Republican Sen. Thom Tillis on Wednesday blasted President Donald Trump‘s pick to lead the U.S. intelligence community as an “incendiary attack dog” who has no path to being confirmed by the Senate.

The remarks on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” from the retiring North Carolina senator added to the growing backlash against Bill Pulte, the current head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, whom Trump appointed acting director of national intelligence on Tuesday.

“I don’t think he has a prayer” of making it through the Senate and becoming the permanent DNI, Tillis said of Pulte.

“Whoever told the president to go ahead and commit to this publicly before vetting it should lose their jobs, because they should know that the math just works against Pulte being confirmed,” he said.

But the senator also acknowledged that the Trump administration could try to skirt the issue by simply leaving Pulte in place with the “acting” title instead of trying to push for full confirmation.

Pulte, who has no known prior experience in an intelligence role, is widely viewed as a Trump loyalist who has targeted the president’s political foes during his tenure leading the housing regulatory agency.

Those targets include Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who both faced allegations of mortgage-related wrongdoing by Pulte.

Trump said that Pulte will serve as acting DNI while continuing to work as FHFA director and chairman of the mortgage groups Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Pulte is replacing outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who said last month that she would resign June 30.

Tillis said on CNBC that Pulte “got removed from his family board the moment the family no longer owned 51%,” and later made such critical statements “that his father and aunt disavowed him having any association with their family trust.”

Tillis was referring to reports that Pulte, a scion of the founder of homebuilding giant PulteGroup, was pushed off the company’s board in 2020 amid disagreements with other directors. The senator also appeared to reference a statement from the Pulte Family Charitable Foundation, clarifying that Bill Pulte, who maintains a highly active social media presence, does not speak for his family “in any capacity.”

“Why do I bring that up? I bring it up because it suggests a temperament that’s probably not right for the DNI role,” Tillis said.

“I don’t believe he’s ever had a security clearance. He clearly has no experience in intelligence, he has no geopolitical experience, no international connections — the sorts of things you would look for” in a DNI, said Tillis.

“He’s got a structural problem. He simply doesn’t have 51 votes on the Senate floor, and he may not even have the votes in [the Senate intelligence] committee, and we…

Shares in mortgage lenders jumped Friday after President Donald Trump instructed “representatives” to purchase mortgage bonds in an attempt to lower rates for homebuyers.

Trump said in a social media post on Thursday that he was asking unnamed buyers — it wasn’t clear if that meant the Treasury, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or another agency — to buy $200 billion of mortgage bonds. This should bring down both rates and monthly payments, making home ownership more affordable, Trump said.

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte later posted that “we are on it.” Trump said he was making the push because Fannie and Freddie — the government-sponsored entities that buy mortgages from banks, credit unions and other original lenders — are sitting on a pile of cash.

Mortgage lender Rocket Companies jumped more than 9% and notched a fresh intraday high going back to 2021. UWM Holdings gained more than 13% in its best day since 2023. Lender PennyMac rose more than 6%.

Artificial intelligence-focused lender Better Home & Finance added more than 6%. Opendoor Technologies — a real estate ecommerce platform that has become a meme stock — surged more than 13%.

White House pressure

Wall Street has long expected the Trump administration to take some sort of action to put downward pressure on mortgage rates. But analysts are now wondering what the actual impact will be for consumers and what it means for lending stocks.

“We read this as the President ordering FHFA Director Bill Pulte to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy $200 billion of their own MBS to bring down interest rates,” TD Cowen’s Jaret Seiberg wrote to clients, referring to mortgage-backed securities. “This is not a surprise.”

TD Cowen expects the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield to finish 2026 at 3.5%, down from about 4.17% on Friday. That would put downward pressure on 30-year fixed mortgages rates, possibly lowering them to roughly 5.25% from the current 6.2%. The rate on a 30-year mortgage on Friday fell to its lowest levels in almost three years, according to Mortgage News Daily.

If the $200 billion in purchases happened quickly, TD Cowen said mortgage rates could finish the year closer to 5%.

Smaller than expected

But Wolfe Research analyst Tobin Marcus said a $200 billion purchase program is smaller than the firm previously anticipated. The impact on the housing market is likely “positive but fairly modest,” he said.

Bank of America analyst Rafe Jadrosich said lower mortgage rates would bring some relief to house buyers grappling with high rates. For each quarter-point decline in mortgage rates, he estimated a monthly payment on a 30-year fixed loan of $400,000 would drop by as much as $70.

At Morgan Stanley, analyst Jeffrey Adelson now sees UWM and Rocket performing closer to his bull case if mortgage rates move lower. Barclays analyst Terry Ma…

Quasi-governmental financial firm Fannie Mae on Wednesday announced a partnership with defense tech player Palantir to detect mortgage fraud, deepening ties between the federal government and a company that has been a big winner in the second Trump administration.

Priscilla Almodovar, Fannie Mae CEO, said Wednesday at a press event that the goal is for the firm to “identify fraud more proactively” with the help of Palantir, starting with its multi-family housing business. An early test showed that Palantir’s technology, which includes elements of artificial intelligence, could identify fraud in seconds that took human investigators two months to find, she said.

Shares of Palantir have jumped more than 140% since President Donald Trump’s election win in November. The technology stock has roles in both modernizing the U.S. military and helping to cut costs in government, making it a seemingly strong fit for the administration’s stated priorities. CEO Alex Karp said Wednesday that the mortgage fraud detection can be done in a way that “protects the underlying data and protects the privacy of the people submitting their forms.”

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored enterprises that have been under the conservatorship of the Federal Housing Financing Agency since 2008. The official names of the two enterprises are the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, respectively.

FHFA director William Pulte said Wednesday the Palantir program could be expanded to Freddie Mac in the future and that the agency is also talking to Elon Musk’s xAI firm about a potential partnership.

“The sky’s the limit. We’re not just limited to fraud. If there are ways to pull cost out of the system, we want to do it,” Pulte said.

The press release did not include a dollar amount that Fannie Mae would pay to Palantir for this service.

The announcement comes as there is a push to potentially bring Fannie and Freddie out of conservatorship and re-establish them as something closer to independent companies.

“Our great Mortgage Agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, provide a vital service to our Nation by helping hardworking Americans reach the American Dream — Home Ownership,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday. “I am working on TAKING THESE AMAZING COMPANIES PUBLIC, but I want to be clear, the U.S. Government will keep its implicit GUARANTEES, and I will stay strong in my position on overseeing them as President. These Agencies are now doing very well, and will help us to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

The “implicit guarantee” mentioned by Trump refers to the idea among investors that the government won’t let Fannie and Freddie default on their…