US state department announces plan to lay off nearly 15% of its domestic staff

The US state department has announced that it plans to move forward with mass layoffs as part of the most significant restructuring of the country’s diplomatic corps in decades. Officials say the cuts will align their mission with Donald Trump’s vision of America first.

The layoffs, which are commonly called reductions in force (or RIFs), along with voluntary redundancies, will affect nearly 15% of the state department’s domestic staff. A senior state department official said that was close to 1,800 people. The restructuring will also see several hundred bureaus merged or eliminated entirely. The department advises the president and leads the US in foreign policy issues.

The state department went forward with the layoffs, which were long expected, after the supreme court sided this week with the Trump administration against a federal judge’s hold on plans for mass government firings that could affect hundreds of thousands of federal employees.

“In the coming days, the department will be communicating to individuals affected by the reduction in force. First and foremost, we want to thank them for their dedication and service to the United States,” read a memo attributed to Michael Rigas, the deputy secretary for management and resources, announcing the layoffs.

State department officials said they wanted to eliminate redundant positions and agencies, noting that there were three offices at the state department managing sanctions policy, and that other offices had “proliferated” under Bill Clinton during the post-cold war era.

“It was looking at what are the functions that are redundant, are overlapping or are no longer aligned with the president’s foreign policy priorities in a post-cold war world,” said a senior state department official who briefed reporters on the restructuring. “In an era of great power competition, what should a state department look like?”

The changes will empower regional bureaus by creating a simpler chain of command, the officials said. That is also likely to empower political appointees, making the unwieldy state department bureaucracy easier for the Trump administration to manage.

“A lot of this covers redundant offices and takes some of these cross-cutting functions and moves them to the regional bureaus and to our embassies overseas, to the people who are closest to where diplomacy is happening,” the official said.

Some bureaus focusing on immigration and democracy promotion will see their missions significantly altered under a Trump administration that has been skeptical of traditional American diplomacy abroad.

For instance, the bureau of population, refugees and migration, which previously helped facilitate legal immigration into the United States, would instead be reformed to include an office of remigration to facilitate deportations.

The officials declined to discuss plans for the RIFs, saying that they wanted the employees “to hear from the department first, just for their own dignity”.