State Department tells staff planned layoffs to begin soon
WASHINGTON – The State Department will start sending notices to members of its workforce impacted by the reorganization soon, the agency's top official for management said on Thursday, as President Donald Trump's administration moves ahead with its plans to overhaul the U.S. diplomatic corps and cut jobs.
"Soon, the Department will be communicating to individuals affected by the reduction in force," Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Michael Rigas said in an email to the workforce.
"Once notifications have taken place, the Department will enter the final stage of its reorganization and focus its attention on delivering results-driven diplomacy," Rigas said.
The move is the first step of a restructuring that Trump has sought to ensure U.S. foreign policy is aligned with his "America First" agenda. It will likely result in hundreds of job cuts, including members of the elite foreign service who advocate for U.S. interests in the face of growing assertiveness from adversaries such as China and Russia.
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No State Department official publicly said when the first notices for the planned layoffs would be sent, but the widespread expectation is for the terminations to start as soon as Friday.
The Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to pursue the job cuts and the sweeping downsizing of numerous agencies, a decision that could lead to tens of thousands of layoffs while dramatically reshaping the federal bureaucracy.
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Trump issued an executive order in February directing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to revamp the foreign service to ensure that the Republican president's foreign policy is "faithfully" implemented. He has also repeatedly pledged to "clean out the deep state" by firing bureaucrats whom he deems disloyal.
Neither Rigas nor any other State Department official specified how many people would be fired, but in its plans to Congress sent in May, the Department had proposed laying off nearly 1,900 employees of the 18,000 estimated domestic workforce. Another 1,575 were estimated to have taken deferred resignations.
The plans to Congress did not specify how many of these people would be civil service and how many from the foreign service, but said that more than 300 of the department's 734 bureaus and offices will be streamlined, merged or eliminated.
'Too bureaucratic' to function
Last week, more than 130 retired diplomats and other former senior U.S. officials issued an open letter criticizing the planned overhaul.
One of the criticisms has been directed at the firing of potentially several hundred U.S. foreign service officers who typically are evaluated based on years of experience, knowledge of particular areas and regions in the world and language skills.
The administration, as it vowed to bring back "merit", has dismantled many diversity and inclusion efforts. Most, if not all, of the DEI programs at the State Department have been rescinded.
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U.S. officials said the criteria for the layoffs have been based on the functions of the bureaus that the agency sees are redundant and overlapping in responsibilities and not based on the personnel that occupy those roles.
"The focus is on the org chart first. Functions of a more efficient, capable, fast and effective State Department," said a senior State Department official speaking to reporters on the condition of anonymity.
"When something is too large to operate, too bureaucratic, to actually function, and to deliver projects, or action, it has to change," Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told a news briefing earlier.
As part of the reorganization, the role of a top official for civilian security, democracy, and human rights will be eliminated, along with the offices that monitored war crimes and conflicts around the world, according to the congressional notification the Department sent to Congress.
A new Senate-confirmed role of under secretary for foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs will oversee the new Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, which is to be reorganized to "ground the Department's values-based diplomacy in traditional Western conceptions of core freedoms" and headed by a deputy assistant secretary for "Democracy and Western Values."
David Brunnstrom and Ismail Shakil, of Reuters, contributed.
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