By Marc Caputo and Alex Isenstadt | Axios
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.”
Zoom in: White House officials point to an NSC structure that’s filled with committees and meetings that they say slow down decision-making and produce lots of jargon and acronyms.
- There’s a “sub-PCC,” an advisory body to the “PCC” (Policy Coordination Committees) and they feed the DCs (Deputies Committee), which in turn advise the PC (the Principals Committee of the Cabinet secretaries).
- “That’s the bottom-to-the-top approach that doesn’t work. It’s going away,” a senior White House official said. “All those things feeding up to principals are the unnecessary piece.”
- A third senior White House official said the NSC’s focus would be to “coordinate and advise — not carry out — policy.”
Zoom out: Supporters of the NSC’s longtime system have long said it promotes healthy debate and discussion about policies.
- A senior Trump administration official said the NSC’s bureaucracy may have been necessary for other presidents who’ve had secretaries and agencies at war with each other — but not Trump’s team.
- “If you have officials fighting each other and their agencies always involved in turf wars, you maybe need this process,” the official said.
- “That’s not what you have here. Rubio, [Treasury Secretary Scott] Besssent, [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth, [Attorney General Pam] Bondi — all of them know each other and like each other, and they know they’re there to execute the president’s will.”
Administration officials cite the example Trump’s move last week to call for the elimination of sanctions against Syria.
- After Trump made the announcement, a White House official said, Hegseth, Bessent and Rubio all told their deputies to follow Trump’s orders. Bondi, whose department had classified Syria’s leader as a terrorist did as well.
- “It was complete reverse workflow: Here’s what the president wants, get it done,” the official said. “It wasn’t, ‘Oh, let’s get the sub-PCC to send it to the PCC to go to the DC to go to the PC.’ “