A leaked draft of an executive order reveals the Trump administration may soon impose a MAGA loyalty test at the State Department.
The new foreign service exam will require “alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision” if staff want to keep their jobs or be hired, the draft said, according to Bloomberg.
Bloomberg reports the order will be “one of the biggest reorganizations of the department since its founding in 1789” should President Donald Trump sign it into effect.
The 16-page draft, which has circulated among American diplomats in recent days, also calls for the elimination of the Bureau of African and the closure of “unnecessary” embassies in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The New York Times, which also viewed the draft, reports the Trump administration hopes to have a “significantly reduced” state department presence in Canada. That would include shrinking U.S. embassy staff in Ottawa and the creation of a new North American affairs office under the authority of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
If Trump signs the executive order, it will also eliminate the position of special envoy for climate.
Rubio denied the draft executive order even existed on Sunday, calling the Times story “fake news,” claiming the paper had fallen “victim to another hoax.”
Bloomberg reports that the Fulbright Scholars program, which the department administers, will not exist in its current form should the draft take effect. Instead of funding the education of thousands of undergraduate and graduate students in fields like fine arts, social sciences, mathematics, humanities, and more, it would be recast as “solely for master’s-level study in national security-related disciplines.” The draft said priority will be “given to programs with intensive instruction in critical languages” like Mandarin, Russian, Farsi, and Arabic.
The order does not call exclusively for cuts. The Times reports the order would add the position of “under secretary for transnational threat elimination,” who would oversee counternarcotics policy and other issues.
The draft also outlined a change to how the Foreign Service relocates its personnel. Instead of staff being rotated to posts around the globe, the department would now require staff to select a single region to remain in for the duration of their careers to “maximize expertise.”
Those not on board with the sweeping changes would have until Sept. 30 to accept a buyout offer if the executive order is signed, the Times and Bloomberg reported.
Such changes are not entirely unexpected. Another memo has circulated this month that laid out sweeping changes to the state department, including the closure of embassies and consulates across Europe, which has some Trump donors “concerned” they are going to lose their posh new diplomatic digs.
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