Joel Kaplan, the man who built Facebook's US policy team from scratch, is leaving after 15-plus years; here's what makes his exit 'big'

Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer and Mark Zuckerberg's top Washington adviser for over a decade and a half, will leave the company next year. Axios first reported the move, which ends a run that began in 2011, when Facebook had no real policy operation in the US capital and Kaplan was asked to build one from the ground up.The timing is what makes this exit significant. Kaplan only took the top policy job in January 2025, replacing former British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg weeks before Donald Trump's second inauguration. He was widely seen as the executive who helped Meta repair its strained relationship with Trump, and his departure leaves the company redrawing its Washington playbook just as the US midterms approach.Kaplan shaped how Meta handled regulators, Trump and its own content rulesA Harvard Law graduate and former Marine artillery officer, Kaplan was deputy White House chief of staff for policy under President George W. Bush before joining Facebook. According to Axios, he shielded Meta's personalised ads business from regulatory attacks worldwide, starting in Europe, and guided Zuckerberg through several changes of party control in Congress and the White House.Associates told Axios he pushed internally for Zuckerberg's free-expression principles to be applied consistently, even when that was unpopular. Zuckerberg said in a statement that Kaplan had "worked on virtually every tough issue Meta has faced" during his time there.His tenure had its share of friction. Kaplan faced accusations of favouring conservative interests in content decisions, a charge Meta has denied, and employees were upset when he attended Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 2018.Meta is splitting Kaplan's job between four executivesKaplan will stay through the midterms and into 2027 to oversee a handover that spreads his responsibilities across executives with ties to both parties. Dina Powell McCormick, Meta's president and vice chairman, will add external affairs to a portfolio that already includes co-heading Meta Compute, the company's AI infrastructure initiative.Chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney, a former Trump trade official and ex-Microsoft general counsel, picks up policy duties. He recently led Meta's teen safety settlement with 52 US state and territory attorneys general. Brian Rice, once an aide to former Secretary of State John Kerry, was promoted earlier this year to head US government affairs. Tucker Bounds, a former spokesman for the late Senator John McCain and a Meta veteran of more than a dozen years, was named global head of communications and public affairs last month.The reshuffle comes as Zuckerberg's own focus shifts to AI. Axios reports he has moved his desk to work alongside the teams building Meta's Muse models, including its first frontier model, Muse Wonder. With data centres and AI now topping the agenda, the policy battles ahead look very different from the ones Kaplan walked into in 2011.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.