(CNN) — Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte has fired six political appointees put in place by former Director Tulsi Gabbard and removed dozens of career intelligence officials from their roles, according to four sources familiar with the moves.

The 45 career officials were on joint duty assignment at the agency — meaning they were working at the ODNI but are technically employed by other agencies — and were sent back to their home offices, the sources said.

The National Counterterrorism Center, a component of ODNI that had previously been expected to be a key target for Pulte, was not impacted by the cuts, one source familiar with the situation said.

Pulte said on X Tuesday evening, “Today, I spent time with the National Counterterrorism Center team, who is doing an incredible job protecting our Country under President Trump’s leadership. The room was filled with true professionals and American patriots. It is a privilege to work beside them.”

Another source familiar said there could be as many as two dozen additional firings in the coming weeks, but would unlikely go beyond that. This source said that Pulte has been consulting career intelligence officials on the cuts.

The removals represent the first major move in Pulte’s mandate to make drastic reductions at the spy office, which had already been slimmed down under Gabbard. The ODNI, which acts as a policymaker and coordinator for the 18 agencies that make up the US intelligence community, has been a target of some on the MAGA right who believe it is made up of a “deep state” determined to undermine the president.

CNN has reached out to the ODNI for comment.

Trump installed Pulte in the acting role with a mandate to “execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post. Pulte, who has no national security experience, initially triggered alarm bells among some Republicans on Capitol Hill.

But according to two sources familiar with closed-door discussions with Pulte on the Hill, some of those concerns have been eased.

“Senators were surprised at the Pulte pick for sure,” said one Republican Senate staffer. “But since Trump announced him, Pulte put together a detailed strategic plan to implement Trump’s reform agenda at DNI, he is working closely with (the Senate Intelligence Committee), and he’s executing great. Republican Senators have been impressed. Don’t be surprised if he stays in for awhile.”

In other words, this person said, “Pulte being willing to rock the boat and send a bunch of people back to their agencies and gut the bureaucracy is a feature, not a bug for Republicans.”

Top Democrats on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, meanwhile, have warned that mass cuts could risk US national security.

In a letter sent to Pulte on Monday, Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes wrote, “We are concerned by reports that you intend to fire or place on leave hundreds of Office of the Director of National Intelligence officers as soon as this week.”

“While there is room to consider responsible reductions to ODNI’s workforce, any large cuts would follow on a substantial downsizing that has already occurred in 2025 and risk jeopardizing the mission of an organization explicitly created after 9/11 to prevent any future such terrorist attack,” the lawmakers wrote.

The ODNI, created to avoid the kind of stove-piping of intelligence between agencies that in part contributed to the US’s failure to catch the 9/11 plot in time, has also long faced bipartisan criticism for bureaucratic inefficiency. Its relevance and authority — in particular relative to the CIA, whose director used to act as the leader of the whole community — have ebbed and flowed depending on the administration.

But it has historically acted as an important hub of analysis for the US government, responsible for producing the kind of interagency assessments that inform presidents. The President’s Daily Brief, for example, is an ODNI product.

The prospect of widespread cuts to an agency that has already struggled to maintain morale — and, some officials say, attract and maintain top talent within the government — has further diminished an office that was once a coveted job posting. Gabbard in 2025 announced that she planned to cut the workforce by 40 percent. Now, one of the sources familiar with the dismissals said, the office spaces are “more than half unoccupied and disheveled.”

“The staff is numb and unhappy,” this source said. “One person compared it to the trauma of the Covid pandemic.”

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