The Supreme Court allows Trump to make massive staff cuts
The Supreme Court lifted a federal judge’s suspension over the Trump administration’s massive staffing.
The State Department will fire more than 1,300 people as part of a broad restructuring plan, Reuters reports.
According to Reuters, the layoffs will affect 1,107 civil servants and 246 foreign service officers. The Associated Press reports the same number.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed with reporters that he was working on cutting on July 10th while traveling to Malaysia.
“Our intention is to notify Congress a few weeks in advance and move forward with the plan that it took several months to design,” he said.
Rubio first announced plans to restructure the department in April, but plans were put on hold when a federal judge blocked them in May. On July 8, the Supreme Court overturned that block, essentially allowing layoff plans to advance across multiple federal agencies, while lower courts continue to hear lawsuits about whether layoffs are legal.
The State Department had around 80,000 employees in September, with the latest figures available. This includes approximately 14,000 foreign service employees and 13,000 civil servant employees.
“In its current form, the sector is bloated and bureaucratic, unable to carry out essential diplomatic envoys in this new era of massive competition,” Rubio wrote in a statement on April 22. “The sector’s footprint has seen unprecedented growth over the past 15 years, and costs have skyrocketed.”
Rubio said the new model would take the State Department into the 21st century, offering taxpayers to improve return on investment and “make the State Department great again.”
“Local-specific features will be integrated, functionally improved, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statistical programs that have been misaligned with the core American national interests,” he wrote.
Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led by New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen, characterized the layoff as “blankets and indiscriminate cuts” that undermine national security.
“In Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, Haiti and Myanmar there are active conflicts and humanitarian crises. “Now is the time to strengthen our diplomatic hands and we don’t undermine them.”
The department proposed to fire nearly 1,900 employees in a plan submitted to Congress in May. The sector has around 18,000 employees in the domestic workforce. The department estimated another 1,575 had postponed resignations.
Contribution: Reuters.
