The State Department may begin laying off hundreds of Washington, D.C.,-based employees as soon as this Friday, according to internal correspondence among staff that was shared with CBS News, amid an effort by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to streamline what he has called a “bloated” bureaucracy.
The precise timing of the cuts could be affected by a looming decision by the Supreme Court which could soon hand down a ruling on whether to leave in place a lower court’s order that temporarily paused government-wide layoffs. The Justice Department asked the high court earlier this month to lift the district court’s injunction and allow it to move forward with the administration’s plans for reductions in force, or layoffs.
In a statement issued Wednesday, the president of the American Foreign Service Association, which represents American foreign service officers, said the association “urgently calls on the Department of State to comply with a federal court order that prohibits federal agencies from executing mass layoffs while litigation is ongoing.”
“Sources inside the department tell us that layoffs will be announced as soon as the end of this week or early next week,” AFSA President Tom Yazdgerdi said. “Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, the department is legally barred from taking any action outlined in its reorganization plans.”
But a senior State Department official told CBS News, “AFSA’s statement is false, and the Department has no plans to violate a court order.”
Multiple sources shared internal correspondence between State Department staffers that described the potential impending cuts. Some sent screen shots of what employees had been told by the department.
Some of the internal notes circulated within State Department ranks said that the notices of reduction in force — or RIF — could impact over 2,000 staffers, including 700 D.C.-based foreign service officers, and could begin Friday, likely in the morning.
The same internal notes said large conference rooms inside the department’s Washington headquarters have been reserved for Friday morning “with no reason given,” but with the expectation that they would be used to process the terminated staffers.
A notice circulated Wednesday in the department’s Bureau of Overseas Building Operations — which manages the department’s overseas diplomatic property — contained instructions on how to process terminated employees. The email, which was reviewed by CBS News, has a checklist — one item directed departing employees to turn in their badges and IT equipment issued by the State Department.
The State Department aims to reduce its domestic workforce by up to 3,448 personnel — according to a more than 130-page notification it had submitted to Congress last month that affected around 18% of its existing staff.
The notification included a deadline of July 1, 2025, for the reductions.
Rubio first announced in April that the department, which he described as “bloated” and “bureaucratic,” would undergo “comprehensive reorganization.”
An AFSA official also noted that the department had made unilateral changes to the Foreign Affairs Manual — which the State Department describes as the “single, comprehensive, and authoritative source for the Department’s organization structures, policies, and procedures” — without the association’s agreement.
“While the Secretary of State holds legal authority to implement RIFs, long-standing procedures were based on a transparent, merit-based process that ranked employees globally. The department’s recent changes bypass these norms, penalizing employees based solely on their current domestic assignments,” the AFSA statement reads.
Melissa Quinn and
contributed to this report.
Camilla Schick is a British journalist in D.C. and CBS News’ foreign affairs producer, covering U.S. foreign relations, the State Department and national security.
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