WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration is proposing a major reformulation of the US State Department that would eliminate more than 100 offices, including some who work with war crimes and rights, to ensure that the agency is aligned with President Donald Trump’s priorities.
The plan, on which Congress was notified, would eliminate 132 of the department’s 734 bureaus and offices, according to an internal memorandum of the State Department seen by Reuters. Under -secretaries will have plans to reduce the team by 15%, the document added.
It was not immediately clear how many people would be fired as a result of the reformulation, but news from the online publication The Free Press, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio, published in X, said that 700 more positions would be eliminated in closed offices.
An internal working group will drive the implementation of reorganization and develop detailed plans for each part of the department until July 1, the deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau wrote to the team in an internal email seen by Reuters.
Change is part of an unprecedented effort of Trump and his billionaire Elon Musk counselor to reduce the federal government, saying that the American taxpayer’s money is being bad. The effort led to the resignation of thousands of civil servants.
“In its current form, the department is swollen, bureaucratic and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new age of competition between great powers,” Rubio said in a statement.
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Both Rubio and the authorities said that the swollen structure of the state department made it impossible to make decision making quickly and efficiently, and that the new plan would try to enable regional offices to increase functionality and remove offices and programs not aligned with the major national interests of the United States.
Trump issued a separated decree in February by instructing Rubio to reformulate the US Foreign Affairs Service and the operation of the State Department to ensure that the US diplomatic corps implemented its agenda.
The proposed reorganization seems to be less dramatic than many in the department feared, and a memorandum that circulated among state department officials over the weekend proposed the elimination of almost the entire department department of the department, among other drastic changes.
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Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the main Democrat of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said she would examine the plan and wanted her to depuse the panel about him. “When the United States retract – as with President Trump – China and Russia fill the void,” she said in a statement.
“Ideological Capture”
The biggest proposed changes are the elimination of the Undersecretary of Civil Security, Democracy and Human Rights, a part of the department that Rubio accused of deviating from US priorities by pointing to what he called “ideological capture” at the agency.
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This sector, he wrote in an article in the substack, “provided a fertile environment for activists to redefine“ human rights ”and“ democracy ”and take forward their projects at the expense of the taxpayer, even when they were in direct conflict with the goals of the secretary, the president and the US people”
He accused employees who work with democracy, human rights, and work to promote revenge on what he called “anti-woke” leaders in Poland, Hungary and Brazil and said the migration department helped stimulate mass migration.
Several US agency programs for International Development (USAID) supported the work of strengthening independent media and civil society in increasingly autocratic countries. It was not known immediately if this was still a priority.
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Although some abolished departments were being incorporated into other parts of the department, an important war monitoring office and atrocities worldwide – the global criminal justice office – had disappeared from the new organogram provided.
Spokesman Tammy Bruce told reporters that the proposal was a script and things could still change. The closure of an office focused on a specific question does not mean that the work on this issue would be completely interrupted, she said, without detailing how these issues would continue to be priorities of the department.
Last week, Rubio also closed a state department office created to combat foreign misinformation, accusing him of censoring conservative opinions.
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In March, US officials said the department was also preparing to close almost a dozen consulates.
The plan announced on Tuesday focused on changes at the department headquarters in Washington, a state department’s high-ranking authority told reporters when asked about the number of missions that can be closed abroad as part of the change.
“This is a purely domestic plan. It has nothing to do with any mission abroad. This does not mean that there will be no further decisions about missions abroad,” the official said, on condition of anonymity.
