The Trump administration began firing more than 1,000 State Department employees on Friday, as it moves to downsize the federal government’s diplomatic arm in what critics say is a risky retreat from America’s global engagement.
The layoffs are part of a reorganization plan devised by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who says his department is too costly, cumbersome and ideological. Continuing President Trump’s drive to slash a federal work force he inherently distrusts, the job cuts will drain the department of expertise and batter the morale of those who remain, critics say.
But the plan also has global implications, veteran diplomats say. It refocuses American diplomacy around Mr. Trump’s narrow and transactional sense of the national interest while downgrading priorities such as human rights, democracy and refugees. In doing so, critics argue, it undermines a moral purpose that, however imperfectly and inconsistently applied, has been a source of pride for generations of Americans and has distinguished the United States from more coldblooded global competitors such as Russia and China.
Democrats and diplomats also warned on Friday that Mr. Rubio’s plan to cut the department’s U.S.-based work force by about 17 percent, including through about 1,400 layoffs announced on Friday, would leave the department short handed — especially after the recent elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose relatively few surviving programs will be transferred to the State Department.
“As the U.S. retreats, our adversaries — like the People’s Republic of China — are expanding their diplomatic reach, making Americans less safe and less prosperous,” said a statement signed by the Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
“If this administration is serious about putting ‘America first,’ it must invest in our diplomatic corps and national security experts — not erode the institutions that protect our interests, promote U.S. values and keep Americans abroad safe,” the statement added.
Trump officials and their Republican allies call that hyperbole. Insisting that his goal is a department that can move at information-age speed, Mr. Rubio says he is not making cuts for their own sake but “streamlining,” as a human resources notice to department employees put it on Friday. Mr. Rubio likes to cite the story of a memo that reached his desk only after 40 different offices had signed off on it.
And senior State Department officials insist that, unlike deep cuts forced elsewhere by a chain saw-wielding Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, Mr. Rubio’s were the product of consultation with longtime department employees. Some seasoned diplomats say that input was not extensive, however, and that Mr. Rubio’s plan does not reflect the work force’s thinking.
And while Trump officials argue that the State Department’s budget has grown “bloated” in recent years, from about $10 billion 20 years ago to $17.6 billion today, that is an increase of just 6 percent when adjusted for inflation.
One consolation for opponents of the reorganization, who planned to protest outside the State Department’s entrance on Friday afternoon, was that it only affects the department’s U.S.-based operations, leaving foreign missions untouched — at least for now. On Thursday, a senior department official said there were no current plans for overseas cuts, but noted that all operations were subject to review.
Mr. Rubio, who also serves as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, argues that the closure of divisions like the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor does not mean that their functions will cease to exist — only that they will be integrated into existing regional bureaus to better coordinate country-specific policies.
But critics say that claim is either dishonest or naïve to how the department works, and that demoting the positions tasked with those issues will mean that officials who advocate American values will be trampled by those focused purely on interests. Debates over whether to send U.S. arms to dictators who grossly abuse human rights, for instance, will be much more likely to go the tyrant’s way.
Friday will be “a happy day for autocrats and criminals alike, who are now freer to crack down on human rights, enjoy impunity and foment conflict,” said Uzra Zeya, who served as under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights in the Biden administration — and whose former office is being eliminated by Mr. Rubio’s overhaul.
“Rather than retaining skills and expertise honed over decades, Rubio will kneecap American human rights and humanitarian leadership in one Friday morning massacre,” she said.
Those who agree with Ms. Zeya — including many of the diplomats whose jobs will survive — feel particularly betrayed by Mr. Rubio, who as a Republican senator from Florida cast himself as a champion of human rights, democracy and “moral clarity” against foreign tyrants and war criminals.
But since he joined the Trump administration, Mr. Rubio has toned down that rhetoric and expressed contempt for “radical ideologues and bureaucratic infighters” within his department.
In an April Substack post explaining his plan, he singled out Ms. Zeya’s former portfolio for scorn, saying it “provided a fertile environment for activists to redefine ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ and to pursue their projects at the taxpayer expense, even when they were in direct conflict” with the goals of the president.
Mr. Rubio’s vision amounts to its own, Trumpian ideology. The department’s soon-to-be-eliminated Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, he wrote, “became a platform for left-wing activists to wage vendettas against ‘anti-woke’ leaders in nations such as Poland, Hungary and Brazil, and to transform their hatred of Israel into concrete policies such as arms embargoes.”
And the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, he said, “funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to international organizations and NGOs that facilitated mass migration around the world, including the invasion on our southern border.”
Mr. Rubio unveiled his plan in April but delayed its implementation after a judge blocked the Trump administration from mass layoffs that Democrats have challenged as illegal. He proceeded on Friday after a Supreme Court ruling this week allowed the layoffs to proceed.
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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