WASHINGTON — The State Department previewed plans Tuesday to lay off roughly 2,000 staffers and close down 132 bureaus abroad as part of an “America First” overhaul of the diplomatic agency.
The number of department outposts will be reduced to 602 from the current 734, while another 137 offices will either be relocated within the department or phased out completely.
A 15% cut to domestic staff will result in more than 2,000 employees losing their jobs with officials telling employees they were “actively exploring” retirement incentives such as buyout offers. Another 700 at the department’s Foggy Bottom headquarters are also expected to be relieved.
Impacted employees will receive reduction-in-force notices by July 1, the department announced.
The reorganization was first reported by The Free Press and touted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“Unless we confront the underlying bureaucratic culture that prevents the State Department from carrying out an effective foreign policy, while allowing offices like GEC to flourish in the shadows, nothing will change,” Rubio said of the move in perhaps the first-ever Substack post by a cabinet official.
“That is why I am initiating a broad reorganization of the Department to address the steady growth of bureaucracy, duplication of functions, and capture by special interests that have crippled American Foreign Policy.”
The announcement came on the heels of leaked internal memos in recent days proposing up to 50% budget cuts, including gutting United Nations and NATO funding, advocating to “drastically” downsize or close dozens of US embassies and consulates as well as to implement many of the consolidations via executive order.
Rubio ripped a New York Times report of the memo on the draft executive order as “fake news.”
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said at the time that those plans weren’t “final” and added Tuesday that no one was “being fired today” — despite the sweeping restructuring efforts begun by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which closed USAID.
“They’re not going to be walking out of the building. It’s not that kind of a dynamic. It is a roadmap. It’s a plan,” she told reporters.
Rubio’s Substack post went on to boast about moving to “drain the bloated, bureaucratic swamp” by eliminating “redundant offices” and “non-statutory programs misaligned with America’s core national interests.”
“Until now, overlapping mandates paired with conflicting responsibilities created an environment ripe for ideological capture and meaningless turf wars,” he wrote, knocking costly spending programs that made use of US taxpayer funding for the agendas of “left-wing activists.”
That included millions of dollars in grants to non-governmental groups “that facilitated mass migration around the world,” a de facto “arms embargo” of Israel and opposition campaigns against “‘anti-woke’ leaders in nations such as Poland, Hungary, and Brazil,” according to the secretary.
Other foreign affairs initiatives on migration and refugees that had been put on the chopping block in the prior memo appear to have been saved from some of the cost-cutting as well.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-Fla.) praised the move in a statement.
“Warfare and diplomacy in the 21st century are changing every day. Yet, bloat and bureaucracy keep the State Department from responding to those changes,” he said. “This reorganization will make the State Department leaner and meaner and ensure every dollar and diplomat puts America First.”
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the top Democrat on the foreign affairs panel, slammed Rubio for having put forward the plans after “zero consultation with Congress” — and asked for Trump’s cabinet official to come testify.
