Authored by Micah Zimmerman via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Strategy Inc. CEO Phong Le somewhat pushed back Tuesday against the wave of criticism that followed the company’s first Bitcoin sale since 2022, telling CNBC’s Power Lunch that the move was a deliberate, limited exercise designed to signal operational flexibility — not a philosophical reversal.

“We wanted to inoculate the market and we wanted to test our processes,” Le said in what the network described as a first-time interview. “We learned that everything works.”

Between May 26 and May 31, Strategy sold 32 Bitcoin for approximately $2.5 million at an average price of $77,135 per coin — a transaction that, despite representing just 0.004% of the company’s total holdings, set off an outsized market reaction and reignited debate over whether Michael Saylor’s famous “never sell” doctrine was being abandoned.

BITCOIN’S FOUR-YEAR CYCLE IS STILL IN PLAY

Strategy CEO Phong Le however says the drawdowns are “much more” than just where we’re at in the four-year cycle.

Inflation, rates, wars, and regulatory clarity are all shaping $BTC‘s next move. pic.twitter.com/TZANZZaQIF

— CryptosRus (@CryptosR_Us) June 10, 2026

Le was careful to frame the disposal in terms of balance sheet management rather than conviction. He cited three reasons for the sale: establishing that Strategy can sell when necessary, confirming that internal systems for executing Bitcoin disposals are fully operational, and creating opportunities to capture tax losses on Bitcoin acquired at lower cost basis — the company has purchased BTC at prices ranging from $10,000 to $125,000 per coin.

Critically, he said the sale was not driven by financial distress.

“We did not need to sell our Bitcoin to satisfy our dividends,” Le said. “We’re able to do that through other capital-raising activities.”

Proceeds from the sale were directed toward distributions on the company’s STRC perpetual preferred stock.

Le also pointed out that Strategy remained a net buyer: on balance, the company purchased approximately 1,500 Bitcoin over the same period it sold the 32 coins.

The most pointed exchange came when the host pressed Le on the backlash from investors who believed Strategy had pledged never to liquidate its Bitcoin reserves. Le acknowledged the frustration but was unapologetic.

“We have a set of constituents that we have to be able to answer to,” he said, listing common stockholders, preferred shareholders, debt holders, and Bitcoin holders. “When it makes sense for our common stockholders for us to sell our Bitcoin, we will.”

Le suggested the loudest critics were retail investors and “crypto anarchists” ideologically committed to permanent hodling — not the institutional shareholders the company interacts with directly.

“Our institutional shareholders that we talked to don’t seem to be unnerved by it,” he said.

This was not Strategy’s first Bitcoin disposal. In December 2022, the company sold 704 BTC at $16,776 per coin and repurchased 810 BTC two days later — a tax-loss harvesting maneuver that exploited the lack of a crypto wash-sale rule.

Jeffrey’s chief market strategist David Zervos, who joined Le on set, asked about the macro picture around Bitcoin, noting weakness across traditional safe-haven assets. Le acknowledged the broader headwinds, citing three macro forces pressuring Bitcoin: uncertainty around the Federal Reserve’s interest rate path, two ongoing global wars, and a lack of regulatory clarity from Congress on pending crypto legislation.

Still, Le remained bullish on Bitcoin’s long-term thesis. 

“I do think Bitcoin is a hedge against inflation. I think Bitcoin is a hedge against big government,” he said, adding that the current environment — potentially a cyclical drawdown — mirrors the roughly 75% pullback seen in May 2022, four years ago.

Bitcoin price and Strategy shares under pressure

The market, for now, is less sanguine. Bitcoin was trading around $61,600 on June 10, 2026 — down more than 40% from its all-time high of $126,198 reached in October 2025. The sell-off deepened after the Strategy announcement coincided with record spot ETF outflows estimated between $2.8 billion and $3.5 billion, triggering $1.8 billion in forced liquidations in a single day.

MSTR shares have been caught in the same downdraft, trading near $117–$127 as of this week — down roughly 67% from their 52-week high of $457.

Strategy has since resumed buying, acquiring 1,550 BTC at an average price of $65,332 between June 1 and June 7 in a move analysts characterized as an effort to restore market confidence. 

As of late May, the company held 845,256 Bitcoin at a total cost basis of approximately $63.97 billion.

Alcoa shares in New York were hammered the most in over a year on Wednesday after CFO Molly Beerman warned investors that the company’s alumina segment faces heavy losses from the energy shock and ongoing disruption at the Hormuz maritime chokepoint.

Beerman was blunt with investors while giving a presentation at the Wells Fargo Industrials & Materials Conference.

She said, “Our alumina segment is very pressured right now,” adding, “The segment as a whole will be underwater.”

Beerman said the unprofitability in the alumina segment stems from a toxic cocktail of soaring energy costs, supply disruptions in the Gulf region, and LNG disruptions in Western Australia following Cyclone Narelle.

Alcoa’s alumina refineries are heavily exposed because they rely on fuel and electricity, and typically ship material to aluminum smelters in the Persian Gulf.

Alcoa’s alumina refineries are mainly in Western Australia, Brazil, and Spain. None are located in the Gulf region.

What’s important is that the company’s refining assets are outside the Gulf, but its alumina cargoes feed Gulf smelters, making the business exposed to ongoing Hormuz shipping disruption and Gulf energy shocks.

Alcoa expects 2026 Alumina segment production of 9.7-9.9 million metric tons and shipments of 11.8-12.0 million metric tons.

Beerman’s warning sent shares tumbling 9.5% in New York on Wednesday, marking the largest one-day drop in 14 months. Shares were up 2% in premarket trading, clawing back some of yesterday’s losses.

Year-to-date, the stock is up 23.4% and is nearing its 2022 highs.

According to Bloomberg data, Wall Street analysts are mostly bullish on AA. 

We have cited several institutional metal desks, including Mercuria, Goldman, and JPMorgan, all of which see the Gulf energy shock producing a supply shock in the aluminum market. This has sent prices back to 2022 highs.

Mercuria commodities analyst Nick Snowdon recently told Reuters on the sidelines of the Financial Times Commodities Global Summit in Lausanne, Switzerland, that “The scale of the supply shock we’re seeing in the aluminum market is probably the largest single supply shock a base metals market has suffered in the post-2000 era.”

Snowdon then told the outlet, “We are already in a ‘black swan’ event. No one could have foreseen something on this scale.”

Latest reporting:

• Aluminum Supply Crisis Is About To Get Worse
• Aluminum Bull Case Gains Traction As Output Shrinks

Alcoa recently warned investors that the energy shock would weigh on second-quarter earnings.

The European Union, which has been starved for cheap energy since the start of the Ukraine war, is betting that the future of its energy system lies under the North African sun. On Tuesday, the European Commission pledged €5 billion of EU money to renewables projects in North Africa and the Middle East, which could feed electricity back into Europe’s grid, Politico reported.

The dream is that solar panels in the sun-soaked Sahara Desert and wind turbines along the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean generate electricity that is then sent through high-voltage transmission lines under the sea and into Europe’s grid. While visionary, the probability of this happening in the next decade is slim, meanwhile the bill for Europe – which is even more cash-strapped than it is energy-strapped – would be astronomic.

That electricity would replace imported fossil fuels, helping Europe meet its ambitious electrification and climate targets.

The Commissions hopes the EU funding will lure private money to co-invest, mobilizing up to €25 billion of investment in solar, wind, hydrogen, electricity grids and other clean technologies by 2035.

“The EU’s bill for fossil fuel imports has increased by over €47 billion in the past 100 days, but not a single molecule of energy in addition,” EU energy chief Dan Jørgensen said during a press conference announcing the new initiative on Tuesday.

By 2035, the Commission expects the initiative to support the development of at least 15 gigawatts of new renewable-energy capacity, create more than 100,000 jobs and strengthen electricity interconnections across the Mediterranean. It wasn’t clear if the Commission also factored in the astronomic costs such a project would require, or where it would get the funds.

The launch of the initiative, known as T-MED, comes as Europe faces renewed volatility in global energy markets because of the war in Iran. Jørgensen linked the initiative directly to the current crisis, arguing that recent events have once again exposed the risks of relying on fossil fuels.

“Our energy security must be based on electrified energy systems that are based on clean energy, modern grids and increased connectivity,” he said.

According to Brussels, North Africa and the Middle East holds around 2,300 gigawatts of renewable-energy potential,  more than twice the EU’s current installed capacity. Solar and wind power can be produced 30 to 40 percent more cheaply than in Europe, the Commission estimates.

“Our objective is simply to turn potential into projects, projects into investments and investments into jobs and growth,” said Mediterranean Commissioner Dubravka Šuica during the launch on Tuesday.

Yet the scale of the challenge remains enormous. By the Commission’s own estimates the region will require well over €100 billion in investment by the end of the decade to fully exploit its renewable-energy potential. Officials acknowledged Tuesday that the €25 billion target is only a starting point. Meanwhile, as Rabo’s Michael Every notes, such a project would require both massive capital as well as Africa not wanting that power for its own economy, not to mention an EU ability to physically protect such installations in a region plagued by Islamist attacks and Russian influence in places. “That could therefore cost more than €100bn.”

The Commission hopes a new T-MED investment platform, due to become operational in September, will help bridge that gap by bringing together governments, development banks, project developers and private investors. At the same time, Brussels plans to push partner countries to simplify permitting procedures, improve grid access and strengthen regulatory frameworks in order to make projects more attractive to investors, which of course will be critical since the project would have to be funded with new debt. Lots of debt.

The initiative resembles a strategy Europe has pursued before. More than a decade ago, the Desertec project sought to harness North African solar power and export it to Europe. Despite early enthusiasm, the project ultimately ended up as a – pardon the pun – flaming disaster amid political uncertainty, financing challenges and concerns over the cost of new infrastructure.

Similar projects in other parts of the world have also collapsed: the Sun Cable project, for example, which promised to power Singapore with Australian sunlight via what would have been the longest undersea power cable in the world, was a flop.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

The European Union recently announced the first recipients of its new European Order of Merit, the organization’s highest award. The headliner was Angela Merkel, former Federal Chancellor of Germany, who indeed personifies the European Union for both her fans and her critics. For many years, some of us have criticized Merkel as one of the leading forces behind European censorship efforts that have eviscerated the “Indispensable Right.” 

Not surprisingly, Merkel called for more censorship and attacks on free speech to a thrilled audience of EU bureaucrats and globalists.

In one of the most ironic moments, Merkel declared, “Europe was not handed to us. It was built treaty by treaty, crisis by crisis and by people who chose solidarity over division and cooperation over self-interest.” Indeed, it was not handed to them.

As I discuss in my new book, “Rage and the Republic, the EU was formed by design to incrementally get citizens in Europe to give up their national identities and rights:

The EEC worked to remove barriers to trade and coordinate national regulations to achieve greater uniformity. As nations conformed to such transnational standards, the final step toward transnational governance became less of a conceptual barrier for citizens, particularly younger citizens…

…The evolution of the EU is a cautionary tale. It began with assurances of marginal coordinating bodies and policies over areas like nuclear power and scientific research. Through this planned incrementalism, each insular move was defended on its narrow purpose while dismissing objections as nationalistic or conspiratorial. That planned incrementalism worked brilliantly in getting citizens to accept transnational governance.

Merkel was critical in that effort. She is blamed for opening the borders to a flood of undocumented immigrants that has caused rising violence and protests throughout Europe. However, her crowning jewel was the crackdown on free speech. She can honestly claim that Germans (and Europeans as a whole) have fewer rights after her public service. She increased the power of government, stripped away free speech rights, and reduced national identities without firing a shot.

Merkel consistently opposed free speech, building a censorship system that gave the government ever greater control over speech. Her decision to first apologize to authoritarian Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for a satirical poem and then approve the prosecution of the comedian is a shocking and chilling disgrace. Now, she is throwing her support behind a crackdown on “hate speech” on social media like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube — radically expanding the already broad scope of government regulation of speech.

Merkel declared, “I support efforts by Justice Minister Heiko Maas and Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere to address hate speech, hate commentaries, devastating things that are incompatible with human dignity, and to do everything to prohibit it because it contradicts our values.”

Merkel was a driving force in using such subjective standards as “compatibility with human dignity” as a foundation for government-imposed speech controls.

Merkel also threatened social media companies, warning they would face a government crackdown if they failed to get rid of “fake news.” Merkel insisted that such postings must be dealt with by the companies or the government will step in.

In her speech in May to the EU, Merkel doubled down on her attacks on free speech as a threat to the world order. She called for the prosecution of  American companies for spreading “disinformation” and “hate” online.

She denounced the “so-called social media” platforms as still not facing “accountability for lies.” She added, “I can only encourage you to continue regulating social media.”

I could think of no better recipient for the first European Order of Merit. No one better sums up EU values than Angela Merkel and her unrelenting campaign against free speech. For globalists who have called for “A New World Order with European Values,” Merkel is the perfect personification of a globalist dream of a world of regulated speech and transnational government.

Poland will not obstruct the commencement of negotiations regarding Ukraine’s accession to the European Union, but Warsaw remains firmly opposed to granting any preferential treatment to Kyiv, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has told journalists.

Relations between the two Eastern European allies have reached crisis-mode of late, after President Volodymyr Zelensky named an elite special operations unit after “UPA Heroes” – to denote a high honor for battlefield performance.

For Warsaw, uplifting this name is tantamount to backing the genocide against the Polish people:

For Poland, the UPA, or the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, is responsible for a campaign of genocidal ethnic cleansing in the 1940s that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 100,000 Polish civilians in Volhynia (known as Volyn in Ukrainian and Wołyń in Polish), a historic region with deep Polish and Ukrainian roots. This violence also systematically targeted Jewish survivors who had escaped the Holocaust.

Amid the diplomatic dispute sparked by the renaming, the Polish government is still promising not to let the issue steer its thinking on Ukraine’s aspirations to join the European Union. It is pledging to remain objective related to examining Ukraine’s status.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk specifically pledge before reporters this week that his government will not use the WW2 issue to block the start of EU negotiations centered on Ukraine.

“We are not going to trade our support for [European] ambitions of Ukraine,” Tusk stated. According to more background:

The Prime Minister was responding to a reporter’s question about whether Warsaw intended to block the accession talks following recent decisions by Volodymyr Zelenskyy to glorify historical followers of Stepan Bandera.

Despite the diplomatic friction, Tusk emphasized that Warsaw would maintain a strict, standard approach to the accession process.

“Nevertheless, there will be no special terms from our side. Poland will support Ukraine on its path to Europe on terms that will be European, as well as safe and beneficial for Poland,” Tusk added.

🔴Poles’ Reaction to “Heroes of the UPA” is an act of Cain

Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn — an educator within the Azov-rooted 3rd Assault Brigade whose callsign is “Nachtigall” (after the Abwehr battalion formed from the OUN in 1941) — described Polish outrage over awarding a military… pic.twitter.com/kxXat3M3in

— Marta Havryshko (@HavryshkoMarta) June 7, 2026

Poland also has other pressing concerns, not the least of which is the immigration and war refugee issue. Poland has throughout over four years of the Ukraine war had to absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees and war-displaced families.

A future where Ukraine could become part of the EU might prove a major drain on Poland’s own struggling economy and resources.

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

In his words, talk about Russia attacking NATO “is not simply nonsense; it is a provocation.”

Several top “Non-Russian Pro-Russians” (NRPR) influencers rang the alarm last month about Russia’s alleged plans to attack NATO, which were inspired by top hawk Sergey Karaganov and then Russian Ambassador to the OSCE Dmitry Polyanskiy ominously channeling his rhetoric. Readers can review examples of their warnings here, here, here, here, and here. Casual NRPRs therefore braced themselves for what would have in that scenario almost certainly been the start of World War III had it come to pass.

It obviously hasn’t and it likely won’t ever, however, judging by Putin’s response when he was recently asked about these alleged plans during a meeting with foreign journalists. In his words, “Why would Russia attack Europe or go to war with NATO? What would be the purpose? As I have said before, these claims are not merely nonsense. In my view, they are a deliberate provocation designed to create the impression of a threat that does not actually exist.”

Putin then elaborated that “The objective is to persuade their populations to increase defence spending and, as a first step, to pay for the regime that seized power in Kiev. That, I believe, is the real explanation. It is not simply nonsense; it is a provocation. What surprises me, however, is that some people in European countries appear to believe it. I find that astonishing. The whole notion is simply absurd. It would be amusing if it were not so sad.”

It’s not just “some people in European countries” who “appear to believe it”, but his own top hawk is championing this policy and it was recently amplified to the max by top NRPR influencers, many of whom can be described as “state-adjacent” due to being platformed by publicly financed media, attending government-organized conferences, and/or taking state-secured tours of Donbass.

Casual NRPRs are therefore left to wonder whether Putin is telling the truth or is “psyching out the West”.

It’s always best to defer to what Putin himself says in such cases whenever confusion arises, which is due to top NRPR influencers practicing what’s been called “Potemkinism”, or the creation of “alternative realities” about Russian interests and policy for “strategic purposes” (whatever they might be). The most infamous example is that Putin is an anti-Zionist secretly allied with Iran against Israel despite him being a proud lifelong philo-Semite as proven by his many quotes to this end from the official Kremlin website.

Accordingly, while it would be inaccurate describe the fiercely loyal Karaganov as a “provocateur” in the spirit of how Putin condemned such folks who advocate for Russia to attack NATO, he nevertheless powerfully rebuffed hawks such as him as well as the top NRPR influencers who hyped up his rhetoric. That said, Russia’s foreign spy service did indeed warn last month that their country might carry out retaliatory strikes against Latvia if Ukraine launches drones from there, which should be taken seriously.

That’s altogether different than what Karaganov has been pushing for, namely a first strike against NATO that could easily spiral into World War III, and it’s important for casual NRPRs to understand this. As Putin himself phrased it, such talk “is not simply nonsense; it is a provocation.” When those on Russia’s side do it, no matter what their intentions might be, they inadvertently “persuade [Westerners] to increase defence spending and, as a first step, to pay for the regime that seized power in Kiev.”

Earlier today, in a report discussing how “AI bills are out of control“, JPMorgan tech guru and TMT salesman, Mark Schilsky wrote that “most of my high level investor discussions focus on one major topic: when will the party end? Put another way, tech investors have made so much money in Semis so quickly that they are looking for potential warning signs that the music is about to stop. Predicting such an end is incredibly difficult. As such, investors are searching for forward-looking indicators that might suggest the AI party is nearing a peak.” 

Here, the JPM trader highlighted perhaps the clearest indicator that the music was about to stop: “A slowdown in the growth of the annualized run-rate revenues of the major AI labs. If there is any sort of second derivative ‘kink’ in their growth algorithms, that could portend a future problem for the AI trade.”

In response to this, we pointed to just such a “slowdown in the run-rate revenues”, when we showed that the Silicon Data token price index is down for 7 straight days to a level last seen in mid-January, or long before the current agentic craze started. Almost as if it knew something… 

Turns out it did: late on Wednesday, with futures surging and Korean stocks erasing a nearly 5% drop and turning green, and euphoria generally back front and center, the WSJ may have burst the AI bubble when it reported that – contrary to conventional wisdom that token prices will magically go to infinity – OpenAI, which has been badly lagging both the revenue and IPO race with Anthropic in recent months – was considering “drastically lowering the prices it charges users” in a panic scramble to regain market share and win back customers from archrival Anthropic.

And so, at a time when there is suddenly a mass realization that token prices had been soared in recent weeks, a wake-up call which JPM lovingly described as follows: “investors have been discussing the possibility that much of the token spend that corporate America is currently incurring is ‘wasted’. Anecdotes from companies like UBER aren’t helping this narrative”, OpenAI is weighing significant cuts to what it charges for tokens. Hilariously, the move would be in anticipation of similar cuts the company expects at Anthropic, which is trying to double how much it charges for its latest model, Fable, which provides at best a very modest modest improvement in performance over Opus 4.8.

In short, we now have a classical deflationary race to the bottom, precisely the opposite of what the profit-strapped industry desperately needs to grow into its gargantuan balance sheets (and massive SPVs); Instead, the AI world is about to get hit with a collapse in both revenues and profit margins, while cash burn goes into full-on incinerator mode.

Warning that “business executives have begun to balk at the high prices for AI usage”, the WSJ writes that OpenAI CEO Altman said at a recent event that costs had become “a huge issue.”

“I think we’ll have a lot of ways we can help people get more value for less spend,” he said.

In other words, LLMs tried to push up token prices to and beyond their breaking point… and succeeded.

And now it’s time for the brutal drop: a drastic price war will erode the profit margins of both companies, which already lose billions of dollars because of the enormous cost for computing resources needed to run AI systems. 

Altman’s decision to start a price war was prompted by OpenAI’s attempt to catch up with its younger rival in the race to win enterprise customers that are paying large amounts of money for AI tools that can improve workplace productivity. Anthropic’s revenue recently surged
“after its coding tool Claude Code went viral among software engineers, and the five-year-old startup surpassed OpenAI’s valuation for the first time.”

Or at least that’s the WSJ version of events. In reality what happened is that Anthropic quietly annualized the one-time bumper revenue from Feb-May during the agentic splurge when nobody had any idea what they were paying, to come up with the ludicrous $47BN ARR, which they then actively paraded ahead of their IPO. But let’s see what Anthropic’s ARR is next month will be after clients finally check their token bills.

Sure enough, as we have been writing repeatedly in recent weeks, “some corporations poured so much money into Anthropic’s products that their leaders are now seeking to rein in spending. Earlier this year, an Uber executive said the company had maxed out its 2026 budget for agentic, or autonomous, AI use, and another company leader said last month that it was difficult to link AI coding productivity improvements to new customer features.”

In other words, yet again the age-old question of whether and when AI will have a positive ROI rears its ugly head, and the answer is not any time soon… if ever. 

Such comments from many executives have triggered a broader debate within Silicon Valley about so-called “tokenmaxxing,” or the practice of using as many tokens as possible to boost productivity, including in ways that don’t generate returns on investment. That may have worked 6 months ago when LLMs were giving out compute for free to capture market share, but it doesn’t work now that all the major AI companies are suddenly charging an arm and a kidney for an “agent” that responds to emails. 

As the WSJ concludes, “a price war would be an early test of the strength of both companies’ business models ahead of hotly anticipated public listings.” OpenAI and Anthropic have captured the majority of revenue from new AI products, powering their rise. But an underlying risk that investors have long identified is the interchangeability of their products, and the ease with which customers can abandon one for the other. 

There is a bigger risk: as we noted one week ago, in the coming price war, neither OpenAI nor Anthropic will win. Instead it will be the country that has made reverse engineering Western technology and then selling it back to the west at 90% off, into an art form. Yes, China is about to enter the chatbot. 

Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump’s pick for a key intelligence post has left Democrats and Republicans at odds over a spy law set to lapse on June 12.

As the clock ticks down, lawmakers are contemplating Trump’s latest proposal: another short-term extension of the authority while the president searches for a permanent nominee other than his chosen acting director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows the government to spy on foreign targets outside the United States.

It has long been controversial, in part because Americans can also be caught up in its warrantless surveillance dragnet. Section 702’s defenders stress its importance to national security, the risks of allowing it to expire, and the strength of the 2024 reforms to the program.

The provision was renewed in late April for a period of 45 days as some lawmakers pushed for reforms to the law.

Also in late April, the House passed a three-year renewal of the spy law with some reforms, though without new warrant requirements.

Democrats raised concerns with re-upping it after Trump selected Pulte as acting director of national intelligence (DNI).

Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and a close Trump ally, is set to replace outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard on June 19 while retaining his other duties.

Acting appointments do not require Senate confirmation—but Democrats and some Republicans in the Senate appeared less than enthusiastic about the selection after Trump announced it on June 2.

When asked about Pulte on June 2, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who lost the GOP Senate primary to Trump-backed Ken Paxton, told reporters, “I see no evidence of any qualifications for that job.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) speaks at a rally for his Senate primary campaign in Austin, Texas, on Feb. 17, 2026. Nathan Worcester/The Epoch Times

That same day, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, declined to comment on Pulte’s fitness for the position when asked about him.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the intelligence committee, voiced shock and disapproval of Trump’s selection at a June 2 hearing, noting that Pulte lacked experience in law enforcement, the military, and other relevant domains.

He also warned that the pick could undermine public confidence in Section 702.

On June 5, almost all Senate Democrats, joined by some Republicans, blocked a measure to renew the provision.

With the Pulte controversy brewing, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) met with Trump at the White House on June 9. Johnson’s staff confirmed the meeting to The Epoch Times but did not elaborate on what was discussed.

On June 10, Trump laid out a new path forward on Truth Social.

“I am asking Congress to send me a short-term extension of FISA to provide time for the selection and confirmation of a permanent head of the agency,” the president wrote.

Some Senate Democrats continued to express concern about Pulte and Trump’s plan.

Warner told reporters he was not sure if there were enough votes to advance a short-term extension of the authority.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) speaks at a campaign event for Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate former Rep. Abigail Spanberger at H Mart in Centreville, Va. on Nov. 2, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) told reporters he would “listen to Senator Warner, adding that the choice of Pulte was “the best way to sabotage [Section] 702.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a frequent critic of Section 702, told The Epoch Times he had not seen Trump’s proposal, adding, “There’s no votes for this bill while Bill Pulte is still on the job.”

Yet, some key Democrats and aligned lawmakers signaled more optimism.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who is expected to succeed outgoing Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) in leadership, told reporters he was open to a short-term extension. He said he doesn’t anticipate the provision will lapse on June 12.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), an independent who caucuses with Democrats, told reporters a short-term extension could pass muster with him if it came with a clear timeline.

However, he said he would have issues with Pulte staying in the role “for an indefinite period.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told The Epoch Times he had no problems with Pulte.

“If he wants him to be acting as short-term [DNI], that’s fine,“ he said. ”If he wants to nominate him permanently, that’s fine by me.”

Hawley told reporters he would not raise opposition to a short-term extension of the authority.