make sure that they don't bend over backwards to accommodate companies going public,

because the job of an index provider really should be to serve the best interest of the index, not the best interest of the issuing company. And that's the thing that I'm really watching as this trend unfolds. I want to make sure that somebody's watching out for me, not just for people like Elon Musk. That was WSJ columnist Jason Zwegg. Thanks so much, Jason. Thanks, Alex. My pleasure. And speaking of those mega IPOs, the journal has learned that SpaceX is looking at evaluation of around 1.6.

$75 trillion in its initial public offering. Elon Musk's rocket maker is likely to sell under 5% of its shares, a much smaller portion than in a typical IPO. It's still possible that those numbers could change before tomorrow afternoon when SpaceX is aiming to file updated paperwork for the IPO. That filing will give investors their first official look at SpaceX's potential valuation in the IPO. Coming up, a newly proposed salary cap is threatening to cost baseball owners an entire season.

More on that. break. U.S. stocks ended slightly higher. The Dow led the gains and closed up nearly half a percent. One standout in the stock market today? Victoria's Secret. Its stock closed up 47 percent, its biggest gain ever, and its first record close since 2021. That comes after the company reported a 15 percent sales gain for the first quarter, and it raised its outlook for the year. CEO Hillary Super said the sales growth really starts with bras. an area where she's trying to reassert the brand's dominance. Earlier this week, we told you that Berkshire Hathaway acquired home builder Taylor Morrison for $6.8 billion.

It's a vote of confidence for the U.S. housing market, that it will shake off its years-long slump and recover as it always has. Berkshire is betting that more buyers will return to the market once mortgage rates come down from their current levels around 6.5%. In the shorter term, though, many real estate agents have reached. their limit. They get paid when a deal closes, so fewer sales means less money. And more agents are leaving the industry. The National Association of Realtors, or NAR, had 1.4 million members as of April. That's down from a peak of 1.6 million in October 2022. Nicole Friedman, who covers the U.S. housing market, says that even that decline is only part of the story. A lot of people keep their licenses, even if they find work elsewhere because they want to keep a foot in the door.

maybe the market will pick back up, NAR does do a survey every year of real estate agents, and they ask them if real estate is your only profession. And in 2025, 71% of real estate agents said that real estate was their only occupation, and that's the lowest level on record in 20 years of asking this survey question. More agents are finding work elsewhere or not working full-time in the real estate industry. A lot of people say they're going back to whatever field they came from, maybe they were a nurse before or a teacher, or they worked in sales or retail hospitality. Or people, you know, sometimes can find like real estate adjacent work, maybe doing staging or something like that.

And finally, it's baseball season. But this year, contract negotiations between team owners and players may be even more dramatic than the games. Here's what's news producer Danny Lewis. For the first time in more than three decades, major League Baseball franchise owners are proposing a salary cap. The league's plan would limit team payrolls to $245.3 million and institute a salary floor of $171.2 million. But WSJ sports reporter Jared Diamond says talks could turn contentious. Baseball is the only major American sport that does not have a salary cap. The NBA, NFL, NHL, all have limits on how much teams can spend on their rosters. Baseball wants that very badly.

So the owners have proposed their first vision of what a salary cap might look like come 2027. But here's the reality. The players have said, and I've made it clear, for decades and decades, and have reemphasized it now, that there are no numbers that they would agree to. They will not agree to a salary cap under any circumstance, no matter what the league is proposing. Now, look, the contract does not expire until December. There's a lot of time for this to change.

But as of right now, both sides seem pretty entrenched, so buckle up. If the two sides can't agree, the results could be disastrous for fans. The last time owners tried proposing a salary cap, players went on strike for 232 days, leading to the 1994 World Series being canceled. And that's what's news for this Tuesday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Danny Lewis and Anthony Bansy, with supervising producer Talley Arbell. I'm Alex O'Sullough for The Wall Street Journal.

We'll be back with a new show tomorrow. morning. Thanks for listening.