Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled a plan on Tuesday to make major cuts to the State Department as part of a restructuring, calling the government’s diplomatic agency “bloated, bureaucratic” and “beholden to radical political ideology.”
Mr. Rubio released the plan in the form of an organizational chart and a brief official statement. The move is the latest by the Trump administration to reduce and reshape the government to a degree unseen in generations, which critics call a shortsightedly blunt assault on the federal bureaucracy.
The most dramatic change is the elimination of the office of the under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights, which is charged with advancing American values around the world. Trump administration officials call the office a hotbed of liberal activism.
Some elements of that office, including a bureau for democracy and human rights and one for refugees, would be cut and folded into an office for foreign assistance and humanitarian aid, according to the reorganization chart posted on the State Department website. A counternarcotics bureau would also be cut and moved under an international security office.
The department released an internal fact sheet that provided more details on Mr. Rubio’s plan, including reducing the agency’s total number of bureaus and offices from 734 to 602, or by about 18 percent. The sheet did not specify all the offices. It also said that Mr. Rubio had instructed senior officials to deliver plans to reduce the number of U.S.-based employees by 15 percent.
On Sunday, The New York Times reported the existence of a draft document labeled an “executive order” that outlined plans for a drastic restructuring of the department.
It included elements in Mr. Rubio’s announcement, such as eliminating the office of the under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights. It was unclear who had written the earlier document or what stage of internal debate it reflected, but diplomats circulated the draft over the weekend, and congressional offices are scrutinizing it.
A proposal in that document to get rid of the bureau of African affairs was not in the plan announced on Tuesday. But U.S. officials say the State Department aims to close some embassies and consulates across Africa, and an earlier memo has a proposed list.
In his brief statement, Mr. Rubio said the State Department’s size and costs had “soared” over the past 15 years, and he argued the new plan would focus the agency on “America’s core national interests.”
The department’s annual budget is about 6 percent of that of the Pentagon. The proposed cuts run counter to President Trump’s indications that he wants to resolve major crises through diplomacy rather than military action, including his recent efforts to negotiate with Iran over curbing its nuclear program.
In a Tuesday post on a new State Department account on Substack, Mr. Rubio portrayed his department as sclerotic and subject to infighting that allows bureaucrats to “push through their own agendas” — an accusation that Trump aides have made during his first and second administrations when talking about the entire federal government.
The bureau for democracy, human rights and labor, Mr. Rubio said, had become a “platform for left-wing activists to wage vendettas” against conservative foreign leaders, including those in Poland, Hungary and Brazil. He also said it had tried to push a policy of an arms embargo against Israel.
Mr. Rubio accused the bureau of population, refugees and migration of sending millions of taxpayer dollars to nongovernment groups that had promoted mass migration, including “the invasion on our southern border.”
The language throughout that post echoed Mr. Trump’s, and Mr. Rubio did not provide evidence for any of his assertions.
As a Republican senator from Florida, Mr. Rubio was an ardent champion of promoting traditional American values abroad and supported the State Department’s work to that end. But as secretary of state, he has hewed closely to Mr. Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy, which puts values aside and leans into trading favors, including with authoritarian governments.
The proposed cuts come as China, the superpower rival to the United States, has bolstered its global diplomatic presence and influence, about which Mr. Rubio had expressed great concern as a senator. A Lowy Institute study released last year said China has overtaken the United States in number of diplomatic missions. Last week, Mr. Rubio announced he was eliminating a State Department office that focused on combating disinformation from China, Russia and Iran.
Some State Department veterans have long conceded that the department, with its many offices and tens of thousands of employees in Washington and overseas, would benefit from judicious streamlining.
But Democratic lawmakers responded warily on Tuesday to the new proposal, arguing that the Trump administration has moved too fast and with too little care.
“Any changes to the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. must be carefully weighed with the real costs to American security and leadership,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which Mr. Rubio used to sit. “When America retreats — as it has under President Trump — China and Russia fill the void.”
Ms. Shaheen added that any reforms “must be done with close consultation with Congress and in compliance with the law,” and that she expected Mr. Rubio to appear before the committee to explain them.
Ms. Shaheen was referring to the United States Agency for International Development, which was gutted in recent months by Mr. Rubio and other Trump administration officials, in coordination with the conservative billionaire Elon Musk. U.S. officials said the remnants of the agency will be moved under the State Department’s office of foreign assistance. A 19-year-old employee of Mr. Musk’s government-slashing task force, Edward Coristine, who publicly calls himself “Big Balls,” is working in the State Department.
Briefing reporters after the plans were unveiled on Tuesday, the State Department spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, deflected concerns that the changes would downgrade the department’s ability to defend human rights and democratic values.
“Our American values remain,” Ms. Bruce said. “Because you might have had a specific bureau that dealt with a discrete issue, doesn’t mean, because it’s now folded into another larger bureau, doesn’t mean that it’s gone or we don’t care.” Ms. Bruce said the changes would instead make for “nimbler” policymaking.
Diplomats and civil service employees are bracing for internal announcements with more details of layoffs and other cuts, including the closures of some embassies and consulates, as senior political appointees carry out the reorganization.
The State Department has about 80,000 employees, with 50,000 of those being local citizens abroad. Of the rest, about 14,000 are trained diplomats who rotate overseas, called foreign service officers and specialists, and 13,000 are members of the civil service who work mostly in Washington.
Mr. Rubio said he would combine overlapping offices and eliminate some programs that were not mandated by Congress. But he did not provide examples, and his statement used murky bureaucratic language: “Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality,” he said.
On Tuesday, the deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, told employees in an internal message that the reorganization would be overseen by a team under José Cunningham, the acting under secretary for management.
Some of the changes are consistent with proposals laid out in recent leaked Trump administration memos, including the one labeled “executive order.”
Another memo proposed cutting the department’s budget by nearly 50 percent for the next fiscal year. U.S. officials said that memo was part of a State Department exchange with the White House in order to prepare a budget proposal to send to Congress. The authors were Pete Marocco, who left the State Department last week after having overseen the elimination of U.S.A.I.D., and Douglas Pitkin, who helps manage budget planning at the department.
A shorter memo proposed closing 10 embassies and 17 consulates and cutting staff at other U.S. diplomatic missions.
The changes announced Tuesday are more drastic than Mr. Rubio had previously signaled. His reference to “radical political ideology” infecting the department sounded more like the voice of Mr. Trump and the so-called MAGA movement than the relatively mainstream Republican senator he once was.
The tone is even a shift from Mr. Rubio’s initial remarks to State Department employees a day after his confirmation in late January.
Standing in the department’s flag-lined lobby on that chilly afternoon, Mr. Rubio said he was excited to preside over “the most effective, the most talented, the most experienced diplomatic corps in the history of the world” and made no mention of poisonous ideology.
Mr. Rubio did warn vaguely of coming “changes,” with the stated goal of ensuring that the department operates more quickly and efficiently.
On Saturday, Tom Malinowski, who was assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor in the Obama administration before serving as a congressman, posted a message online criticizing Mr. Rubio’s abrupt turn on American values, saying that “when I ran the State Department’s human rights bureau, few senators were more interested in our work than Marco Rubio.”
Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting.
Edward Wong reports on global affairs, U.S. foreign policy and the State Department.
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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