The U.S. State Department on Friday is firing over 1,300 workers in a reorganization plan as President Donald Trump’s administration works to cut government waste.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a senior department official explained to the Associated Press (AP) that officials are giving layoff notices to 1,107 civil servants and nearly 250 foreign service officers with assignments inside the United States, the outlet reported on Friday.
“Foreign service officers affected will be placed immediately on administrative leave for 120 days, after which they will formally lose their jobs, according to an internal notice obtained by The Associated Press,” the outlet said.
Per the AP, the notice also said, “In connection with the departmental reorganization … the department is streamlining domestic operations to focus on diplomatic priorities. Headcount reductions have been carefully tailored to affect non-core functions, duplicative or redundant offices, and offices where considerable efficiencies may be found from centralization or consolidation of functions and responsibilities.”
A reporter from WUSA 9 noted, “These cuts include layoffs but also the voluntary departures through buy-out programs the administration rolled out here”:
In a statement posted in April, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said officials were working to implement Trump’s America First agenda by making big changes at the department, Breitbart News reported.
The outlet continued:
“Today is the day. Under @POTUS’ leadership and at my direction, we are reversing decades of bloat and bureaucracy at the State Department. These sweeping changes will empower our talented diplomats to put America and Americans first,” Rubio said, formally releasing a statement.
“In its current form, the Department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of essential diplomatic competition,” Rubio’s formal statement reads in part, noting that the State Department’s footprint has had “unprecedented growth” with soaring costs. All the while, the American people have seen “less effective and efficient diplomacy.”
“That is why today I am announcing a comprehensive reorganization plan that will bring the Department into the 21st Century. This approach will empower the Department from the ground up, from the bureaus to the embassies,” the statement continued, as Rubio added that “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.”
The news about the state department firings comes after the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday permitted Trump to move forward with cuts to the federal workforce, according to Breitbart News.
“In an 8-1 ruling, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting, the Supreme Court explained that they were ‘not ruling on the legality of a specific reorganization plan,’” the article said.
According to Reuters, the reorganization efforts were expected to be almost finished by the beginning of July, but the state department had to wait for the Supreme Court to rule on the issue.
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