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Welcome back to Foreign Policy<\/em>\u2019s SitRep.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what\u2019s on tap for the day: Trump fires much of the National Security Council<\/strong>, Israeli<\/strong> Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be ready to accept a U.S. cease-fire proposal<\/strong>, and U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance <\/strong>embraces bitcoin<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Even with the level of personnel turnover we have come to expect from U.S. President Donald Trump across his two administrations, last week\u2019s cuts to his National Security Council (NSC) were staggering in their scale and scope.<\/p>\n As NSC staffers prepared to head into the long Memorial Day holiday weekend on Friday afternoon, more than 100 of them reportedly<\/a> received an email from the council\u2019s chief of staff, Brian McCormack, saying they would not need to return and giving them 30 minutes to clear out their desks.<\/p>\n Key individuals ousted include<\/a> those charged with overseeing the council\u2019s work on the Middle East and Europe, as well as over a dozen staffers who worked on China<\/a>.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the first NSC shake-up of Trump\u2019s administration, either. His chosen national security advisor, Mike Waltz, was abruptly reassigned<\/a> to the United Nations earlier this month following the \u201cSignalgate<\/a>\u201d fiasco\u2014replaced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a double role\u2014and around half a dozen NSC staffers were reportedly<\/a> fired or reassigned back in early April.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s shrinking NSC presents a sharp contrast to the body\u2019s outsized power under his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, whose national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, was one of the administration\u2019s most prominent officials<\/a> and drove many of its foreign-policy priorities.<\/p>\n Why the purge?<\/strong> The White House says<\/a> that reducing the NSC\u2019s size will help\u00a0\u201cfacilitate more streamlined processes.\u201d<\/p>\n The changes reflect Trump\u2019s decision-making style, which is \u201capparently more informal,\u201d Michael Allen, a former NSC official in the George W. Bush administration, told SitRep.<\/p>\n \u201c[Trump] likes making decisions. Most of the time we hear of fewer NSC options and papers rising to the top, and more directives given from the top down,\u201d Allen said. \u201cTrump knows what he wants to do. He\u2019s looking for the people at the National Security Council to implement what he wants.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump also oversaw a significant reduction of the NSC back in 2020, toward the end of his first term in office, with then-National Security Advisor Robert O\u2019Brien slashing<\/a> the council\u2019s staff to less than half of what it was under President Barack Obama. Trump ultimately went through four national security advisors during his first term.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s actually a lot of continuity with these moves with the first Trump term,\u201d Jonathan Guyer, program director of the Institute for Global Affairs (IGA), a New York-based think tank, told SitRep, citing Trump\u2019s preference for conducting foreign policy through individual envoys such as his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in his first term and his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, in his current term. \u201cHe has this kind of kitchen cabinet of advisors,\u201d Guyer added. (The IGA published a tracker<\/a> for Trump\u2019s NSC staff last week that Guyer said has almost immediately become a \u201chistorical artifact.\u201d)<\/p>\n Potential problems. <\/strong>For decades, the NSC has been the nerve center for shaping U.S. foreign policy\u2014serving as a conduit between the White House and federal agencies while advising the president on pivotal security and diplomacy issues.<\/p>\n The NSC has two primary functions, said Allen, which are to \u201cstaff the president, to have his personal national security advisors in the building\u201d and to \u201ccoordinate the interagency on issues that the president cares about.\u201d<\/p>\n The influence of the NSC\u2014and the national security advisor, for that matter\u2014has varied from president to president. Trump has every right to shape it as he sees fit.<\/p>\n But critics<\/a> of Trump\u2019s approach say he\u2019s depriving himself of a crucial tool and dangerously disregarding expertise at a time when Washington is contending with a range of global crises and complicated issues: the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza, and nuclear negotiations with Iran, to name a few.<\/p>\n Though the White House contends that a smaller NSC will mean fewer cooks in the kitchen, the Trump administration may come to find that it\u2019s difficult to swiftly coordinate on pressing issues with far less staff on hand.<\/p>\n The size of the NSC staff \u201cdefinitely needed to be lower\u201d than it was under the Obama and Biden administrations, said Allen. If the staff is \u201ctoo big, it usurps the departments and the agencies,\u201d Allen said, but if it\u2019s too small then there\u2019s \u201carguably less coordination and less expertise at the top.\u201d This is a \u201ctrade-off\u201d that every administration has to figure out for itself, he said.<\/p>\n The NSC isn\u2019t the only agency facing a purge of senior staffers under Trump. Three of the top six division heads of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) will depart the agency by the end of this month, according to an internal memo first reported<\/a> by the Washington Post<\/em>. Several heads of the agency\u2019s regional offices will also leave, the memo said, along with its heads of finance, strategy, human resources, and contracting.<\/p>\n CISA has long been tasked with defending U.S. government systems, elections, and critical infrastructure from foreign hackers. It has also long been a target of Trump, who fired<\/a> CISA director Chris Krebs in 2020 for contradicting Trump\u2019s claim that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election that Trump lost. (Trump has continued to target<\/a> Krebs in his second term, revoking his security clearance and ordering the attorney general and other officials to review his actions during his time in that job.)<\/p>\n What should be high on your radar, if it isn\u2019t already.<\/em><\/p>\n Trump flirts with punishing Putin. <\/strong>Russia on Wednesday proposed<\/a> holding another round of peace talks with Ukraine next week in Istanbul. The first round, which Russian President Vladimir Putin skipped, failed to secure a cease-fire as both Kyiv and Moscow remained far apart on key issues.<\/p>\n Moscow\u2019s push for fresh peace negotiations comes as Trump has expressed growing impatience with Russia over its continued attacks against Ukraine. Russia in recent days launched some of its largest missile and drone attacks<\/a> of the war. Trump, who has raised the prospect of slapping new sanctions or other economic penalties on Russia amid the lack of progress in his effort to secure a peace deal, on Tuesday warned Putin that he\u2019s \u201cplaying with fire.\u201d<\/p>\n But Trump on Wednesday told reporters<\/a> at the White House that he\u2019s holding off on taking any concrete steps yet because he believes a deal may be close and doesn\u2019t want to \u201cscrew it up by doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n Is a Gaza cease-fire on the horizon? <\/strong>Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday told families of hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza that he has accepted a new cease-fire proposal put forward by Witkoff. This comes as Israel faces mounting criticism over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and a controversial new aid distribution system\u2014which is also backed by the U.S.\u2014that\u2019s been marred by violence and chaos<\/a> this week.<\/p>\n Hamas is reviewing the proposal, which would reportedly<\/a> involve releasing 10 living hostages and 18 dead hostages in separate phases in exchange for a 60-day cease-fire. There are 58 hostages remaining in Gaza, 20 of whom are believed to be alive.<\/p>\n Ruby Chen, the father of American Israeli Israel Defense Forces soldier and hostage Itay Chen, who is believed to have been killed on Oct. 7, 2023, was among those who met with Netanyahu on Thursday. After the meeting, Chen told SitRep that there\u2019s optimism surrounding getting a partial deal across the finish line. But he added that such an agreement would be \u201cdicey\u201d and emphasized that the hostage families \u201chave been advocating for a deal that shows a path to get to the last hostage.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re able to get half, why not get all of them out?\u201d Chen said.<\/p>\n More China chip curbs. <\/strong>The Trump administration has reportedly<\/a> blocked several U.S. companies that make software used to design semiconductor chips from selling to China, further escalating a battle over access to critical technologies. It\u2019s one of several recent U.S. broadsides against Beijing, including curbs<\/a> on the sale of jet engine technology to China and an announcement by Rubio that the United States will begin revoking the visas<\/a> of Chinese students.<\/p>\n