Rubio unveils sweeping revamp of State Department
Offices focusing on conflict stabilization and criminal justice are targeted under the secretary's reorganization plan.
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced a major overhaul of the State Department that would reduce its US-based workforce by 15% and see the closure of offices focused on global conflict and criminal justice.
The State Department in its current form is “bloated" and "bureaucratic,” Rubio said in a statement Tuesday.
“Over the past 15 years, the Department’s footprint has had unprecedented growth and costs have soared,” Rubio said. “But far from seeing a return on investment, taxpayers have seen less effective and efficient diplomacy.”
According to a proposed reorganization chart, the position of undersecretary for Civilian Security, Democracy & Human Rights will be eliminated, along with several offices under its domain, including Conflict & Stabilization Operations and Global Criminal Justice. Together, these offices “provided a fertile environment for activists to redefine ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ and to pursue their projects at the taxpayer expense,” Rubio wrote in a Substack post Tuesday.
Two other offices in that grouping — the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration — will be placed under the new Coordinator for Foreign Assistance and Humanitarian Affairs.
An internal State Department fact sheet obtained by Al-Monitor shows the agency plans to reduce the number of its bureaus and offices from 734 to 602. Additionally, 137 offices will be relocated within the department to “ increase efficiency.”
The document further called on the department’s undersecretaries to “also submit a path to reducing staff in domestic offices by 15%." It’s not immediately clear whether employees in shuttered offices would be laid off or reassigned to other bureaus, officials said.
The reorganization won’t take effect until July 1, according to an email Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau sent to State Department employees on Tuesday. Further changes to the workforce are expected once Michael Rigas is confirmed as deputy secretary of state for management and resources.
In March, the Trump administration announced it had terminated 83% of the US Agency for International Development's programs. Earlier this month, Rubio said he was shuttering the department’s center for fighting foreign disinformation, formerly known as the Global Engagement Center.
Marcia Wong, a former senior official at State and USAID, told Al-Monitor that Congress should demand briefings from the State Department on the intent and rationale of the reorganization, including the decision to fold humanitarian assistance into the same office as democracy and human rights.
“Congress should want to understand the 'how,' with ongoing terminations of USAID specialized staff and now the goal to cut State personnel, can we be assured of continuity? Who remains to do the work?” Wong said.
This developing story has been updated since initial publication.
