State Department to lay off 1,300 civil servants, foreign service officers
The State Department will lay off more than 1,300 people as part of a broad restructuring plan, Reuters is reporting.
The layoffs will affect 1,107 civil servants and 246 foreign service officers, according to Reuters, which said it had seen an internal notice. The Associated Press is reporting the same number.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed to reporters that the department was proceeding with the cuts on July 10 while traveling in Malaysia.
"Our intent is to move forward with the plans that we’ve notified Congress of weeks ago and that we took months to design," he said.
Rubio first announced plans to reorganize the department in April, but the plans were put on hold when a federal judge blocked them in May. On July 8, the Supreme Court reversed that block, essentially allowing layoff plans to move forward at multiple federal agencies while the lower court continues hearing the case over whether the layoffs are legal.
The State Department had about 80,000 employees in September, the latest numbers that are available. That included about 14,000 foreign service employees and 13,000 civil service employees.
"In its current form, the Department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition," Rubio wrote in an April 22 statement. "Over the past 15 years, the Department’s footprint has had unprecedented growth and costs have soared."
Rubio said at the time the new model would bring the State Department into the 21st Century, provide taxpayers a better return on investment, and "make the State Department Great Again."
"Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist," he wrote.
Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led by Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, characterized the layoffs as “blanket and indiscriminate cuts” that undermine national security.
“There are active conflicts and humanitarian crises in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, Haiti and Myanmar – to name a few,” the statement said. “Now is the time to strengthen our diplomatic hand, not weaken it.”
The department proposed laying off nearly 1,900 employees in plans it submitted to Congress in May. The department has about 18,000 employees in its domestic workforce. The department estimated that another 1,575 took deferred resignations.
The cuts don't seem to align with Trump's promises to improve the United States' economic standing internationally and have a less military forward foreign policy, said Joshua Shifrinson, Associate Professor with the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and Senior Fellow with the Cato Institute.
"None of this makes any sense to me. Bottom line, it seems deeply at odds both with what the country says it wants and probably needs going forward. And it's also at odds with what the administration itself says it wants in the foreign policy space,” he said.
Contributing: Reuters.