The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, presented on Tuesday a radical plan to drastically restructure the State Department that would see many of its long -standing offices and hundreds of eliminated positions.
“In its current form, the department is swollen, bureaucratic and unable to carry out its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition,” Rubio said in a statement. “Expansion bureaucracy created a more in debt system with radical political ideology than to advance to the United States central interests.”
Officials familiar with the plans say that Rubio’s vision implies reducing the number of offices within the State Department from 734 to 602 and eventually eliminating approximately 700 positions based in Washington for the external service and employees of the civil service.
The officials said that the reductions would not be immediate, and that the leaders within the department would have 30 days to analyze and implement the plan.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrives at Quai D’Orsay, France’s Foreign Minister for high -level conversations to discuss Ukraine and his security in Paris, on April 17, 2025.
Julien de Rosa/Pool via Ap
An updated organizational picture published by Rubio shows the offices in the cutting block include those that are under the department’s energy resources office and its Office of Conflict Operations and Stabilization, which aims to help the Federal Government to “better anticipate, prevent and respond to the conflict,” according to the department.
Other offices that would be eliminated under the plan include the Office of the Science and Technology Advisor of the Secretary, the Office of International Religious Freedoms, the Office to Monitor and Combat Personal Traffic, the Office of Global Women’s Affairs, the Office of the Global Association and the Global Criminal Justice Office, which aims to coordinate the government’s response and promote the Office of Responsibility of the responsibility of the offers.
According to the plan, the department will also combine two offices focused on arms control and eliminate units centered on counteracting violent extremism from the department’s anti -terrorism office.
The authorities also expect several special envoys and their offices to be eliminated.
The state department spokesman Tammy Bruce said the reorganization did not necessarily meant that the approach area previously covered by a deleted position was no longer a priority for the department.
“Certainly, all these problems are important,” Bruce said, added that the department would work to “mix” those issues within the new framework so that they can be “treated as a whole.”
However, the authorities say that other reductions for areas in the department are planned that were not directly affected by reorganization, and that sub -secretaries throughout the office have received instructions to prepare plans to reduce their staff by 15%, a movement that could lead to thousands of additional employment cuts.
The leadership of the State Department has had greater pressure to reduce its workforce amid broader cuts between the federal government headed by Elon Musk and its Government Efficiency Department (Doge).
On Tuesday, Bruce minimized the role that Doge had in the reorganization plans.
“We know that the American people love Doge’s result. I think there were some questions, maybe, about how it was applied,” he said.
“I would say that Dege is not in charge of this, but this is the result of what we have learned and the fact that we appreciate the results,” Bruce added.
The Trump administration has been considering a budget proposal that would reduce the state department budget by approximately half, according to officials familiar with deliberations and internal documents reviewed by ABC News.
Rubio’s restructuring does not address operations abroad from the department, which officials say that they are also likely to undergo significant cuts in the coming months.
