Reinventing the State Department
Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently announced plans to streamline and refocus the first Cabinet agency.
Donald Trump won the 2024 election on an “America First” platform. As far as he and his administration are concerned, promises made to the American people are to be promises kept.
In that vein, Trump has spent his first 100 days aggressively implementing his transformative agenda.
The rebranded Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk, has drawn most of the media’s and Democrats’ attention. And for good reason, as DOGE shook up Washington’s entrenched bureaucratic class faster and harder than anyone believed possible.
DOGE’s biggest scalp was USAID, the wannabe independent outfit technically under the broader State Department umbrella. In a matter of weeks, USAID was gutted and nearly completely eliminated following DOGE’s revelations of just how the department was spending taxpayer dollars. Needless to say, the majority of Americans found the wasteful spending appalling. What remained of USAID, what was genuinely non-objectionable and worthwhile, has been absorbed directly into the State Department.
However, the elimination of USAID is just the beginning of Trump’s efforts to implement significant and lasting change in Washington.
Recently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on X, “Today is the day. Under [Trump’s] leadership and at my direction, we are reversing decades of bloat and bureaucracy at the State Department.” He added in an official statement, “These sweeping changes will empower our talented diplomats to put America and Americans first.”
Today is the day. Under @POTUS’ leadership and at my direction, we are reversing decades of bloat and bureaucracy at the State Department.
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) April 22, 2025
These sweeping changes will empower our talented diplomats to put America and Americans first. pic.twitter.com/CGWz3JrYwu
While cost-cutting was a significant reason for this action, Rubio also noted, “The sprawling bureaucracy created a system more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America’s core national interests.”
Rubio also blasted as “fake news” a recent New York Times report claiming that this restructuring would also “shut down embassies and consulates across Africa.” At the same time, the plan calls for reducing the current number of State Department offices worldwide from 734 to 602, which amounts to a 17% reduction.
Furthermore, 137 offices will be transferred to other parts of the agency. “This approach will empower the Department from the ground up, from the bureaus to the embassies,” Rubio explained. “Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist.”
A number of departments that are rumored to be eliminated include the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, which is to be overhauled and renamed the Under Secretary for Foreign Assistance and Human Rights; the Office of Global Criminal Justice, which was created in 1997; and the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO), which was started in 2011.
Meanwhile, the Leftmedia is spinning these changes and downsizing of the State Department as damaging to the U.S.‘s foreign policy efforts. The Associated Press quotes Daryl Grisgraber from Oxfam America, a non-governmental organization that focuses on famine relief, who says that these moves create “uncertainty” and will “only make the world a more unstable, unequal place for us all.”
Democrat lawmakers were even more hyperbolic, claiming that Trump aims to eliminate “vital components of American influence” around the globe. Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz asserted that “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.”
But will it actually? Unlikely. As Senator Jim Risch (R-ID), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, observed, “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.”
The truth is, what Democrats and the Leftmedia really object to is the fact that Rubio is implementing change in the State Department to promote Trump’s agenda and foreign policy views.
