President-elect Donald Trump is rooting out critics in the National Security Council.
In an unprecedented move, top incoming Trump administration officials are deploying loyalty questionnaires on career civil servants inside the national security advisory body. Questions focused on who bureaucrats voted for in 2024, their political contributions and whether they’ve made social media posts against the incoming administration, per The Associated Press.
Some are preparing to leave the agency when Trump takes office as Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for National Security Adviser, eyes mass firings.
Waltz told Breitbart last week that he’d already begun the process of clearing out national security staffers from the Biden era and beyond.
“We’re taking resignations at 12:01 and we’re going to put the president’s team in place,” he said. “If anybody out there thinks I’m somehow now going to have a platoon full of Never Trumpers they’re full of it. It’s ridiculous.”
Former National Security Council member and Trump whistleblower Alexander Vindman slammed the political firings as a “stark and troubling” sign of Trump’s plans to consolidate power.
“By prioritizing loyalty above all else, the Trump administration will significantly undermine the foundations of good governance, jeopardize U.S. national security, and weaken U.S. democracy,” he said in a post to Bluesky.
Close Trump allies, including the authors of Project 2025, have urged the president-elect to replace thousands of career civil servants with pro-Trump recruits, even curating lists of potential hires. Trump is reportedly planning to reinstate Schedule F, a 2020 directive that allowed him to fire career bureaucrats and replace them with loyalists.
Beyond concerns over Trump’s preference for loyalists over competent civil servants, a mass exodus of experienced NSC staffers could pose security challenges. Per the AP, holdover national security adviser Jake Sullivan pleaded this case to incoming Trump officials.
“Given everything going on in the world, making sure you have in place a team that is up to speed, and, you know, ready to continue serving at 12:01, 12:02, 12:03 p.m. on the 20th is really important,” Sullivan reportedly said on Friday.
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