Rubio Made Permanent National Security Adviser as the NSC Runs With Fewer Than 50 Policy Staff

On 22 September the White House said Marco Rubio is now the permanent national security adviser, after 16 months as acting adviser. He stays Secretary of State. The only other person to hold both jobs at once was Henry Kissinger, from 1973 to 1975.

The appointment formalises how the National Security Council has worked since May 2025: a small White House staff, with the State and Defense departments doing the policy work the NSC once coordinated.

How the NSC shrank

The cuts came in stages. On 22 January 2025 about 160 career staff on loan from other agencies were told to clear their desks. In April several senior directors were dismissed. On 1 May the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and his deputy were removed and Rubio took over.

Later that month the White House announced a restructuring of a staff of about 350, aiming to roughly halve it. The NSC was to “coordinate and advise,” leaving policy to departments. By June 2025, a former NSC official writing in Lawfare counted fewer than 50 policy experts. The Middle East directorate had gone from ten officers to five; the Western Hemisphere had a senior director with no staff; no one covered Africa.

For comparison, the NSC had a peak of 222 policy staff under Obama, about 119 at the end of 2019 in Trump’s first term and 186 under Biden. A 2016 law caps it at 200 policy staff. There’s no minimum.

How decisions get made

The traditional NSC process works in tiers. Policy committees of assistant secretaries prepare options, deputies narrow them, and cabinet principals decide or take them to the President. According to the Lawfare account, meetings below the principals’ level were suspended on the chief of staff’s direction, and restarting them needed the approval of Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff. Principals still meet.

Michael Needham, Rubio’s counsellor and head of policy planning at State, became a deputy national security adviser in May 2026. That ties the White House staff more closely to State.

The case for and against

Supporters of the model say a big NSC staff slowed decisions and leaked, and that cabinet departments have the expertise. Rubio running both the policy process and the largest foreign affairs department removes a layer of friction.

Critics say the NSC’s job is to give the President options from every agency, including ones the Secretary of State disagrees with. Defence, intelligence, Treasury and Commerce all have a stake in decisions on Iran, China trade and Ukraine. If the coordinator is also one of the parties, the others’ views may not reach the President intact. The war with Iran, run largely from the Pentagon, and trade talks run from Treasury and USTR, test that.

What Congress can do

Congress set the NSC up in the National Security Act of 1947 and capped its size in 2016. It has little say over how a President uses it. The adviser isn’t Senate-confirmed, so the role escapes the hearings that cabinet posts face. Rubio is the exception: as Secretary of State he answers to Congress, which gives lawmakers more access to the person running the process than they’ve had in decades.