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.
In an internal message sent to State Department workers on Thursday, Michael J. Rigas, the deputy secretary of state for management and resources, said the department would “soon” begin notifying U.S. employees who are losing their jobs.
Diplomats said that senior department officials had told them to expect layoff notices as soon as Friday morning.
The layoffs are part of a reorganization plan unveiled in May by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who called his department “bloated” and stifled by bureaucracy. Mr. Rubio said the changes would better align it with core American values and root out pockets of “radical political ideology.”
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.
The union that represents trained diplomats who rotate overseas, called foreign service workers, expects about 700 of those based in the United States to lose their jobs. A larger number of civil service workers, who work mostly in Washington, are also expected to be fired, in what is officially known as reduction-in-force actions.
In all, the department’s U.S.-based work force of about 18,000 people will shrink by about 15 percent. Department officials said that more than half of that proportion would be made up of voluntary departures, including workers who have accepted the Trump administration’s “deferred resignation” offer.
Mr. Rubio’s plan does not include cuts to overseas staffing and operations, such as embassy closures, although a senior State Department official said that all the department’s operations worldwide were subject to ongoing review.
Democrats in Congress and veteran diplomats have decried Mr. Rubio’s plan, saying it will drain the government of diplomatic expertise at a time of global crises, including conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, and as the United States competes with China for influence abroad.
“America’s diplomatic corps is needed now more than ever to peacefully de-escalate ongoing tensions in the Middle East and achieve American foreign policy objectives in an increasingly complicated world,” several dozen House members wrote in an open letter to Mr. Rubio in late June. The downsizing plan, they warned, will “leave the U.S. with limited tools to engage as a leader on the world stage during this critical juncture.”
Critics also complain that the reorganization plan targets dozens of offices that deal with specific issues, such as human rights, democracy, refugees and war crimes.
Mr. Rubio contends that it is more efficient for regional bureaus to handle most of those issues, but veteran diplomats say they will inevitably be downgraded in policymaking.
The senior official said on Thursday that the cuts were not aimed at specific individuals but rather job positions. The official said some of the cuts targeted redundancies, citing the consolidation of three offices that handle economic sanctions into one.
In theory, workers who lose their jobs can reapply for other positions. But Mr. Rubio recently approved changes to the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual that drastically narrow their job options and effectively make it impossible for many to remain at the State Department.
The cuts follow President Trump’s elimination earlier this year of the independent U.S. Agency for International Development, which had previously employed 10,000 people, including contractors and local workers, around the world.
In Senate testimony this spring, Mr. Rubio complained that the State Department decision-making process was far too cumbersome. He described receiving a memo that had required 40 people to check a box of approval before it landed on his desk.
“That’s ridiculous,” Mr. Rubio said, adding, “We can’t move at that pace in this world.”
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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