DID DONALD EVEN EXIST:

When President Joe Biden took office in January, he took control of a national security decision-making apparatus that had been through one of the more tumultuous periods of American history. The officials serving during President Donald Trump's presidency worked through a commander-in-chief temporarily sidelined by COVID-19, his impeachment for attempted bribery of Ukraine, alienating and insulting NATO allies, coddling and wooing adversaries and dictators, stoking conspiracy theories and domestic violent extremism, all culminated by the siege at the Capitol just weeks before. 

"What the team inherited was not a blank page, but literally a burned page," said John Gans, who published a book about the National Security Council in 2019. "It was disused, it was dysfunctional, and it was completely totally disconnected from any of the traditions and processes and norms by which the National Security Council has functioned for 70-something years."

Biden's team is committed to returning national security-making to regular order, including giving agency heads regular access to the president, holding scheduled meetings, and in many ways recreating the panel's place during the Obama administration, a senior administration official told Defense One. 

"The biggest thing we did was we literally made it clear that we expected decisions to be made rigorously as part of the regular order process," the official said. "We hoped to show the NSC and the interagency that the way to advance an opinion was via the regular order process."

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