If it hasn’t been made clear enough by now, President Donald Trump and his administration have unfinished business from his first term.
That feeling is especially acute at the State Department. The first Trump administration’s plans to revive the American system were undermined by leakers and turncoats who sought to preserve the status quo. Such was the case at the State Department: When Trump proposed transformative cuts in 2017, the president faced resistance not just from deep state actors but from his own political appointees and Republicans in Congress.
The four-year interregnum of President Joe Biden culminated in Trump’s return to Washington more powerful and more popular than ever. The mandate victory exposed just how wrong the establishment was in thinking the American people wanted Trump-lite—the American people wanted full-bodied Trump.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has brought that message to Foggy Bottom. On Monday, Rubio announced the most aggressive reorganization of the State Department in modern American history. This “comprehensive reorganization plan,” Rubio said in a statement, “will bring the department into the 21st Century.”
Prior to Rubio’s arrival in Foggy Bottom, the State Department had 734 different offices, many with redundant tasks and responsibilities. Now, Rubio aims to decrease that number to 604 with the closure of 132 offices, according to a report from The Free Press. The nearly 20% reduction in State Department offices will come with the elimination of 700 civil service and foreign service employees.
Beyond the closure of 132 offices, 137 offices will be consolidated into other divisions of the agency. Furthermore, the elimination of 700 foreign and civil service roles is just the tip of the iceberg, as Rubio has instructed his undersecretaries to produce plans within 30 days to slash their staff by 15%.
Some of the offices Rubio is looking to downsize employ thousands of people, thanks to the rapid growth of state department staffing over the last few decades. Prior to World War II, the State Department employed about 1,000. By 1946, the State Department had grown to 17,000 employees, somewhat understandable to meet the needs of the war and its aftermath.
Today, the State Department employs around 80,000 people between foreign service, civil service, and locally employed staff. Cold War hires? No. In the year 2000, State Department employees numbered just over 30,000.
In 25 years, the agency has nearly tripled in size. All the while, the Department of Defense has played an increasingly important role in international diplomacy at the expense of the State Department. Core State Department functions and efficacy have been undermined, due in no small part to over bureaucratization and left-wing capture that has diverted oodles of taxpayer dollars to liberal pet projects.
Rubio himself described the department as “bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition”:
Over the past 15 years, the Department’s footprint has had unprecedented growth and costs have soared. But far from seeing a return on investment, taxpayers have seen less effective and efficient diplomacy. The sprawling bureaucracy created a system more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America’s core national interests.
Trump has long recognized this truth, which in part explains why Trump chose a complete outsider in Rex Tillerson, the former chairman of ExxonMobil, as his first secretary of state.
In the early days of Trump 1.0, the administration proposed a 28% cut to the State Department budget, with a $25.6 billion budget between the State Department and USAID. The proposal, Tillerson told State Department employees in an email at the time, “acknowledges that U.S. engagement must be more efficient, that our aid be more effective, and that advocating the national interests of our country always be our primary mission.”
Those deep cuts failed to materialize, and Democrats were not solely to blame. Republicans in Congress opposed the plan, as well. Then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he was “not in favor” of the cuts. The late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also said he was “very much opposed.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., went further, claiming Trump’s State Department cuts were “dead on arrival” and that “it would be a disaster.” Even Rubio expressed concerns at the time.
Graham’s prediction turned out to be true: Republicans in Congress failed to deliver on the cuts that would have assisted Trump’s reform efforts. By 2021, the State Department saw a 2,000-person drop in foreign service staffers and still fewer reductions in civil service staff, but this was mostly credited to attrition and retirements.
Now, Rubio is prepared to go farther than anyone in the first Trump administration—much less Rubio himself—imagined in 2017.
“We are facing tremendous challenges across the globe,” Rubio’s statement said. “To deliver on President Trump’s America First foreign policy, we must make the State Department Great Again.”
Rubio’s reforms have the potential to be bigger and better than the deal struck between Senator Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (with one Senator Joe Biden playing a major role, as well) in the late Clinton years. The deal, which saw the State Department re-absorb the United States Information Agency (USIA) and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), marked the last time the State Department absorbed a major bureaucratic entity before it reabsorbed USAID in February.
The Helms-Albright agreement provides powerful testimony because it was ultimately Congress who delivered on the deal when it passed The 1998 Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act.
As Rubio institutes his reforms and DOGE identifies waste, fraud, and abuse at the State Department to streamline department processes, it will be up to Congress to protect what could be Rubio’s legacy at Foggy Bottom.
