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 since 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.
But 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 is 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 is considered a moderate Republican with substantial national security experience, is also expected to leave, 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.
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 recently as Monday at a meeting with the president and senior members of his national security team.
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.
