MAGA Turf War Breaks Out Over National Intelligence

The war over what America First means will soon move to a new theater: a battle over the fate of the Office of Director of National Intelligence.

Overseeing all 18 of the U.S. intelligence agencies, the office was created in the wake of 9/11 to serve as a sort of orchestra conductor for the intelligence community, integrating operations and mediating feuds between shadowy three-letter agencies. Intended to be a small coordinating office, the ODNI has become sprawling and bureaucratic in the decades since. Republicans now broadly agree that it must be reformed.

At issue though is how the agency will change, and perhaps more importantly, who will accrue more power as a result. It is a fraught question for a GOP already suspicious of “weaponized” intel agencies.

Two MAGA heavyweights will shape the outcome.

Tulsi Gabbard, a skeptic of foreign intervention and President Trump’s current director of national intelligence, has already cut the ODNI workforce by 25% and finalized plans for additional reforms. Sources familiar with that effort tell RealClearPolitics that Gabbard is moving quickly but methodically not only to change the agency but to “set the example for all IC elements to emulate.”

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, the hawkish chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced legislation last week to shrink the size of the agency. The ODNI workforce would be capped at just 650 employees. Certain responsibilities would also be transferred, in coordination with the director, to other intel agencies. Notably this includes the ODNI center focused on counterproliferation and biosecurity, which would be subsumed by the CIA. The end goal: “A lean organization,” Cotton said in a statement announcing the bill, “not the overstaffed and bureaucratic behemoth that it is today, where coordinators coordinate with other coordinators.”