Washington — The State Department on Friday began laying off more than 1,300 staffers as it seeks to cut the size of its U.S. workforce by about 15%, part of the Trump administration’s sweeping plan to reorganize the department.
The involuntary staff reductions include 1,107 civil service and 246 foreign service employees, according to a notice sent to State Department employees Friday morning that was obtained by CBS News. The total number of staff departing as a part of the State Department’s reorganization is “nearly 3,000,” according to the department, a figure that includes those who took the “Fork in the Road” voluntary departure offer earlier this year.
The department is also closing or merging scores of U.S.-based offices and rearranging its organizational chart shortly after. The layoffs, called a reduction-in-force, or RIF, have been expected for months. Officials sent a reorganization plan to Congress in March, signaling the cuts.
Critics argue the cuts could undermine the State Department’s work. Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a statement saying the “decision to fire hundreds of members of the Civil Service and Foreign Service at the Department of State undermines our national security.”
“While there are targeted reforms that our government can pursue to maximize the impact of every tax dollar, that’s not what this is,” the senators wrote. “Blanket and indiscriminate cuts — the legacy from Elon Musk’s failed DOGE effort — weaken our government’s ability to deliver for the American people in a cost-effective manner.”
Foreign service officers who received RIF notices will be separated in 120 days, the notice sent to employees said, while civil service officers will be separated in 60 days.
The long-planned layoffs are taking place days after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration’s sweeping plans to slash the size of the government workforce, pausing a lower court order that halted layoff plans at dozens of federal agencies.
Department staff were informed of the impending reduction-in-force plans in a Thursday afternoon message from Deputy Secretary of State Michael Rigas, who thanked departing staff “for their dedication and service to the United States.” Two sources familiar with the matter said RIF notices started going out to affected employees on a rolling basis on Friday morning. The department previously told reporters it plans to conduct the reductions-in-force over the course of a single day.
Some employees were told that due to the anticipated RIF, they would not be permitted to telework on Friday, and should report to work with all department-issued equipment including laptops, telephones, diplomatic passports, travel cards and any other property owned by the State Department. An email with these instructions told staff that badges would be collected during “out processing,” and to ensure that any personal items be collected before that time.
A sign posted in the State Department building in Washington, D.C., directs staffers affected by job cuts to turn in their government laptops and phones on Friday, July 11, 2023.
Sweeping State Department reorganization
After the reduction-in-force notices go out, the agency will move into a “transition period of several weeks” to phase in the new organization chart, a senior State Department official told reporters on Thursday.
The official said the changes are aimed at “streamlining this bloated bureaucracy,” cutting redundant departments, consolidating functions like human resources and finance, and shifting more focus to foreign embassies and offices assigned to handle specific regions.
For example, the official said, the State Department has multiple offices that oversee sanctions.
“Now, no one’s saying that the people who were working in any of those sanctions offices weren’t doing a good job or weren’t valuable members of the State Department family, but at the end of the day, we have to do what’s right for the mission and what’s right for the American people, and that means having one combined sanctions office,” the official said.
The department’s Political Affairs bureau — which includes the country-specific desks that handle the United States’ relations with individual nations and regions — is “largely unaffected by the reductions,” according to the official.
Another senior State Department official told reporters the department “identified offices where natural efficiencies could be found.”
“We took a very deliberate step to reorganize the State Department to be more efficient and more focused,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters during a trip to Malaysia on Thursday.
The State Department formally told lawmakers in May that it intended to eliminate about 3,400 U.S.-based jobs and close or merge almost half of its domestic offices. At the time, the department said it planned to phase out some offices focused on democracy or human rights that it claimed were “prone to ideological capture,” and add new offices focused on “civil liberties” and “free market principles.”
The plan also integrates the previous functions of the U.S. Agency for International Development into the State Department, after the Trump administration moved to shutter the foreign aid agency. That move has drawn stiff criticism, with Democrats arguing the agency was unlawfully shut down without permission from Congress and humanitarian groups warning the shutdown could endanger public health.
The American Foreign Service Association, which represents members of the Foreign Service, has also previously pushed back on the plans.
“No one disputes the value of strengthening and rationalizing the State Department to meet today’s global challenges. But there is a right way and a wrong way to do it,” the association said in April. “The right way does not involve weakening and demoralizing the workforce. Neither does it involve rhetoric that accuses our diplomats of being ineffective, lacking accountability and concern for American interests.”
The cuts to the State Department have drawn pushback from Democratic lawmakers, who argue the moves could undermine American diplomatic efforts.
Many department staff have expressed alarm at the changes. For foreign service officers, the reductions-in-force are based on whether they worked in an office impacted by the reorganization on May 29, one of the two senior State Department officials told reporters Thursday.
A current State Department employee told CBS News there are people who were in these positions six weeks ago but have since moved on to new assignments. “So why would you punish them for previously having held a job that they’re no longer in?” they said. “It makes absolutely no sense.”
The second senior State Department official told reporters, “we’ve tried to do this in an anonymized, functional way.”
“Some of these are positions that are being eliminated, not people,” Rubio said Thursday.
The first senior department official also said, “We’re going to work to handle this in a manner that preserves, to the maximum extent possible, the dignity of federal employees.”
Udemy Is Powering Enterprise AI Transformation Through Skills
Migrants hide from ICE agents after farm raid, clash with protesters