In one of the highest-profile departures from the Biden administration to date, top presidential adviser Susan Rice has announced plans to leave her White House position at the end of next month, as the Daily Wire reports.

Rice's decision will bring to a conclusion her often-controversial tenure as an influential force on the president's domestic agenda, a role in which she has served for more than two years,

Longtime Liberal Insider Leaving White House

Already well-known in D.C. circles prior to her time in the Biden White House, Rice also served eight years in the Obama administration, first as ambassador to the United Nations and subsequently as national security adviser, as the New York Post notes, and she also worked in a foreign policy capacity during the Clinton administration.

Remarking on Rice's impending departure was White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, who referenced her lengthy resume and declared that she has succeeded in raising Biden's Domestic Policy Council “to new heights.”

“It's extraordinary when you think about what she's done in terms of public service across her career, capped off by being the first person ever to be the national security adviser and domestic policy adviser. It really speaks a lot to her leadership and her range,” Zients stated, according to the Daily Wire.

White House chief economic adviser Brian Deese was also complimentary in his assessment of Rice's contributions but noted that the administration is now poised for a shift, saying, “Susan was there during this two-year period where there was just an incredible and historic burst of policymaking, and the next year and a half is going to be different. It's going to call for a different approach to policy.”

Polarizing Figure

Despite her history of landing powerful positions inside the White House, Rice's career has not been without its controversies, as the Post further explains.

Specifically, Rice is said to have butted heads with other top Biden administration figures, particularly over border-related issues, reportedly blasting Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra over his handling of migrant processing matters.

Last year, multiple past and present White House staffers told the American Prospect magazine that the work environment fostered by Rice was “abusive” as well as “dehumanizing," according to the Post.

Describing those alleged tendencies in more charitable terms was former White House chief of staff Ron Klain, who said, as NBC News noted, “Susan is blunt and direct, and some people find that style effective; some people I think are intimidated by it.”

Border to Blame?

The timing of Rice's departure coincides with recent reporting from the New York Times suggesting that she and others inside the administration dismissed concerns that had been raised about unaccompanied minor migrant children being released into the country only to be forced into unsafe working conditions.

The Times detailed documents indicating that Rice was long aware of what was happening to many migrant children following their hasty release into the country's interior after unscrupulous sponsors put to them to work for long hours in hazardous environments.

According to the report, Rice and those under her did not take action even when others in the administration advocated for more stringent vetting of the aforementioned sponsors of migrant youth, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Vivian Graubard, an administration adviser who collaborated with Rice on such matters, told the Times, “It was maddening,” and five HHS employees further claimed that they were ousted from their jobs after sounding the alarm – which Rice allegedly disregarded – about migrant child labor.

Critics abound

It was not just rivals within the Biden administration who took issue with Rice and the outsized role she has played in domestic policy over the past few years, with Richard Grenell, former acting director of National Intelligence under former President Donald Trump warning back in 2021 that she was not just a garden variety adviser but had assumed the role of a “shadow president.”

“Biden is too weak to stop the progressive Left from taking over,” Grenell declared. “[Vice President] Kamala [Harris] does not understand what's going on...[w]e have a shadow president in Susan Rice, and no one is paying attention.”

More recently, Rice was panned for a speech she delivered to activist Al Sharpton's National Action Network in which she claimed that the United States has had a GDP shortfall of $16 trillion dollars due to anti-Black racism, as Fox News reported.

Not only did that assertion attract additional scorn from Grenell, Pradheep Shanker of National Review observed sarcastically, as Fox News added, “Liberalism has reduced the size of the economy by $100 trillion. And I have as much proof of that as @AmbassadorRice does,” with both reactions suggestive of the fact that there are indeed folks on both sides of the aisle who are more than pleased to see Rice's impending exit.