Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in his new add-on role of national security adviser, is expected to significantly scale down the size of the National Security Council and make a drastic change to how it works, four people with direct knowledge of the plans told NBC News.
Shrinking the staff at the NSC would be in part designed to more closely align how it operates with the way President Donald Trump makes decisions, these people said. Rather than a large staff generating policy recommendations for the president, the idea is to create a version along the lines Trump prefers — more top-down, with the president directing the national security adviser who then leads the staff to carry out those orders, two of the people said.
The NSC, which is run out of the White House, is the core hub for coordinating a policy process across government agencies to help the president make decisions on foreign policy and national security matters. The size of its staff, which can be as many as several hundred, has changed under different presidents.
When Trump took office the NSC had 300 staffers, which was cut in January to about 150. The expected cuts could whittle the staff down to between 50 and 60, but a final decision has not been made, said three of the people with direct knowledge of plans. Rubio does not plan to fire any staff but is expected to reassign them to other agencies, a senior administration official with direct knowledge of Rubio’s decision-making said.
“Secretary Rubio is doing an incredible job serving as both Secretary of State and White House National Security Advisor,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to NBC News. “Under his leadership at the White House, the NSC team will be streamlined to ensure maximum efficiency and coordination with outside agencies.”
During his flight to the Middle East this past weekend, Rubio discussed the structure of the NSC with Sergio Gor, the White House director of presidential personnel who has managed the appointment of Trump’s staff.
Alongside other White House officials, Gor and Rubio reviewed data collected over the last three months about NSC personnel and settled on a plan to significantly cut down the size of the staff, the people with direct knowledge of the plans said.
The data included spreadsheets of NSC staff, positions and salaries, as well as possible redundancies where multiple staff are performing similar duties, one of these people said.
The NSC has grown considerably over the years. Under former President John F. Kennedy, it had about 20 employees, and it was still at just 40 in 1991. By 2000, it was up to about 100, and by 2010, there were roughly 370.
Its expansion troubled Congress. The late Sen. John McCain, R., Ariz., spearheaded a move to limit its size, and in 2016 Congress capped the number of policy-focused positions to 200 individuals. During the first Trump administration, the NSC was marked by heavy turnover — about 80 percent across senior roles, according to Katherine Kuzminski, director of studies at the Center for a New American Security.
Mike Waltz, who Trump removed as national security adviser earlier this month, had run the NSC in what two of the people with direct knowledge of the planned changes called a “traditional” style that mirrored the way then-President Joe Biden ran the agency, and was not aligned with what Trump prefers.
Rubio also discussed shifting some of the NSC staff’s responsibilities to other agencies, including the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency, one of the people with direct knowledge of the plans said. Currently, government agencies detail staff to work at the NSC, where they focus on specific national security issues or regions of the world and compile information to help inform the president’s decisions.
Under the expected new structure, individual government agencies would make their own recommendations to the national security adviser’s team, and if any coordination is needed, an official from one of the agencies would run point on the matter, according to one of the people with direct knowledge of the plans. The proposed plans to downsize the agency come after Trump fired some NSC officials in April, one day after he met with far-right activist Laura Loomer, who raised concerns about purportedly “disloyal” people working for the administration.
Rubio is expected to serve as national security adviser for at least six months, according to Trump. The president could name a more permanent replacement by the end of the summer, according to one source involved in discussions.
