WASHINGTON − Mike Waltz, President Donald Trump's national security adviser, is set to leave his White House post amid continued fallout weeks after he invited a journalist into a chat between top national security officials discussing plans for Yemen airstrikes.
A source familiar with the situation on May 1 confirmed Waltz's exit, as well as deputy national security adviser Alex Wong. Their departures mark the first major staff shake-up since Trump's return to the White House in January.
Trump had publicly stood by Waltz after his national security adviser and other members of the chat vigorously denied sharing any classified war plans on the publicly available app Signal. The chat was revealed when Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, published a March 24 story detailing how Waltz accidentally invited him into the communications.
Yet behind the scenes, the embarrassing mishap ‒ which even Trump started referring to as "Signalgate" ‒ took a toll on the relationship between Trump and Waltz, a former Republican congressman from Florida.
A replacement for Waltz has not been named, but one possibility could be Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, whose role has expanded to include negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
Waltz's departure, just 102 days into Trump's second term, marks the first high-ranking administration official to leave since the president's inauguration. Yet Waltz lasted longer than Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser, whom Trump fired in February 2017, 24 days into his first term.
The Waltz move comes after far-right activist Laura Loomer has exerted increasing influence in Trump's decision-making, including encouraging Trump to recently fire two senior officials on the National Security Council after a White House visit.
"Hopefully, the rest of the people who were set to be fired but were given promotions at the NSC under Waltz also depart," Loomer said in a post on X shortly after news broke about Waltz's exit.
Loomer, on a recent podcast hosted by reporter Tara Palmeri, recounted her recent Oval Office visit with Trump, saying she was prepared to show the president past footage from his 2016 campaign of Waltz criticizing him for remarks he made about U.S. service members.
"I was about to show this video of Michael Waltz, and then President Trump walked into the Oval Office," Loomer said, adding that she's kept it on her phone for "many years."
Just hours before news of his departure, Waltz appeared on Fox News, touting "leadership at its finest, led by our commander-in-chief" as he discussed new military technology investments.
With Waltz out, three original Trump picks for top posts who had been serving as Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House are now either gone or ‒ in the case of Matt Gaetz, Trump's initial nominee to lead the Justice Department, and Elise Stefanik, his onetime selection for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations ‒ never made it.
On the day of the initial Atlantic report revealing the Signal chat, Waltz said he took "full responsibility" for the "embarrassing" blunder. "We're going to get to the bottom of it," he told Laura Ingraham on Fox News.
Waltz mistakenly added Goldberg, a longtime national security journalist, to a chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal in mid-March that also included Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Vice President JD Vance, among other members of the Trump administration's top echelon.
Officials in the group discussed military plans to strike the Houthi militant movement in Yemen, and Hegseth sent a message detailing strike times by U.S. warplanes and drones, as Goldberg reported in the bombshell article.
Trump defended Waltz at the start of the controversy, saying it was a "mistake" and that "he's not getting fired." But fallout from the incident grew as lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees grilled Trump's intelligence officials and following reports of an additional Signal chat created by Hegseth in which the Defense secretary shared sensitive military information with his wife and brother.
As Hegseth repeatedly denied accusations that he had shared any classified war plans, The Atlantic published screenshots of messages Hegseth sent in the chat that detailed the exact times of planned strikes and how they would be delivered.
Waltz was also defiant for weeks before news of his departure. "No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS," he posted on X in March.
A former member of the Army's Green Berets, Waltz served three terms representing the sixth congressional district in North Central Florida. He was replaced in Congress by Republican Randy Fine, who won a special election in March.
Waltz was initially elected to the House in 2018, replacing Ron DeSantis after his rise to Florida governor. An officer in the Army National Guard, Waltz had served in combat zones multiple times. He had been a defense policy director in the Pentagon before being tapped by Vice President Dick Cheney as a counterterrorism adviser during the George W. Bush administration. Waltz retired from the National Guard last fall at the rank of colonel.
Dinah Voyles Pulver contributed to this report.
(Correction: An app notification to this story misstated the position of the national security adviser. It is not a Cabinet-level position.)