The White House unveiled a sweeping plan on Tuesday to reorganize the U.S. State Department, in one of President Donald Trump’s most aggressive federal overhauls since taking office. The plan will cut 132 agency offices, eliminate around 700 jobs in Washington, and shutter programs dedicated to peace and democracy promotion.
“In its current form, the Department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on X. “Region-specific functions will be streamlined to increase functionality. Redundant offices will also be removed, and non-statutory programs misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist,” he added on Substack.
Rubio does not list what those core interests are beyond delivering on Trump’s “America First” agenda. In Trump’s second term so far, that agenda has included gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, launching a global trade war, cracking down on immigration, and retreating from multilateral institutions. Another key administration priority has been eradicating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and other initiatives perceived to be part of the “woke” liberal agenda, including the promotion of democracy and human rights abroad.
That last priority appears to have factored heavily into decisions about which State Department programs to cut. As part of the proposed reorganization, for instance, the Trump administration will eliminate the office of the Undersecretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, known as the “J programs,” which Rubio accused of having “provided a fertile environment for activists to redefine ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ and to pursue their projects at the taxpayer expense.”
Read more in today’s World Brief: Trump Team Unveils Massive State Department Overhaul.
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