Secretary of State Marco Rubio‘s initial days leading U.S. foreign policy did not grab many headlines.
It seemed that the former Florida senator, overshadowed by special envoys handpicked by President Donald Trump, might have signed up to play a backup role despite the prestigious Cabinet post.
But any doubts about Rubio’s power and relevance now seem farcical as he not only participates in the highest-level diplomatic negotiations abroad but is also playing an increasingly important role when it comes to domestic policy.
Rubio is the first statesman since Henry Kissinger to be both secretary of state and acting national security adviser. He’s overseeing the restructuring of the United States Agency for International Development, and he’s outraging universities by promising to “aggressively revoke” visas for students linked to the Chinese Communist Party.
He was even happy to take responsibility for the deportation of illegal immigrants after Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) scolded him for the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia — “that guy is a gangbanger,” Rubio shot back without a second thought.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a realm of national politics in which Rubio is not involved.
The safe choice
When Trump returned to the White House earlier this year, it seemed as though every possible Cabinet appointee was destined for a grueling confirmation process.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz was swatted down immediately for attorney general. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was scrutinized and accused from every angle, from his drinking habits to his tattoos, before a razor-thin confirmation. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was pilloried as a crank and a conspiracy theorist before being confirmed as the health and human services secretary.
The reason was obvious. Trump spent the four years following his 2020 defeat planning his new government and prioritizing loyalty over establishment approval. His appointees were outsiders who offended the sensibilities of career congressmen.
“We are not in a typical presidential cycle. We usually have presidents who are elected to a first term, and they may or may not get elected to a second term — there’s that eight-year cycle of relevance and then off they go into retirement,” said Steve Yates, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “In many ways, we have a year-nine president.”
Yates continued, “Under a year-nine president, a lot of it is the president saying: This is what I have in mind to do, it’s extremely clear in terms of strategic direction, and I am going to have more of a Cabinet-led form of governance rather than kind of a White House think tank-like approach to policy formation.”
Rubio was the exception to the Cabinet of outsiders. The 14-year Florida senator received a unanimous 99-0 vote from his former colleagues, with the interrogations and grilling that filled his colleagues’ confirmation hearings giving way to a glorified celebration of his Senate career.
Sidelining the secretary of state?
Early into his tenure as secretary of state, Rubio seemed at risk of being iced out.
Trump appointed Steve Witkoff — a close, personal friend with no diplomatic experience — to serve as his special envoy to handle Israel’s war with Hamas and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Witkoff, whose marching orders, by all accounts, have been to act as a simple messenger for the president, was the U.S. official photographed in Doha, Paris, Moscow, and Istanbul as he worked to make Trump’s campaign promises of peace a reality.
“I think it’s important to understand that Steve Witkoff doesn’t appear to be calling the shots as it relates to these negotiations. He’s getting instructions from Washington as he travels,” Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner.
“I see him as an executor of the president’s wishes as it relates to specific deals that the president wishes to accomplish,” he continued. “Gaza ceasefire, hostage negotiations, Iran negotiations, Russia, Ukraine, you know. This is where Steve Witkoff is playing. And these are transactions.”
The globe-trotting former real estate developer’s role as a Trump surrogate on the international stage seemed to be forcing the State Department to play second fiddle.
Reports showed Rubio was carrying portfolios focusing mostly on restructuring his department and renegotiating relationships in Latin America.
“I think what the takeaway for me was that we were getting our own hemisphere in order before Rubio turned his sights on other challenges,” Schanzer said. “And so I think those were two important things that took place early on, where Rubio was taking a prominent role, but those were not headline-grabbing things.”
Expanding portfolios
The White House announced on May 1 that national security adviser Mike Waltz would be stepping down from his position.
It was an ungraceful exit following reports that Waltz unintentionally added a prominent journalist to a Signal group chat planning attacks on Yemen. Trump said he would be nominating Waltz as ambassador to the United Nations.
Somewhat surprisingly, Rubio replaced him as the nation’s preeminent national security official while still staying on as the secretary of state.
Seemingly overnight, Rubio leapt into national and international headlines.
He collaborated with Vice President JD Vance to quell India and Pakistan’s escalating tit-for-tat conflict that presented the possibility of war between two nuclear-capable states.
He began giving updates on peace talks with Russia and Ukraine during press gaggles and issued a condemnation of Germany’s intelligence agency after it designated the Trump-aligned Alternative for Germany party an “extremist group.”
He appeared on Fox News during Trump’s multi-leg Middle East trip to explain to Sean Hannity why Iran will “never have nuclear weapons” and threatened to “roll [nuclear enrichment] back one way or another.”
Rubio and Vance both traveled to Vatican City to greet Pope Leo XIV after the new pontiff’s election, forming a double-team of MAGA Catholics seeking to keep the administration in the Catholic Church’s goodwill.
His new role at the National Security Council seemed to expand his relevance even in realms not traditionally associated with the agency.
“I think now we’re actually seeing an even greater pivot because it looks like the National Security Council, which Marco Rubio runs, is now being downsized significantly,” Schanzer asserted. “And what this means is that we’re likely to see more power in the hands of the secretary himself.”
Critics call the recent widespread layoffs at the National Security Council a dangerous downsizing. Rubio called it “right-sizing.”
“The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State,” a White House official told Axios. “We’re gutting the Deep State.”
Rubio’s full embrace of the MAGA agenda has spoiled some of the bipartisan support that got him into the position, but he doesn’t seem to care much.
When Van Hollen told Rubio that he now “regrets” voting to confirm him as secretary of state, the former senator scoffed.
“Your regret for voting for me tells me I’m doing a good job, based on what I know about your record,” Rubio responded, sparking furious accusations that he is not taking his duties seriously.
No more firewalls
Now deputized with the president’s full backing, Rubio is directing State Department resources into domestic issues with foreign angles, prepared to play gatekeeper to noncitizens believed to be disruptive or subversive to the national interest.
The State Department began its initiative with investigations into the visa status of students at Columbia University who were believed to have participated in anti-Israel protests at the campus library.
That fight expanded to a nationwide crackdown on Chinese influence in U.S. higher education, culminating in the administration’s current war on Harvard University.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” Rubio announced last week.
At the same time, Rubio is offering State Department resources and authority to complement agencies such as Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in their mass deportation of illegal immigrants.
The new priorities were formalized in a Friday announcement from the State Department attributed to Rubio announcing a plan aimed at further developing a “more agile Department, better equipped to promote America’s interests and keep Americans safe across the world.”
“Over the past quarter century, the domestic operations of the State Department have grown exponentially, resulting in more bureaucracy, higher costs, and fewer results for the American people,” Rubio wrote. “Since my first day as Secretary, I have said that this Department must move at the speed of relevancy and, in April, announced a broad reorganization of the Department to better achieve that goal.”
Rubio said his restructuring was coordinated with feedback from “lawmakers, bureaus, and long-serving employees” to serve modern concerns better.
The plan will reportedly create a new Office of Remigration to facilitate larger and more efficient deportations through the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, according to Axios.
“I think he’s been clear that the policies he’s addressing are, in fact, relevant to the jurisdiction of what a secretary of state has,” Yates told the Washington Examiner. “He’s emphasized visas as being the purview of the Department of State. That’s just empirically true. And when it’s come to border and other issues, I think he’s similarly emphasized his jurisdiction.”
RUBIO ANNOUNCES VISA RESTRICTION FOR FOREIGNERS ‘COMPLICIT IN CENSORING AMERICANS’
Rubio is now the poster child for the Trump administration’s guiding political philosophy — breaking each facet of the executive branch out of entrenched silos and coordinating action across sectors without worrying about stepping on toes.
After all, if every Cabinet member is Team Trump, what’s the problem with sharing the workload?
“If we’re going to be effective, all of the president’s top surrogates have to share jurisdiction on this,” Yates said. “You can’t address the malign influences of the Chinese Communist Party by treating it only as a foreign policy challenge, or the issues in education as just a Department of Education challenge.”
“It’s going to have to be all-hands,” he continued. “And really, it’s up to the president to decide who he’s most comfortable with addressing these things.”
Trump seems to agree, and there’s no one he’s more comfortable with than Rubio.
“Marco Rubio, unbelievable, unbelievable. Marco, when I have a problem, I call up Marco,” Trump said of his secretary of state on the same day he appointed him to head the NSC.
“He gets it solved.”