On May 29, Government Executive and Nextgov/FCW uncovered State Department documents that outline a radical plan “to eliminate or consolidate more than 300 of its offices and bureaus” and to liquidate “more than 3,400 employees and 45% of its structural entities.”
Bureau missions will also be changed amid the reorganization.
The layoffs will exempt passport and visa operations with Consular Affairs, as well as special agents in active law enforcement cases and regional staff assigned to a specific country desk. The cuts will only impact domestic staff, though both civil and foreign service personnel will be laid off, according to the documents.
Government Executive
Notably, the Foreign Assistance and Humanitarian Affairs division will see a cut of almost its entire workforce- a 69% reduction. 145 employees are also leaving voluntarily. On top of the legal limbo that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been subjected to due to the Trump administration’s attempt to make it a subsidiary of the State Department, foreign competitors and adversaries such as Russia and China may take advantage of the privatization of American humanitarian assistance, especially in Africa and Latin America.
Ambitiously, the State Department intends to complete its extreme transformation by July 1. However, an injunction barring the State Department and several other agencies from making mass layoffs may stymie such ambitions.
Justifying the elimination of many offices in the Civilian Security, Human Rights and Democracy division, the State Department has said, without providing evidence or elaboration, that it has become “prone to ideological capture and radicalism.”
The de facto elimination of the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, now under the Economic Growth office, brought about concern from both Democrats and Republicans.
A foreign service officer commented that the merging and reorganization of several offices “doesn’t look any simpler” and that it would merely result in new “Frankenstein offices.”
