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State Department is firing more than 1,300 staff on Friday

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the Blue Room of the White House in Washington, DC on July 7. Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the Blue Room of the White House in Washington, DC on July 7. Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

CNN — The State Department has begun firing more than 1,300 people as part of a dramatic overhaul of the agency, according to a State Department official.

The firings will affect 1,107 civil service and 246 foreign service officers, an internal notice seen by CNN said. It comes as the State Department implements a drastic reorganization as part of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to shrink the federal government.

Hundreds of offices and bureaus are being eliminated or altered as a result of the changes being implemented on Friday.

 

Employees will receive layoff notices via email, the notice said. The firings are happening as Secretary of State Marco Rubio is out of Washington, DC, on a flight back from an overseas trip to Malaysia.

“Nearly 3,000 members of the workforce will depart as part of the reorganization,” the notice said. That number includes people who are being fired as well as those leaving voluntarily.

“In connection with the Departmental reorganization first announced by the Secretary of State on April 22, 2025, the Department is streamlining domestic operations to focus on diplomatic priorities,” the notice said.

“Headcount reductions have been carefully tailored to affect non-core functions, duplicative or redundant offices, and offices where considerable efficiencies may be found from centralization or consolidation of functions and responsibilities.”

Foreign service officers who are given “Reduction in Force” (RIF) notices on Friday will be placed on administrative leave for 120 days before formally losing their jobs, according to the notice. Most civil servants will be placed on leave for 60 days before their firing takes effect, the notice said.

The RIFs, which have loomed over the agency for weeks, have left the workforce in limbo and demoralized as they wait for final notice about the fates of the careers to which many have devoted years or even decades of their lives.

Opponents of the cuts say they will take a toll at a time when the role of diplomats and foreign affairs experts is particularly important as the Trump administration tries to broker ends to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

There have also been sharp criticisms of the broader reorganization, which includes sweeping changes to focus on the Trump administration’s priorities, such as reducing immigration to the US and promoting the administration’s worldview, with less emphasis on protecting and promoting human rights across the globe.

Trump administration officials have defended the reorganization, arguing it was necessary to make the “bloated” agency more effective and aligned with the president’s priorities.

Rubio on Thursday said the reorganization was being implemented in “probably in the most deliberate way of anyone that’s done one.”

A senior State Department official, when asked for an estimate of how much money the firings would save taxpayers, could not provide a specific answer but said the budget request for the next fiscal year “reflects substantial savings.”

The official said the RIF plan “looked at the functions that were being performed, not at individuals.”

“If a particular function was being performed that was no longer aligned with what the department was going to be doing going forward, that function was being eliminated,” the official said Thursday. “It was personnel agnostic.”

The firings are impacting both members of the civil and foreign service in Washington, DC. Foreign service officers are often highly trained, speak multiple languages, and serve around the world on behalf of the US. If they were working in a now-eliminated office on May 29, the day Rubio approved the reorganization plan, they may be cut.

There aren’t plans for cuts at overseas posts as of now, the senior State Department official said.

Thomas Yazdgerdi, the president of the American Foreign Service Association, the union representing foreign service officers, said that forthcoming firings come “at a particularly bad time.”

“There are horrible things that are happening in the world that require a tried-and-true diplomatic workforce that’s able to address that,” he told CNN on Wednesday. “The ability to maintain a presence in the areas of the world that are incredibly important, dealing with issues like Ukraine, like Gaza, like Iran right now that require great diplomatic attention.”

Yazdgerdi, a career diplomat, said he does not believe the RIF plans take “the unique nature of the foreign service” into consideration.

“We’re like the military. We have personal rank and an up-or-out personnel system. We’re not tied to any particular position,” he explained. “If you’re going to RIF an office, we’re not tied to that office.”

He noted that even prior to the Trump administration, the diplomatic corps was “stretched thin” and “could not staff up appropriately our embassies overseas at a time when China, our biggest rivals, had no problem doing that.”

Yazdgerdi believes the firings will have an impact not only on morale, “but also on recruitment and retention.”

Meanwhile, the senior State Department official said Thursday they wanted to handle the firings “in a manner that preserves, to the maximum extent possible, the dignity of federal employees and foreign service officers and civil servants who are affected by this.”

Author: Editors Desk, Jennifer Hansler, CNN

Source: Jennifer Hansler, CNN

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