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'Not a single policymaking person who knows Russia,Ukraine' as Trump heads for talks with Putin
Negotiations with Moscow have been handled not by diplomats steeped in years of Russia policy, but by real estate developer Steve Witkoff, who has no background in foreign affairs When Donald Trump steps into a room with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday (August 15), the setting will be a far cry from his first headline-grabbing encounter with the Russian leader in Helsinki six years ago. That summit went so poorly that Fiona Hill, his then top Russia adviser, later admitted she had considered faking a seizure to shut it down. This time, there are unlikely to be any Russia specialists within arm's reach of the president. In his second term, Trump has purged swathes of the federal workforce, elevated loyalists over seasoned experts and sidelined the traditional machinery of foreign policy. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Negotiations with Moscow have been handled not by diplomats steeped in years of Russia policy, but by real estate developer Steve Witkoff, who has no background in foreign affairs. Former ambassador Eric Rubin says Trump 'does not have a single policymaking person who knows Russia and Ukraine advising him', Financial Times reported. Ordinarily, before a meeting of this magnitude, the US national security council (NSC) would be corralling input from across government to prepare the president for anything Putin might throw at him. Known for his command of detail and skill in exploiting gaps in an opponent's knowledge, Putin has been in power for a quarter of a century. That process has been hollowed out. Dozens of foreign policy and national security officials were forced out of the NSC in May. More than 1,300 state department employees were let go last month, including many analysts covering Russia and Ukraine. The diplomatic corps has also been hit hard; the American Foreign Service Association estimates around a quarter of foreign service officers have quit since January. Top posts dealing with Russia and Ukraine remain unfilled. The administration insists the cuts will make the government 'leaner' and more responsive. Deputy White House press secretary Anna Kelly said Trump still gets input from leaders at the state department, NSC and intelligence agencies before making decisions. But in practice, the most senior roles are concentrated in the hands of a few figures, including secretary of state Marco Rubio, who is also serving as acting national security adviser. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Trump has said the Alaska meeting will be 'a feel-out' and that he will know 'within two minutes' whether progress is possible. 'I may say 'lots of luck, keep fighting', or I may say 'we can make a deal',' he told reporters this week. For many former officials, that approach rings alarm bells. Daniel Fried, a former ambassador to Poland, warned: 'You can't have him and Witkoff winging it because they just don't know enough. You need somebody in the room who can just look at the president, roll his eyes and shake his head.' In Helsinki in 2018, Trump publicly questioned his own intelligence agencies' findings on election interference, accepting Putin's denials instead. Back then, he had what were described as the 'adults in the room' – experienced hands who tried to temper his impulses. John Bolton, his national security adviser at the time, recalled trying to brief Trump on nuclear weapons during the flight to Helsinki, while the president watched a football match. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD This time, those guardrails are gone. Fried put it bluntly: 'This is not an administration that is going to have an experts-led process.'
Jordan News
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Jordan News
1,300 Employees Bid Farewell to U.S. State Department After Trump Administration Layoffs - Jordan News
A somber atmosphere filled the halls of the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., on Friday as colleagues embraced and applauded their departing coworkers. Over 1,300 employees were officially laid off—part of a broader plan to eliminate 2,000 positions announced earlier by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. اضافة اعلان In an internal email, Rubio explained that the layoffs were intended to streamline decision-making, eliminate redundant roles, and better allocate resources toward priority policies, all in an effort to deliver improved services to taxpayers. Emotional Farewells Amid Heavy Security Security was heightened throughout the State Department building, while diplomats wept and hugged one another. Many were escorted to conference rooms to pack their belongings and return work materials. Some employees posted notes of gratitude such as 'Thank you for your service' and 'Your work made a difference.' Blow to U.S. Diplomacy The dismissals sparked backlash from current and former diplomats, who warned that the cuts could significantly undermine U.S. global influence and soft power. Critics argue that such a large reduction—particularly within key policy departments—will cripple American diplomatic capabilities. Key Offices Shut Down The layoffs included nearly 12 staff members from the Office of Global Climate Change, effectively shuttering it. The Office for Afghan Resettlement Coordination was also disbanded. Cuts extended to programs supporting global women's issues, diversity and inclusion, and diplomatic missions in conflict zones like Syria, as well as personnel overseeing chemical weapons and multilateral nuclear diplomacy. Breakdown of Terminations 1,100 foreign service employees received termination notices and were immediately placed on paid administrative leave. They will lose their jobs after 120 days. 240 civil service employees were also notified and will depart within 60 days. Rubio defended the sweeping reform as essential to eliminating bureaucracy that "stifles innovation and misallocates scarce resources." He claimed some departments had succumbed to 'extreme political ideologies.' Democratic Lawmakers Respond Senator Jeanne Shaheen and other Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee condemned the layoffs, stating: 'If this administration truly believes in 'America First,' it should invest in our diplomatic corps—not dismantle the very institutions that protect our interests, values, and citizens abroad.' Legal Backing from Supreme Court The U.S. Supreme Court, now with a conservative majority, cleared the way for the Trump administration's layoffs by lifting a lower court injunction. This paves the path for mass reorganizations in 19 federal agencies, including the State Department, despite ongoing legal challenges related to lack of congressional consultation. American Foreign Service Association: 'This Is Not Reform' The American Foreign Service Association, which represents U.S. diplomats, criticized the move, reporting that 20% of the diplomatic workforce had been cut in the past six months alone. 'These layoffs are not about efficiency or mission needs. They're politically targeted, not performance-based. This is not reform—it's dismantlement,' the association said. As America's diplomatic footprint shrinks, observers warn that its ability to lead on global issues—from security to climate to humanitarian response—may be seriously diminished.
India Today
12-07-2025
- Politics
- India Today
‘Abolished': US State Department lays off 1,353 staff in reorganisation
A senior department official said 1,107 civil servants and 246 foreign service officers based in the United States received layoff notices, with affected employees losing access to their email, headquarters, and internal systems by 5 p.m.'Headcount reductions have been carefully tailored to affect non-core functions, duplicative or redundant offices,' read a departmental notice obtained by the Associated began arriving shortly after 10 a.m., informing staff that their positions were being 'abolished.' Foreign service officers will be placed on 120-day administrative leave before formal termination, while civil servants face a 60-day separation President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio hailed the move as a long-overdue streamlining of a bloated bureaucracy.'This will make the department leaner, more nimble, and more efficient,' Trump said during a press availability. 'It's about time we focused on core priorities, not waste.'However, current and former diplomats expressed alarm at the cuts, warning they could weaken US diplomatic power at a time of intensifying global challenges from geopolitical threats to climate instability.'You don't promote American leadership abroad by gutting the agency tasked with diplomacy,' said one former move is part of a broader Trump-era effort to shrink the federal workforce and reorient the State Department toward what officials call 'mission-critical functions.'Rubio defended the plan, saying, 'These are smart reductions that will allow us to focus on emerging threats more strategically.' Critics say the changes will hurt US standing abroadThe American Foreign Service Association, the union that represents U.S. diplomats, said Friday that it opposed the Trump administration's cuts during 'a moment of great global instability.''In less than six months, the US has shed at least 20 percent of its diplomatic workforce through shuttering of institutions and forced resignations,' the organisation said in a statement. 'Losing more diplomatic expertise at this critical global moment is a catastrophic blow to our national interests.'If the administration had issues with excess staffing, 'clear, institutional mechanisms' could have resolved it, the group said.'Instead, these layoffs are untethered from merit or mission. They target diplomats not for how they've served or the skills they have, but for where they happen to be assigned. That is not reform,' AFSA a notice Thursday, Michael Rigas, deputy secretary for management and resources, said that 'once notifications have taken place, the Department will enter the final stage of its reorganisation and focus its attention on delivering results-driven diplomacy.'The State Department noted that the reorganisation will affect more than 300 bureaus and offices, saying it is eliminating divisions it describes as doing unclear or overlapping work. It says Rubio believes 'effective modern diplomacy requires streamlining this bloated bureaucracy.'- Ends
Epoch Times
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
Federal Judge Blocks Trump's Order to Strip Foreign Service Bargaining Rights
A federal judge has ruled to temporarily block President Donald Trump's order stripping foreign service workers of their collective bargaining rights, granting a group a request for a preliminary injunction. At issue is a March 27 executive 'President Trump supports constructive partnerships with unions who work with him; he will not tolerate mass obstruction that jeopardizes his ability to manage agencies with vital national security missions,' the White House U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, in a Tuesday In a lawsuit brought against the administration, the American Foreign Service Association had said the order 'upended decades of stable labor-management relations in the Foreign Service.' 'Congress could not have been clearer in passing the Statute that it intended for the protections of the Statute to extend broadly to the covered departments and agencies in the foreign service,' the judge said in Tuesday's order. Related Stories 5/15/2025 5/15/2025 Further, he said that the removal of the foreign service workers' union bargaining agreements would pose an issue for those employees as the Trump administration moves to restructure the federal government and initiate layoffs. The unions have argued 'that these significant obstructions to representing its members have come at a critical moment where both the State Department and USAID have signaled—and have begun—large-scale reorganization efforts and reductions-in-force,' the judge wrote, referring to the U.S. Agency for International Development 'As to USAID, the agency has already begun to implement reductions-in-force where employees will be terminated on July 1, 2025, and September 2, 2025,' Friedman added. Secretary of State Marco Rubio 'Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America's core national interests will cease to exist,' he said. Lawyers for the Trump administration argued in a filing They also claimed that the American public has an interest in making sure that agencies that have an intelligence, national security, or investigative function operate in an efficient manner. A preliminary injunction that is being sought by the plaintiffs would instead 'displace and frustrate the President's decision about how to best address issues of national security, matters on which the courts typically defer to the President's judgment,' the lawyers said. In response to those arguments, Friedman disagreed, saying that administration lawyers were 'recasting decisions related to 'the general welfare' as 'national security' determinations' without providing a legal basis for doing so. After Friedman's decision, the head of the American Foreign Service Association praised the order in a 'This ruling is a significant victory—not just for our members, but for the integrity of the Foreign Service and for the accountability and transparency of our member agencies,' said the group's president, Tom Yazdgerdi. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Clinton-appointed federal judge blocks Trump admin from pulling foreign service workers' bargaining rights
In a move that adds to an ever-growing stack of court interventions that have stymied the president's second-term agenda, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from targeting foreign service workers' collective bargaining rights amid an ongoing challenge against an executive order. The American Foreign Service Association, a labor union for foreign service workers, lodged a legal challenge after President Donald Trump issued an executive order earlier this year that, according to a White House fact sheet, aimed to "end collective bargaining with Federal unions in" various government entities "with national security missions." "Certain Federal unions have declared war on President Trump's agenda," the release asserted. "Protecting America's national security is a core constitutional duty, and President Trump refuses to let union obstruction interfere with his efforts to protect Americans and our national interests." Judge Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia — who was nominated by then-President Bill Clinton decades ago — issued the order granting the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction. Trump's Newest Executive Order Moves To End Collective Bargaining At Agencies Safeguarding National Security The order signed by Friedman states, in part, that Trump's executive order "is unlawful as applied to the Defendants who are heads of agencies with employees represented by the Plaintiff." Read On The Fox News App "The effect of the Executive Order was substantial: it removed collective bargaining rights from approximately two-thirds of the federal workforce," Friedman's opinion declared, echoing verbatim a sentence included in an opinion Friedman issued last month in a similar case. In that case, which was brought by the National Treasury Employees Union, Friedman also targeted Trump's executive order and granted a motion for a preliminary injunction. Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump Order Ending Collective Bargaining Rights For Most Federal Workers American Foreign Service Association President Tom Yazdgerdi called the ruling "a significant victory—not just for our members, but for the integrity of the Foreign Service and for the accountability and transparency of our member agencies," according to a press release issued by the union. "President Trump eliminated collective bargaining agreements that risk national security interests. He will always prioritize public safety for the American people," White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement the White House provided to Fox News Digital on Thursday. Judge Upholds Trump's Authority To Deport Criminal Migrants Under Alien Enemies Act Fox News Digital also reached out to the Justice Department for comment, but they did not immediately article source: Clinton-appointed federal judge blocks Trump admin from pulling foreign service workers' bargaining rights
