Last week, Donald Trump and Secretary of State (and acting National Security Advisor) Marco Rubio made some drastic cuts to the National Security Council (“NSC”). Naturally, the leftists are outraged—how dare he fire the people Democrats and the Deep State put in place?—but this is exactly what presidents have long done, and that they have a complete right to do.
The NSC was created via the National Security Act of 1947. The Act’s purpose was to enhance America’s defenses by eliminating the silos that had hindered the efficient exchange of information between different branches of the military and the government during World War II.
As originally constituted, the NSC consisted of the President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and the Chairman of the National Security Resources Board (“NSRB”). The Act also allowed (and still allows) the president to designate other officials to attend NSC meetings. The Act has been amended several times since then.
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In 1949, the Act added the Vice President and removed the secretaries of the different branches of the military, leaving only the Secretary of Defense. The NSRB chairman vanished, too. By 1986, statutory amendments had updated the NSC to include the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and the Director of Central Intelligence. As of now, the mandated staffing has the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Treasury, and the Director of National.
I mention all this to make the point that the statute has always envisioned the NSC consisting of a tight cadre of people, all of whom the President has nominated and all of whom have undergone Senate review. These are the President’s people, with the Senate’s imprimatur.
According to Grok (which spot checks suggest is accurate regarding the following facts), over the years, different presidents have significantly adjusted non-statutory council members to suit their vision of a robust, defensive foreign policy and the way they preferred to carry out their constitutional responsibilities.
As Grok accurately points out, some of the growth in staff has been inevitable, given the complex world in which we live. These include the increasing responsibilities that the Pax Americana brought after World War II, and the diffusion of geopolitical enemies following the Soviet Union’s collapse.
But the one inevitability in today’s Washington D.C. is that any heavily staffed institution is going to have a staff hostile to Donald Trump. That has become the nature of the federal bureaucracy.
For that reason, Trump and Rubio have taken a hatchet to the staffing list. Trump’s original National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, who is now the UN Ambassador, put 160 staffers on leave while he reviewed whether they were necessary. Now, it appears that those staffers, or others like them, will be permanently cashiered. Axios, which loathes Trump, reports:
President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have orchestrated a vast restructuring of the National Security Council, reducing its size and transferring many of its powers to the State and Defense departments.
Why it matters: Trump’s White House sees the NSC as notoriously bureaucratic and filled with longtime officials who don’t share the president’s vision.
- A White House official involved in the planning characterized the reorganization as Trump and Rubio’s latest move against what they see as Washington’s “Deep State.”
- “The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State. We’re gutting the Deep State,” the official said of the move, which will cut the NSC staff to about half of its current 350 members. Those cut from the NSC will be moved to other positions in government, officials said.
- “The right-sizing of the NSC is in line with its original purpose and the president’s vision,” Rubio told Axios in a statement. “The NSC will now be better positioned to collaborate with agencies.”
The axe, when it fell, fell hard and fast, with 100 NSC staffers put on leave and quickly escorted from the building. This is a typical corporate strategy to prevent sabotage.
As my brief history has shown, there is nothing lawless or ahistorical about this. American presidents have consistently reshaped the NSC since its creation. It is a president’s prerogative, because he is the person the American people chose to be the leader of America’s national security.
However, given the left’s outrage, you’d never guess this to be the case. Some are shocked, absolutely shocked, that a president would want people loyal to his vision, saying that only a dictator would do something like that (meaning all previous presidents have been dictators):
Others have been horrified that the administration quickly escorted people from the building (hint: sabotage):I’m told all directors of the NSC have been fired. The senior directors remain.
— Michael Fullilove (@mfullilove) May 23, 2025
Can you imagine Putin or Xi gutting their own policy coordination structures? https://t.co/iiL1pnWPgc
The following post sums up the overarching attitude, which is that (a) only Congress can fire NSC staffers (the basis, presumably, for inevitable lawsuits), and (b) that anyone Trump appoints will be stupid.The axe has fallen at the NSC, it’s been gutted on a Friday afternoon before a long holiday weekend. It’s “as unprofessional and reckless as could possibly be,” an admin official told me. Staffers had 30 mins to clean out their desks, over 100 dismissed. https://t.co/aY9O958XiI
— Alex Marquardt (@MarquardtA) May 23, 2025
Once again, Congress needs to do this, not the President! We need a full operating NSC without the uneducated Trump appointees! https://t.co/WiAYqgwY9V - National Security Council staff will be cut by half
— RichardBurrsPig (@BurrsPig) May 25, 2025
Ultimately, we don’t know if Trump will appoint good people. Israel’s supporters are, as always, worried. But the fact is that Trump has the absolute right to do this, and that’s the end of the debate.