Rubio unveils a massive overhaul of the State Department that would cut staff and bureaus

Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled a massive overhaul of the State Department on Tuesday, with plans to reduce staff in the U.S. by 15% while closing and consolidating more than 100 bureaus worldwide as part of the Trump administration’s “America First” mandate.

The reorganization plan, announced by Rubio on social media and detailed in documents obtained by The Associated Press, is the latest effort by the White House to reimagine U.S. foreign policy and scale back the size of the federal government. The restructuring was driven in part by the need to find a new home for the remaining functions of the U.S. Agency for International Development, an agency that Trump administration officials and billionaire ally Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have dismantled.

“We cannot win the battle for the 21st century with bloated bureaucracy that stifles innovation and misallocates scarce resources,” Rubio said in a department-wide email obtained by AP. He said the reorganization aimed to “meet the immense challenges of the 21st Century and put America First.”

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce echoed that sentiment, saying the “sweeping changes will empower our talented diplomats” but would not result in the immediate dismissal of personnel.

“It’s not something where people are being fired today,” Bruce told reporters Tuesday. “They’re not going to be walking out of the building. It’s not that kind of a dynamic. It is a roadmap. It’s a plan.”

It includes consolidating 734 bureaus and offices down to 602, as well as transitioning 137 offices to another location within the department to “increase efficiency,” according to a fact sheet obtained by AP.

There will be a “reimagined” office focused on foreign and humanitarian affairs to coordinate the aid programs overseas that remain at the State Department.

Although the plan will implement major changes in the department’s bureaucracy and personnel, it is far less drastic than an alleged reorganization plan that was circulated by some officials over the weekend. Numerous senior State Department officials, including Rubio himself, denied that the plan was real.

Work that had been believed targeted in that alleged leaked document survived — at least as bureau names on a chart — in the plan that Rubio released Tuesday. That includes offices for Africa affairs, migration and refugee issues, and democracy efforts.

It was not immediately clear whether U.S. embassies were included in the installations slated for closing. The earlier reports of wholesale closings of embassies, especially in Africa, had triggered warnings about shrinking the U.S. diplomatic capacity and influence abroad.

Some of the bureaus that are indeed expected to be cut in the new plan include the Office of Global Women’s Issues and the State Department’s diversity and inclusion efforts, which have been eliminated government-wide under Trump.

An office charged with surging expertise to war zones and other erupting crises will be eliminated, while other bureaus focused on human rights and justice will be scaled back or folded into other sections of the department.

Daryl Grisgraber, a policy lead with humanitarian organization Oxfam America, said this development only creates more “uncertainty” about the United States’ ability to contribute to humanitarian conflicts and will “only make the world a more unstable, unequal place for us all.”

It is unclear if the reorganization would be implemented through an executive order or other means.

The plans came a week after the AP learned that the White House’s Office of Management and Budget proposed gutting the State Department’s budget by almost 50% and eliminating funding for the United Nations and NATO headquarters.

While the budget proposal was still in a highly preliminary phase and not expected to pass muster with Congress, the reorganization plan got an initial nod of approval from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

“Change is not easy, but President Trump and Secretary Rubio have proposed a vision to remake the State Department for this century and the fights that we face today, as well as those that lie ahead of us,” Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, Republican chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.

Democrats, meanwhile, blasted the effort as the Trump administration’s latest attempt to gut “vital components of American influence” on the world stage.

“On its face, this new reorganization plan raises grave concerns that the United States will no longer have either the capacity or capability to exert U.S. global leadership, achieve critical national security objectives, stand up to our adversaries, save lives, and promote democratic values,” Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz said.

Some lawmakers said the move is a departure from the work Rubio supported as a senator.

“The vital work left on Secretary Rubio’s cutting-room floor represents significant pillars of our foreign policy long supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, including former Senator Rubio — not ‘radical ideologies’ as he now claims,” said New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The proposed changes at the State Department come as the Trump administration has been slashing jobs and funding across agencies, from the Education Department to Health and Human Services.

On foreign policy, beyond the destruction of USAID, the administration also has moved to defund so-called other “soft power” institutions like media outlets delivering objective news, often to authoritarian countries, including the Voice of America, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Asia and Radio/TV Marti, which broadcasts to Cuba.

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Amiri reported from the United Nations and Lee from London.