Secretary of State Marco Rubio happy to go after his own department’s staff.
Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The U.S. Supreme Court’s order earlier this week, which killed a lower-court hold on mass firings at federal agencies, in theory liberated the budget-and-personnel cutters of the Trump administration with 17 departments or agencies given the right to move ahead with reduction-in-force plans authorized by the president in February.
It’s telling that the first likely to move is the State Department, as the New York Times reported:
The State Department formally notified employees on Thursday that it was about to begin layoffs as part of a consolidation plan that department officials say will reduce bureaucratic bloat but that critics call a shortsighted blow to American diplomacy …
The State Department is proceeding with the cuts two days after the Supreme Court overturned a lower-court order that had blocked the Trump administration from implementing mass layoffs across the federal government …
In all, the department’s U.S.-based work force of about 18,000 people will shrink by about 15 percent.
There does appear to be some ideological targeting going on in the purge at Foggy Bottom, the legendary State Department headquarters, notes CBS News:
The State Department formally told Congress about its reorganization plans in May, telling lawmakers it intended to eliminate about 3,400 U.S.-based jobs and close or merge almost half of its domestic offices. At the time, the department said it planned to phase out some offices focused on democracy or human rights that it claimed were “prone to ideological capture,” and add new offices focused on “civil liberties” and “free market principles.”
The State Department has also taken on some of the functions of the completely gutted Agency for International Development, one of DOGE’s first targets. But at the same time, the administration is making congressional ratification of the demolition of foreign aid it’s first post-megabill priority. The House has already rubber-stamped a $9.4 billion rescission package (i.e., cancellation of previously appropriated spending). Though much of the attention given to these cuts involves the effort to kill public broadcasting, $8.3 billion in savings actually come from foreign-aid accounts. The one that has drawn most fire in the Senate, which has until July 18 to approve these rescissions, involves the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a major legacy initiative of the George W. Bush administration.
More generally, the rescissions and the mass State Department firings should be seen as part and parcel of Team Trump’s efforts to reorient U.S. foreign policy away from the bipartisan traditions that have shaped it with a new America First branding underway. Indeed, doing just that was the subject of one of Trump’s day-one executive orders, the America First Policy Directive to the Secretary of State.
Recent foreign-policy steps by Trump, such as the attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, his recommitment to NATO, and an apparent decision to reengage with the defense of Ukraine, may be giving MAGA activists some heartburn. But down on the ground where foreign policy is made and implemented, the America First shift remains apparent. Don’t be surprised if additional layoffs or spending cuts aimed at the State Department, the ancient enemy of conservative isolationists and unilateralists, are on tap.
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