Human rights, democracy, refugees, war crimes.
Those are some of the key responsibilities of a State Department office that Secretary of State Marco Rubio intends to shutter as part of a larger reorganization plan for his agency that he unveiled on Tuesday.
The official goal of the office — the under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights — is to help countries “build more democratic, secure, stable, and just societies.”
In a post on Substack on Tuesday, Mr. Rubio called the change a blow against rogue liberal bureaucrats, saying the office had become “a fertile environment for activists to redefine ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ and to pursue their projects at the taxpayer expense” even when they conflict with the president’s goals.
The office’s nine bureaus will be pared down and in most cases merged into other parts of the department under Mr. Rubio’s plan. Bureaus slated for elimination include those focused on conflict, global criminal justice and combating antisemitism.
Two of the bureaus, including a smaller democracy and human rights bureau, will continue to exist under a new Office of the Coordinator for Foreign Assistance and Humanitarian Affairs. But that office will no longer be led by an under secretary.
On Tuesday, a State Department spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, cautioned that the changes did not mean the end of values-based initiatives in U.S. foreign policy, arguing that the goal was a “nimbler” department.
Mr. Rubio’s critics, however, say the clear message is that those values are being downgraded, breaking with decades of American diplomatic tradition — not to mention Mr. Rubio’s record as a Republican senator from Florida.
“Eliminating the State Department’s senior most human rights official sends a clear signal that the Trump administration cares less about fundamental freedoms than it does about cutting deals with autocrats and tyrants,” said Christopher Le Mon, who served as deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in the Biden administration.
Some noted that Mr. Rubio has long been among the strongest supporters in either party of the department’s human rights efforts.
“When I ran the State Department’s human rights bureau, few Senators were more interested in our work than Marco Rubio,” Tom Malinowski, who ran the bureau under President Barack Obama before becoming a Democratic congressman in New Jersey, recently wrote on X.
Mr. Rubio’s Substack post particularly singled out Mr. Malinowski’s former bureau for scorn, calling it “a platform for left-wing activists” to promote their personal views, including what Mr. Rubio called “their hatred of Israel.”
That bureau acts as a sort of voice of conscience for policymakers as they balance America’s interests with its values. During the Biden administration, it offered internal criticism of Israel, arguing that it was not doing enough to protect civilians in Gaza.
The bureau also produces the department’s widely cited annual report on human rights in foreign countries, although changes may be coming to that document.
Mr. Malinowski posted in reaction to an NPR report that Trump administration officials had directed the bureau’s professionals to omit from the report several categories of abuses that it has long condemned. They include persecution of L.G.B.T.Q. people, violations of women’s rights and government corruption, according to NPR and a similar report by Politico. A former bureau official called those news reports accurate.
The bureau’s defenders say that it has done plenty of work for conservatives to admire. During the first Trump administration, it played an important role in making the case for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to declare that China’s persecution of its ethnic Uyghur minority amounted to genocide.
It has also argued for tough policies against the Iranian and Venezuelan governments, which are notorious human-rights offenders.
The office was created in 1977 as the Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs after lawmakers pushed to elevate the role of human rights in U.S. foreign policy. The Clinton administration renamed and expanded it to become the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.
Under Mr. Rubio’s plan, it will be scaled down and renamed again, as the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Religious Freedom.
The under secretary position to which it reports, and which Mr. Rubio plans to eliminate, evolved from a State Department reorganization by the Clinton administration in 1994 in response to new diplomatic challenges after the fall of the Soviet Union.
In 1994, Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher created an under secretary for global affairs, responsible for elevating the importance of so-called transnational issues. The office evolved and expanded over the years, reaching its current form during the Obama administration.
Mr. Le Mon dismissed the notion that the changes would lead to more efficient policymaking.
“We absolutely need a serious bipartisan conversation about how to reorganize the State Department to better meet 21st-century challenges and threats,” he said. “But this proposal isn’t that serious, and it’s disingenuous and ignorant to treat ‘efficiency’ as the only goal for reforms.”
Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state.
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