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Brian Slodysko.

Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency Bill Pulte speaks with reporters at the White House, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Trump housing finance chief OKs more mortgage spending and adds risk for government-backed lenders

January 24, 2026

President Donald Trump’s federal housing finance director, Bill Pulte, quietly granted government-backed lenders the authority to nearly double a $200 billion bond purchase that Trump ordered to try to lower mortgage rates. That’s according to an email obtained by The Associated Press. The move could introduce a new level of risk for the companies. The purchasing rule changes would reverse nearly two decades of bipartisan consensus that limits should be imposed after the government bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008-09. That crisis led to to them being placed into a government conservatorship.

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FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at the Bitcoin 2024 ConferenceJuly 27, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)

How a Trump Media deal with a crypto firm exposes potential conflicts of interest

December 16, 2025

Crypto.com was under siege — investigated by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration and told enforcement action was likely. Then Donald Trump won the 2024 election, and the company’s legal peril dissipated. Crypto.com tapped a lobbyist close to Trump and donated $11 million to political committees tied to the Republican president. The investigation was dropped. Then the company announced it would invest roughly $1 billion into a venture with Trump’s social media company. Legal and ethics experts say the arrangement offers a case study of the conflicts of interest that have arisen in Trump’s second presidency. The White House says neither the president nor his family has ever engaged in conflicts of interest.

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FILE - Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency Bill Pulte speaks with reporters at the White House, Sept. 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

Top Fannie Mae officials ousted after sounding alarm on sharing confidential housing data

November 13, 2025

A confidant of Bill Pulte, the Trump administration’s top housing regulator, provided confidential mortgage pricing data from Fannie Mae to a principal competitor. Emails reviewed by The Associated Press reveal the disclosure alarmed senior officials of the government-backed lending giant, who warned it could expose the company to claims that it colluded with a rival to fix mortgage rates. The emails show the data was shared with rival government-backed lender Freddie Mac by an associate of Bill Pulte, who was working on the Federal Housing Finance Agency director’s behalf. Fannie Mae and the FHFA both say they take compliance with the law seriously.

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FILE - Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, wife of impeached state Attorney General Ken Paxton, sits in the Senate Chamber at the Texas Capitol in Austin, Texas, May 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Senate hopeful, claimed 3 homes as his primary residence

July 24, 2025

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, Angela, are longtime owners of a $1.5 million home in a Dallas suburb. In 2015, they snapped up a second house in Austin. Then another. The problem: Mortgage documents signed by the Paxtons that contained inaccurate statements declared that each of those three houses was a primary residence, enabling the now-estranged couple to lock in low interest rates and save tens of thousands of dollars in mortgage payments, according to an Associated Press review of public records.

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