Friday Briefing

Trump removed his national security adviserPresident Trump announced yesterday that he was removing his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, naming Secretary of State Marco Rubio as his interim replacement, and instead nominated Waltz as ambassador to the U.N. It was the first major personnel overhaul of top White House aides, and the kind of move he had wanted to avoid in his second term. Waltz had been on thin ice since he organized a group chat on the app Signal to discuss a sensitive military operation in Yemen and accidentally included a journalist. But even before the group chat leak, most of Trump’s advisers viewed Waltz as too hawkish to work for a president who was eager to reach a nuclear deal with Iran and normalize relations with Russia. What’s next: The selection of the next national security adviser will be a critical one, at a moment when the president’s top aides have differed sharply on how to handle China, Russia and Iran.