Major Layoffs Begin at the State Department

The State Department will start firing employees Friday as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to trim government ranks, reports the AP. The outlet says the first 1,300 or so layoff notices were going out, including to 1,107 civil servants and 250 foreign service officers. The Washington Post earlier reported on an internal memo related to the cutbacks. Michael Rigas, the department's deputy secretary for management and resources, outlined the move without specifying how many staffers will be let go, but said "every effort has been made" to support departing colleagues. Secretary of State Marco Rubio informed Congress in May that the agency intends to shrink its US staff by over 15%, translating to nearly 2,000 jobs, in a bid to streamline what he labeled a "bloated bureaucracy."

The wave of cuts follows months of anxiety and frustration among the department's workforce. The Post describes employees as "exhausted and embittered" about the prospect of losing their jobs after working overtime to assist Americans caught up in Middle East conflicts. Officials say they want to eliminate positions and agencies that are "redundant, are overlapping or are no longer aligned with the president's foreign policy priorities in a post-Cold War world," the Guardian reports. Rubio has claimed some bureaus are "beholden to radical political ideology."

President Trump's skepticism of the State Department is longstanding, and his administration has made clear since his second term began that significant cuts were on the table. The Supreme Court recently removed a legal barrier that had temporarily halted mass layoffs, allowing the administration to proceed with reorganization plans affecting 19 federal agencies. The Post reports that some officials expressed "mild relief" about the decision if only because it ended the speculation about mass layoffs. "The only thing worse than these layoffs was the uncertainty about these layoffs," one insider says. (This story was updated with news of the first layoff notices.)