President Trump is ousting his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and another senior member of the White House’s foreign policy team, the first significant personnel overhaul of top aides in his second term, according to people familiar with the situation.
Mr. Waltz had been on thin ice for months, but his position became more precarious after it became public that he organized a group chat on the commercial messaging app Signal to discuss a sensitive military operation in Yemen and accidentally included a journalist in the conversation.
Most of Mr. Trump’s advisers had already viewed him as too hawkish to work for a president who campaigned as a skeptic of American intervention and eager to reach a nuclear deal with Iran and normalize relations with Russia.
Mr. Waltz’s deputy, Alex Wong, who worked on North Korea issues in Mr. Trump’s first term and who is considered a moderate Republican with substantial national security experience, is also expected to be removed, according to a senior administration official with knowledge of the situation. The official and others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal discussions.
There was no immediate announcement of a replacement for Mr. Waltz, and Mr. Trump has yet to formally say he is leaving. But the selection of the next national security adviser may prove a critical one, at a moment when his top national security and foreign policy aides have differed sharply on how to handle three of America’s most potent adversaries: China, Russia and Iran.
Mr. Trump is making the change just two weeks before his first major trip abroad, to Saudi Arabia and other Arab capitals in the Middle East, and in the midst of tense negotiations with Moscow and Tehran. Mr. Waltz had joined him in Rome a week ago, for the funeral of Pope Francis, and was in the background of the meeting in St. Peter’s Basilica with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine.
Mr. Waltz barely had time to organize a staff, much less tackle the hardest issues facing the president. Ordinarily a new national security adviser writes the administration’s national security strategy, often a yearlong process that involves hashing out differences among government agencies and cabinet members.
On some major issues — including how to engage China on its ambitions in the Indo-Pacific, its fast-growing nuclear program, its sophisticated cyberattacks on the United States and its allies and its effort to reunite Taiwan with the mainland — the administration never got started.
On Thursday morning, just as word of his ouster was beginning to circulate in national security circles in Washington, Mr. Waltz appeared on Fox News. It is unclear whether he knew then that he was being removed.
Mr. Waltz, a traditional Republican hawk who never made the public evolution toward Mr. Trump’s foreign policy views that Secretary of State Marco Rubio did, has been arguing internally for sharp sanctions against Russia if it fails to agree to a cease-fire with Ukraine. Mr. Waltz made that suggestion as an option for handling Russia as recently as Monday at a meeting with the president and senior members of his national security team.
So far, Mr. Trump has been reluctant to take anything but symbolic action against Russia, though at times he has threatened on social media to impose sanctions and tariffs.
And Mr. Waltz has been under siege by external allies of Mr. Trump for weeks, including the far-right activist Laura Loomer, who prompted the president to have Mr. Waltz fire several National Security Council staff members for what she perceived as disloyalty to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump has been loath to fire anyone from cabinet-level positions since he took office a second time, seeking to avoid the headlines about the chaos that engulfed his first term.
Mr. Trump fired his first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, within four weeks of his inauguration in 2017, saying he did so because Mr. Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about talks he held with the Russian ambassador. Mr. Trump ran through four national security advisers in his first term.
Discussions about replacing Mr. Waltz have been occurring in private for weeks, intensifying after the leaked Signal chat. Several members of the Trump team have pushed for Steve Witkoff, the New York real estate investor and Mr. Trump’s friend, to take the job, although it is unclear that he would want or accept the role.
Mr. Witkoff began the administration as Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, but his role quickly evolved as the president began to see him as his all-purpose dealmaker, sending him to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and to lead the Iran nuclear negotiations. If he were to take the national security adviser role, Mr. Witkoff would need an experienced deputy because he has only three months of government and foreign policy experience.
Mr. Witkoff has also been the focus of a spate of crushing media coverage on issues varying from his foreign policy chops to his sons’ business dealings.
Other ideas that have been discussed include having Marco Rubio serve as both secretary of state and national security adviser — a joint arrangement that has not existed since Henry Kissinger served in those roles for President Nixon. Mr. Rubio, one person with knowledge of the discussions said, would likely serve in such a dual role only on an interim basis of about six months.
Another option that Mr. Trump’s aides have discussed is Christopher Landau, a deputy to Mr. Rubio, though, like Mr. Witkoff, it is not clear that he would take the role.
There is only a small group of people who are considered both ideologically aligned with Mr. Trump and trusted by his inner circle.
