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The US state department has notified its staff that it will fire hundreds of US-based employees “in the coming days”, following the Supreme Court’s decision this week allowing Donald Trump’s administration to proceed with mass job cuts across federal agencies.
The administration’s plan, unveiled by secretary of state Marco Rubio in April, would eliminate about 15 per cent of the department’s workforce and is designed to make the state department “relevant,” “effective, [and] quick”, department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said on Thursday.
“When something is too large to operate, too bureaucratic, to actually function and to deliver projects or action, it has to change,” she said.
The reduction of state department staff is part of a wider effort by the White House to eliminate tens of thousands of jobs across US government agencies.
President Trump in January empowered his then-confidante Elon Musk to slash staff and spending across the federal government in the interest of eliminating bureaucratic “waste, fraud and abuse” — the mission of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
Critics, some of which have sued the administration, have accused Trump and Doge of dismantling programmes that are critical to national security, global health and other US interests abroad, alongside wasteful ones.
A senior state department official on Thursday said the imminent lay-offs would not spare people based on individual merit such as critical language skills. Instead the department would target “functions” and offices that the secretary, in consultation with Congress, had found redundant or out of sync with Trump’s agenda.
“We looked at the functions that were being performed, not at individuals,” a separate senior department official said.
After a federal judge in May temporarily blocked the downsizing operation across 20 agencies, pending court challenges, the Supreme Court on Tuesday determined that the plan could proceed.
Department officials declined to say precisely how many people would lose their jobs, or how long the process would take. The department notified Congress earlier this year that about 1,800 people would be affected, in addition to nearly a thousand others who had chosen to leave voluntarily.
A senior department official on Thursday said the imminent staff reductions would not include foreign service staff deployed overseas.
“We don’t have any plans for that right now,” the official said. “The secretary wants to take this one step at a time and we are looking at our domestic footprint right now.”
Michael Rigas, the deputy secretary of state for management and resources, wrote in the email: “Every effort has been made to support our colleagues who are departing. On behalf of department leadership, we extend our gratitude for your hard work and commitment to executing the reorganisation and for your ongoing dedication to advancing US national interests across the world.”
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