Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a huge announcement on Tuesday regarding the State Department and the Donald Trump administration’s “America First” agenda. It’s being called the biggest shakeup at State in decades.
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
“Today is the day,” Rubio began in a post on X, adding, “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.”
The post included an official statement from the State Department, which reads (emphasis mine):
We are facing tremendous challenges across the globe. To deliver on President Trump’s America First foreign policy, we must make the State Department Great Again.
In its current form, the Department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition. Over the past 15 years, the Department’s footprint has had unprecedented growth and costs have soared. But far from seeing a return on investment, taxpayers have seen less effective and efficient diplomacy. The sprawling bureaucracy created a system more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America’s core national interests.
That is why today I am announcing a comprehensive reorganization plan that will bring the Department into the 21st Century. This approach will empower the Department from the ground up, from the bureaus to the embassies. 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.
Under President Trump’s leadership, we have a commander in chief committed to putting America and Americans first. As his Secretary of State, I am confident a reformed State Department will meet the moment and help make our country great once again.
So what exactly does a “comprehensive reorganization” of the State Department look like? According to The Free Press, which Rubio says has the “real exclusive,” — by the way, how do we get one of those exclusives here at PJ Media? — internal documents show that the Department “will close 132 agency offices, including those launched to further human rights, advance democracy overseas, counter extremism, and prevent war crimes.” That’s a 17% reduction to start.
Additionally, “under secretaries at the State Department are also being instructed within 30 days to present plans to reduce their U.S. personnel in individual departments by 15 percent,” including “six top offices employing thousands of people.”
SCOOP: The Trump administration is launching the biggest shake-up at the State Department in decades, @TheFP has learned.
▶️ Closing 132 offices
▶️Undersecretaries to reduce personnel by 15%
▶️Moving 137 offices
+More pic.twitter.com/krPa8pnddw— Gabe Kaminsky (@gekaminsky) April 22, 2025
Rubio also wrote about the shakeup in what appears to be a new Substack for the State Department, stating that “The Department has long struggled to perform basic diplomatic functions, even as both its size and cost to the American taxpayer has [sic] ballooned over the past fifteen years. The problem is not a lack of money, or even dedicated talent, but rather a system where everything takes too much time, costs too much money, involves too many individuals, and all too often ends up failing the American people.”
Related: A HUGE Win for Free Speech: Rubio Shuts Down Controversial State Department Office
He also expanded on a topic I covered last week, the shuttering of the Global Engagement Center — an office that censored U.S. citizens — citing it as just one of many reasons why this overhaul is necessary.
An example of an out-of-control Department is the Global Engagement Center (GEC) that I shuttered last week. The office engaged with media outlets and platforms to censor speech it disagreed with, including that of the President of the United States, who its director in 2019 accused of employing ‘the same techniques of disinformation as the Russians.’ Despite Congress voting to shutter it, the GEC simply renamed itself and continued operating as if nothing had changed.
Unless we confront the underlying bureaucratic culture that prevents the State Department from carrying out an effective foreign policy, while allowing offices like GEC to flourish in the shadows, nothing will change. That is why I am initiating a broad reorganization of the Department to address the steady growth of bureaucracy, duplication of functions, and capture by special interests that have crippled American Foreign Policy.
Rumors surrounding a major overhaul have been circling for a while, though no one knew exactly what that included. As it does, the New York Times reported on Sunday that plans for the reorganization would “eliminate Africa operations and shut down bureaus working on democracy, human rights and refugee issues.” Rubio called this information “fake news.” The Free Press also says that the official “Sensitive But Unclassified” documents it viewed made no mention of any of this.
If you’ve paid any attention at all, the Times and other legacy media outlets have been desperately trying to paint Trump, Rubio, etc., as these uncaring jerks who are running around cutting humanitarian aid and starving all the poor children in Africa. That’s simply not true. Instead, they’re righting the wrongs of previous administrations and bureaucrats who have turned programs falsely labeled with names like ‘humanitarian aid” and “spreading democracy” into a way to spread their leftist agenda and/or put money in their own pockets.
Recommended: Rubio Exposes Leftist Agenda and Corruption of USAID Programs
Here’s another example from Rubio’s Substack post:
The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor became a platform for left-wing activists to wage vendettas against “anti-woke” leaders in nations such as Poland, Hungary, and Brazil, and to transform their hatred of Israel into concrete policies such as arms embargoes. The Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to international organizations and NGOs that facilitated mass migration around the world, including the invasion on our southern border.
Another office that Rubio is reportedly shutting down is the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO). According to the Free Press, “The CSO was established in 2011 to help anticipate, prevent, and respond to conflicts that may threaten U.S. national security, according to a press release upon its launch.”
However, a senior official at the State Department told the news outlet that “Nobody is really sure what they do.” That person added, “When I ask them, they seem to not really be sure what they’re supposed to be doing. It’s an office that was created several years ago to look at Afghanistan [issues] and to avoid conflict areas. But we already have other offices within the department that do that.”
I have a feeling that’s the case for many federal government offices. It’ll be interesting to watch Rubio and his team tackle this bloated bureaucracy at the State Department. It sounds like it’s something that is long overdue — much like most of what the Trump administration has done over the last three months.
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