Rubio: It’s Time to Clean House at State

Correction: It is long past time to clean house at the State Department. After decades of bloat turned into authoritarian attempts to quash and suppress dissent and debate inside the US, the need has never been greater for reform that strips the bureaucracy down to a level where focus on diplomacy and national security are all that Foggy Bottom has as its mission.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the start of those “sweeping changes” this morning:

Today is the day. Under @POTUS’ leadership and at my direction, we are reversing decades of bloat and bureaucracy at the State Department.

These sweeping changes will empower our talented diplomats to put America and Americans first. pic.twitter.com/CGWz3JrYwu

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) April 22, 2025

The attached statement doesn’t describe the sweeping nature of the reforms Rubio plans to implement. Fortunately, the New York Times has entered freak-out mode over the executive order issued by Donald Trump outlining its scope and scale. It takes a while for the NYT to get specific, however:

Major structural changes to the State Department would be accompanied by efforts to lay off both career diplomats, known as foreign service officers, and civil service employees, who usually work in the department’s headquarters in Washington, said current and former U.S. officials familiar with the plans. The department would begin putting large numbers of workers on paid leave and sending out notices of termination, they said.

The draft executive order calls for ending the foreign service exam for aspiring diplomats, and it lays out new hiring criteria that includes “alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision.”

And … so? The State Department had plenty of resources that weren’t at all oriented to diplomacy, such as the “Global Engagement Center,” which the previous administration converted to a domestic censorship operation. When discovered and challenged, the bureaucrats at Foggy Bottom attempted to hide that function by renaming the effort “The Counter Foreign Information Manipulation & Interference Hub” and dispersing its staff across State’s other bureaus. Rubio made clear last week that he would put an end to that kind of bureaucratic insurrection, and the best way to do that is to eliminate the bureaucrats with too much time on their hands.

Most of the plan consists of consolidations and reductions in bureaus in favor of more focus on the agenda of the elected president. Given that the executive branch reaches its zenith of authority in foreign policy, this should be relatively non-controversial. One suspects that the NYT is mainly upset over the priorities rather than the reorganization for focus and cost reductions, perhaps especially in one particular area (emphasis mine):

The department would eliminate a bureau overseeing democracy and human rights issues; one that handles refugees and migration; and another that works with international organizations. The under secretary position overseeing the first two bureaus would be cut. So would the office of the under secretary of public diplomacy and public affairs.

The department would also get rid of the position of the special envoy for climate.

The department would establish a new senior position, the under secretary for transnational threat elimination, to oversee counternarcotics policy and other issues, the draft memo said.

In other words, the Trump administration won’t abandon diplomacy. They just plan to apply resources to their priority issues while vastly reducing the aount of bureaucrats who either don’t or won’t fit that agenda. 

After watching the State Department tip over into Big Brother over the last few years, that is a good outcome regardless of priority reassignments. The GEC/R-FIMI sequence demonstrates just how dangerous an unaccountable bureaucratic state is to a constitutional republic. The ever-expanding bureaucracy will seek power for its own ends and use it to secure their power for as long as possible, even if it means violating constitutional protections that go to the core of this country and democracy itself. In fact, it’s the anti-democracy — an institution that shields itself from accountability in order to execute its own preferred policies rather than those of the elected officials chosen by the people in both the executive and legislative branches. 

According to other memos that the NYT claims to have seen, the end goal is a 50% reduction in the State Department budget, with perhaps as much as a 70% reduction in personnel. Want to know what that’s called? A good start.