Trump is destroying the State Department and dragging diplomats through the mud

Washington-La Hambruna in full rule is now being developed in Gaza, thanks to Israeli aid restrictions backed by American experts anticipate “Rapidly accelerating mortality”, hunger that will kill many more Palestinians, which adds to the cost of at least 111 who have already starved in hunger, including children No pre -existing conditions.

The key to stopping bleeding is Israel raising its siege from the Palestinian territory, which will probably only occur through an agreement with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, about the fate of their dozen Israeli hostages. American officials have hoped to seal an agreement convincing the two parties to commit to the details of the prisoners’ swaps and the deployments of Israeli troops. However, a bargain also depends on the widest issue of the future of Israel-Palestine, and if the parties feel that the terms of an agreement leave them well positioned for what comes next. Gaza’s pain is the most urgent matter in the region, but other great concerns are also coming: Israel is exciting Demonstrate 12 more Palestinian villages in occupied West Bank, further harming the possibility of establishing a future Palestinian state and the undercutter hopes of long-term Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Israel-Palestine observers say Washington should be doing much more to avoid greater devastation and future conflicts, particularly as the chief and diplomatic sponsor of Israel. “It is in the absence of an effective American leadership that we have seen that the humanitarian situation in Gaza deteriorates, the violence of the settlers against the Palestinians in the West Bank increases, and Israeli hostages continue to suffer,” said the New Narrative Defense Group in a statement on Wednesday.

The group pointed out that the foreign ministers from another 25 countries near Israel this week issued a call to end the war in Gaza, saying: “So important that this collective statement is, the nations that issued it do not have the same level of influence as the United States of America.”

But during the last two weeks, the Office of the Department of State for Palestinian Israeli Affairs has not had a director, because the person in that work was fired along with more than 1,300 employees on July 11. Andrew Miller, the senior state official of the region under President Joe Biden, told News themezone that the paper is crucial, serving as the “desk officer” for the region of the region of the Gaza region, the producer of the region. “Analysis of the State Department.

Six months after his mandate, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reduced dozens of important positions and offices in the department in the most prominent changes in the state in decades, while pushing more than 1,500 officials to resign. Counting the mass dismissal, the department has lost almost 3,000 employees.

The result is a weaker and demoralized diplomatic corps that faces growing global crises. As President Donald Trump intensifies his international commercial war, negotiating with the main economies and promising huge huge tariffs for August 1, the State has lost officials working in matters from energy markets to the delicate interaction between shopping centers in southeast Asia.

With the War of Russia in Ukraine in progress despite Trump’s promises that would bring peace, the department reduced intelligence officers centered on the region and the personnel who would join the United States embassy in kyiv. And as the Trump Administration has attacked the main international actors from Brazil to European governments, claiming that they mistreat Trump’s ideological allies, the department has lost hundreds of officials with unique relationships internationally and experiment explaining and defending movements of American hand -hand policy to maintain the United States’s ties abroad despite the changing political winds.

“It is not a reform of the State Department as much as it is only a wide degradation of the function,” a former state -of -the -art official told News themezone.

The agency now feels like “a ghost city,” a state official still used to News themezone. Rubio and his advisors “wanted us to felt the pain and, ultimately, they succeeded [in creating] An environment in which people wake up and do not want to enter work. “

A senior state department official told News themezone by email: “The Secretary Rubio, under the leadership of President Trump, is working to consolidate and strengthen the workforce of the State Department.”

Many observers see a different objective: to ensure that officials do not dissent, even if they do it based on experience or rigorous analysis. An effect of the review is to undermine US diplomacy. (Meanwhile, the other main force of the country in global affairs, the military, is obtaining an increase in financing). By reducing the national work force of 18,000 people from the State Department, Rubio created “a head in a situation of Lucio,” said the current state official. “They see us as the enemy, or at least impediments to a foreign policy of Maga, and are things like this that will put us online.”

News themezone discussed the mass dismissals with more than 25 officials of the current and previous state department, almost all of whom they would only speak anonymously for fear of reprisals, as well as legislators and others familiar with the department. They described a confusing, secret and political process with devastating consequences. Few were optimistic about the future of the agency.

“I missed Christmas, I lost my weddings and lost farewell to die family members. I supported a father through the treatment and recovery of cancer mainly by phone. Yo He paid a high price to serve my country, ”wrote a diplomat fired in shared testimony with News themezone by a Democratic Office of Congress. Saying that they had accepted a Washington post for the first time in a decade and, therefore, the 246 foreign service officers who were finished, added:” We do not expect them to be replaced … I hope that the injured and illustrated It will replace local languages.

Arguing that the department was dominated by bureaucracy and liberal thinking, the state of the Trump administration will be thinner and effective. “We hope to have a workforce that moves at the speed of relevance and works to advance in the first United States foreign policy mandate granted to President Trump,” said a senior state department official to News themezone by email on Thursday. Last month, an official argued in a separate email to News themezone that the review was transparent, writing: “The leadership of the department has been to dozens of reports and audiences of the congress regarding reorganization … The consultation with Congress will continue to ensure a state department that best reflects the main national interests of the United States.”

Appearing before the legislators in the hearings of Capitol Hill this month, the state of the state senior management, Michael Rigas, projected the confidence on the future and the abilities of the agency.

“We want to empower our ambassadors and diplomats in the field and our regional offices in Washington,” Rigas said The senators, who also claim that the State will ensure that the United States remains the main donor of humanitarian aid in the world through its controversial absorption of the former United States Agency for International Development (USAID). “Our goal is to create a state department that is responsible to the American and effective people to unleash the potential of the most talented diplomatic force in the world.”

‘Address and demonization’

The testimony of Rigas to Congress triggered a new storm of fire between some staff of the State Department, who said that his statements ignored how the “strength reduction” (RIF) involved little logic or precision.

Rigas said, for example, that the department did not reduce officers in the Office of Consular Affairs. Although he clarified that he was not referring to the personnel who made decisions about passports or visas, the office fired 104 employees, even in his so -called “nervous center” for passports, along with a quarter of personnel who worked in passport fraud, and had already lost almost 100 for resignations, current and former state employees told the Democrats of Congress. While Rigas said that the department prioritized clarity over the cuts, some staff members who were told that they would not be affected were released later, while some positions said they would reallocate were abolished, which led to situations in which the staff was preparing to assume the work of their colleagues who anticipated dismissals, then they said goodbye. And although Rigas said that the cuts did not affect the positions abroad, the cuts reached multiple foreign service officers who were recently sent abroad, which means that now the money of the taxpayers must be spent to return them to them and their families and potentially move replacements.

Days after the RIF, the department requested the personnel of the offices that cover southern Asia and Africa to ignore the termination notices and recognized errors in 3% of the shots, according to the Washington Post. “We noticed a very small number of discrepancies that were addressed in real time,” said the senior state official to News themezone.

For months, the staff of the State Department and others expressed alarm on decision making by Rubio and his advisors, and the cost of a sense of imminent fatality.

For the second month of the Trump administration, the staff discussed issues as if signing their children for the summer camp or saving that money, a recently deceased official told News themezone. In April, the secretary took advantage of a new head of the Global Talent Management Office (GTM): Lew Olowski, who had joined the foreign service four years earlier. “This would be similar to placing a Junior military officer, who has not yet completed a command tour, in charge of the Pentagon Personnel System,” the American Foreign Service Association saying At the moment. After Olowski’s appointment, “the career people respected in GTM were clear or left in solidarity,” the persistent The state department official told News themezone, including the highest official in the office.

As Rubio refined and then released His plan, defenders of the State Department Reform, saw little sign that he was addressing long data complaints about the agency or count the loss of institutional knowledge.

“There’s a phrase in government street withdraw in place (rip)… you’ll probablay Catch sum of thhue, but you’re Also Going to Catch subdeply knowable people who understand where the bodies are buried and have particular related relationship ‘We Can’t Do It That Way Because We’ve TRIED IT BEFORE,’ ”

When Congress officials pressed the representatives of the State Department this spring to obtain details about the reorganization of blonde, state officials fought to explain how the department kept To particular tasks assigned to the teams that were scheduled to be cut, a congress assistant told News themezone. In public comments, Rubio focused on calling the inefficient state, telling legislators in Can that he had seen a memorandum that needed authorization from 40 people before arriving at his desk. A former official told News themezone that less supervision is not the only or best measure of a compensation process.

For many current and previous state employees, decision -making seemed limited to a small cohort of assistants around Rubio. The group included Rigas, its counselor Michael Needham, a conservative operation involved with the Tea Party movement and the Heritage Foundation, and Jeremy Lewin, a 28 -year -old boy hired from the “Government Efficiency Department” by Elon Musk (Doge). Lewin was used to execute the state’s foreign assistance work, which increased when Usaid Transport of Musk meant that the United States programs were transferred to the department. Rolling Stone reported in April that 10 people who knew Lewin He accused him of racist comments and violent outbursts. Lewin did not respond to requests for comments from the magazine.

Lewin was “arriving at things with a very large knife” and saw that much of the state’s work is so wasteful or not in line with Trum P thought, said a state department official familiar with his activities.

“Some reforms … They have a lot of time,” the official told News themezone. Even so, administrations rarely cut complete functions in government agencies, and Rubio’s circle did not seem to explain global volatility. “You do not want to concentrate on efficiency just because often the more efficient a government, the less flexible it is,” said a former high -level official of the State Department. “He needs free capacity, hand experience that perhaps does not necessarily be used completely at this time, in case there is a crisis in which he has to increase. There were years that the Palestinian crisis was not important until October 7,” 2023.

Meanwhile, the career officials played little in the conversations and the evidence grew that the review was in part ideologically motivated, aimed at programs that had bipartisan support, but the Trump administration now considered “aroused.”

“Anyone who shows any disposition to promote an agenda around human rights or other issues of what this administration is prioritizing is excluded [while] people with decades of experience [are being] I told him that you should retire to be fired, because you are going to get [fired]”Said another former official of the Senior State Department to News themezone earlier this year.

The authorities described an immense fear of Needham and even officials beyond the State, such as Russ Vought, a advocate of Christian nationalism that now directs the Office of Management and Budget. News themezone obtained an Vought questionnaire office circulated earlier this year investigating whether government contracts for foreign aid discuss environmental justice, transgender rights or other issues. Earl this year, free press reported that Michael Anton, a extreme right figure Now, serving as Head of Planning of State Department, personally interviewed almost all those appointed of Trump National Security. Many state department officials were surprised to see Rubio in February hire Darren Beattie – who last year tweeted: “COmpetent white men must be in charge if you want things to work “, and it was dismissed By Trump’s first administration, then, when the departure of the department in May published a rehearsal For Trump’s appointment, Samuel Samson, praising the “Western civilization.” On Friday, Rubio took advantage of Beattie for another powerful publication: above the group of experts from the United States Institute funded by the Government.

In addition, officials pointed out that many new state leaders were involved in Ben Franklin Fellowswip, a group of current state and previous employees who promote nationalist ideas and criticize diversity efforts. In June, the association received a $ 100,000 prize from Heritage, the former Needham employer, as one of several groups “doing what the left fears most”, for Heritage president.

Meanwhile, most of the department’s offices lacked leaders confirmed by the Senate, even when they were redesigned to fulfill Rubio’s goal of a 15% cut in the state national staff.

By June, an official told News themezone that the situation felt “as a funeral in the building.”

“They are used to changing policies [but] This administration is really pointing and demonizing the public servants of Care issued New criteria for promotions and possession, including a section on “Fidelity”.

The sources described the feeling of feeling and uncertainty that affect the work of the State, with officials who avoid meetings with foreign officials and others, while spending time trying to plan how to continue their work with less personnel or make calculations on whether to quit smoking.

“They decided to get rid of complete offices based on not much more analysis than a university republican might think is worthy of contempt.”

– Former State Department official

The day of real dismissals only brought more pain and confusion.

In the midst of shock shots and additional security on each apartment in the department, some managers had no idea that some of their employees were fired and some officials lost access to the government’s email before they could finish the travel plans back to the United States or cancel planned meetings with international counterparts, according A News.

News themezone attended a “applause” ceremony that day for dismissed employees. A young woman who came out of the crying and confused state said her termination “came out of nowhere” and his team was “hit hard” despite focusing on the security of Americans.

“It is comforting to see people appear for us. I have felt so forgotten,” he said, close to the protesters who carry pro-diplomacy signals. When asked if he would consider returning to the public service, he did not hesitate: “If they asked me. I made an oath to this country and that has not changed.”

That day, Rubio promoted Lewin, the member of the Dux staff without prior experience in foreign policy, to the third highest range of the state, which makes him the youngest person at work, by The Washington Post. When asked about the decision, a senior state department official told News themezone: “The leadership team of the State Department, in our offices, is talented and driven by the results regardless of their age.”

Under Trump

The new limitations in the state due to the shots will probably be clarified soon.

Some officials who did not expect to be dismissed, such as intelligence analysts, did not have time to transmit knowledge to the remaining colleagues, the current and previous state staff, while even those who knew they left because they chose to resign or blond indicated that their team would disappear could not be sure that their functions would continue.

Saul Loeb through Getty Images

The reorganization involved the closure or fusion of almost half of the national offices of the department, among other cuts. Among the most affected teams focused on human rights, help programs and diplomacy at the multilateral level, which means in international forums. “They decided to get rid of complete offices based on not much more analysis than a university republican might think he is worthy of contempt,” a former state official told News themezone.

There is a marking watch for when the impact of those reductions will be felt. Several dismissed officials focused on multilateral and nuclear affairs and a decimated team in the Rights Office would usually do a great preparatory work for meetings around the annual meeting of United Nations governments, in autumn, two former officials said.

One added that disarmament officials would also be key to a scheduled summit next year on the Nuclear Non -Proliferation Treaty, a tool that is vital for the effort of US presidents, including Trump, to prevent them from developing a nuclear weapon.

Meanwhile, despite the president of the president to promote US workers and businesses, the State cuts most of the officials specialized in international labor standards, argued a former state department official, telling News themezone: “They are literally spending the time to the dry US companies that depended on the United States government to promote these standards abroad to level the field.” And the department lost a team of negotiators already involved in Trump’s signatory diplomatic policies, such as the commitment to the new government in Syria, for Crooked news.

The Trump administration may feel that less diplomacy is beneficial. Inform reporters last week, a senior state official speak To listen to a minister of a country in the Persian Gulf, home of authoritarian monarchies with terrible labor rights records, which their nation and the United States had “great diplomatic tension” under the presidency of Biden as the officials of the State Department promoted the unions. Now, the official continued, the minister “was delighted and wants to work with us in shared prosperity and trade agreements that are not trying to condescate.”

Avoiding such dynamics is precisely why the State Department and legislators have designed for decades in different offices focused on the rights and other problems of universal standards, such as the prevention of international crimes. The United States embassies and state offices centered in particular parts of the world have long experienced “clientitis”: seek warm relationships with foreign partners to the extent that they almost echo their perspectives. That makes it difficult, for example, to push other governments not critics of jail or violate international law.

“That was the beauty of our office: not being caught in other interests,” said a recently deceased state department employee who spent several years in the office by monitoring and fighting trafficking in persons. His “Rotula” office has lost almost half of his staff, and the employee believes he is extreme Long unlikely that the remaining personnel can continue to produce a detailed analysis for the annual people traffic report in the United States, the most outstanding evaluation worldwide than governments are doing about the problem.

“Traffic is a transnational criminal company [with] The victims who come to the US and the traffickers who use their procedures to finance other illegal activities, so it is a domino effect, “said the official, noting that Trump in his first mandate became the first president to attend a meeting of the interagence tartage force on trafficking and appoint an anti-translation official in the National Security Council of the White House.

The former officer fears that without the participation of the United States government, progress will be lost in matters such as interacting with trafficking survivors and including their perspectives in global discussions. “It was not just a job, but a mission to hold governments responsible and advocate the victims and survivors,” they continued.

Earlier this year, the officials of the State Department diluted the annual human rights reports of the agency, according For the Washington Post, eliminating references to countries that participate in government corruption or deport people where they could face the abuse of their political ties.

Trump attendees argue that they can remedy involuntary problems that arise from layoffs. In an internal town hall last week, the Undersecretary of State Political Affairs, Allison Hooker, told the staff that the department will identify the gaps and fill them, which led an assistant to ask why that analysis was not carried out before leaving people, a current state official told News themezone. Speaking to Congress, Rigas said that the officials of the Department of State dismissed can still request openings in the department, but then added: “The warning is that there is a freezing of contracting of the entire government.”

Bloomberg through Getty Images

The former official against trafficking and an assistant of Congress told the programs financed by News themezone financed abroad probably closed simply due to the lack of skills necessary to keep payments in operation. “The programs will be kept on paper, but if the money does not go through the door, they will not do it in practice,” said the assistant.

Some denounce the soft power of the United States as deliberate. “The administration plan is to disappear to the United States,” Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn (D-Conn.

Build again … never?

Most observers of the state department review have little hope that the agency can recover lost strengths, even through the action of Congress or under a new president who wants to cut the talent.

During Trump’s remaining years in office, the Administration will probably leave the State to wilt, given the president’s disdain for the agency and the preference to entrust international initiatives to the assistants with whom it is personally close, such as the special envoys Steve Witkoff and Tom Barrack or the Commercial Advisor Peter Navarro.

The president and blond “have a vision of the State that really does not allow him to do what he does best: alliances, work together, help create a nuanced vision of other countries. To the extent that we are telling all other countries to suck eggs, why do we need all that?” A former senior state department official argued. They predict that the Trump team will largely use the department to send political signals on the combination of liberal ideology or bureaucrats: “The State has become a place where these performative initiatives can make.”

Meanwhile, in the emerging discussion about Capitol Hill on government financing plans for 2026, influential republican legislators in the House of Representatives keep A 22% cut for the department and other internationally centered agencies. The Trump administration wants almost half the state budget.

The years of abuse of diplomats will probably have a self-reference effect on department staff.

Consider the affirmation of the administration that the vital humanitarian work of the United States previously administered by USAID can still occur with the agency absorbed in the State. That vision would probably benefit from taking advantage of those who previously did that job, and perhaps even hire, said another former state official, but “even in the best case … they still have a complete generation, decades and decades of international professionals who have now left to the left?

A state employee who recently accepted a purchase told News themezone that many younger hiring choose that route, probably because it is easier for them, for example, abandoning the Washington area or trying a change in the race. They and several other officials feel that the agency’s review will undermine future recruitment attempts, including efforts to make the Traditionally institution of “pale, man and yale” Reflect the range of American society.

If the resumption of hiring will probably be molded by Trump’s movement, the staff argued, predicting blond “to fill all these positions with people who are quite similar, who will never leave because they see now [State] as Heritage Foundation 2.0 “.

Several former officials also pointed out that the specialized work carried out by finished teams and employees will not occur for several years or will be much less exhaustive due to personnel limitations. That has a coup effect: it will be more difficult for the State, a few years later, to produce a comparative analysis of, for example, the conditions of human rights in specific countries or the trajectory of international climatic negotiations, if there are gaps of years in its monitoring of those matters.

In addition, the combination of self -election between the personnel they renounce, the focus of offices that probably question the Trump agenda and the fear among those who are still in the department will reduce the possibilities that the state personnel documently and report a possible misconduct or abuse, the former employee argued. The responsibility for the greatest changes in the department in decades may never arrive.

As some state department staff discusses attempts to recover their work and plans to restore their agency, the possibilities of internal or external support in doing so remain thin.

“They can do what they want in the State with impunity because the State has no internal political allies and does not affect the markets,” said a former senior official.

Igor Bobic contributed reports.