The State Department will begin layoffs as early as Friday as it seeks to cut the size of its U.S. workforce by about 15%, CBS News has learned — part of the Trump administration’s sweeping plan to reorganize the department.
The cuts will include layoffs, or reductions-in-force (RIF), as well as voluntary departures by State Department staffers who took part in the Trump administration’s buyout programs, two senior State Department officials said Thursday. The department is also closing or merging scores of U.S.-based offices and rearranging its organizational chart shortly after.
The total number of layoffs expected in the coming days will be “pretty close” to the roughly 1,800 that were listed in a plan submitted to Congress earlier this year, one senior department official said.
Cuts to staff stationed overseas are not planned at this time, according to the official.
A draft reduction-in-force notice obtained by CBS News said the goal is “streamlining domestic operations to focus on diplomatic priorities.” It added the cuts “have been carefully tailored to affect non-core functions.”
Critics argue the cuts could undermine the State Department’s work.
The long-planned cuts are taking place days after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration’s sweeping plans to slash the size of the government workforce, pausing a lower court order that halted layoff plans at dozens of federal agencies.
Department staff were informed of the impending reduction-in-force plans in a Thursday afternoon message from Deputy Secretary of State Michael Rigas obtained by CBS News, thanking staff who face layoffs “for their dedication and service to the United States.”
Some employees were told that due to the anticipated RIF, they would not be permitted to telework on Friday, and should report to work with all department-issued equipment including laptops, telephones, diplomatic passports, travel cards, and any other property owned by the State Department. An email with these instructions told staff that badges would be collected during outprocessing, and to ensure that any personal items be collected before that time.
The department told reporters it plans to conduct the reductions-in-force over the course of a single day.
Trump administration planning sweeping State Department reorganization
After the reduction-in-force notices go out, the agency will move into a “transition period of several weeks” to phase in the new organization chart, a senior State Department official told reporters on Thursday.
The official said the changes are aimed at “streamlining this bloated bureaucracy,” cutting redundant departments, consolidating functions like human resources and finance, and shifting more focus to foreign embassies and offices assigned to handle specific regions.
For example, the official said, the State Department has multiple offices that oversee sanctions.
“Now, no one’s saying that the people who were working in any of those sanctions offices weren’t doing a good job or weren’t valuable members of the State Department family, but at the end of the day, we have to do what’s right for the mission and what’s right for the American people, and that means having one combined sanctions office,” the official said.
The department’s Political Affairs bureau — which includes the country-specific desks that handle the United States’ relations with individual nations and regions — is “largely unaffected by the reductions,” according to the official.
Another senior State Department official told reporters the department “identified offices where natural efficiencies could be found.”
“We took a very deliberate step to reorganize the State Department to be more efficient and more focused,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters during a trip to Malaysia on Thursday.
The State Department formally told Congress about its reorganization plans in May, telling lawmakers it intended to eliminate about 3,400 U.S.-based jobs and close or merge almost half of its domestic offices. At the time, the department said it planned to phase out some offices focused on democracy or human rights that it claimed were “prone to ideological capture,” and add new offices focused on “civil liberties” and “free market principles.”
The plan also integrates the previous functions of the U.S. Agency for International Development into the State Department, after the Trump administration moved to shutter the foreign aid agency. That move has drawn stiff criticism, with Democrats arguing the agency was unlawfully shut down without permission from Congress and humanitarian groups warning the shutdown could endanger public health.
The American Foreign Service Association, which represents members of the Foreign Service, has also previously pushed back on the plans.
“No one disputes the value of strengthening and rationalizing the State Department to meet today’s global challenges. But there is a right way and a wrong way to do it,” the association said in April. “The right way does not involve weakening and demoralizing the workforce. Neither does it involve rhetoric that accuses our diplomats of being ineffective, lacking accountability and concern for American interests.”
The cuts to the State Department have drawn pushback from Democratic lawmakers, who argue the moves could undermine American diplomatic efforts.
Many department staff have expressed alarm at the changes. For foreign service officers, the reductions-in-force are based on whether they worked in an office impacted by the reorganization on May 29, one of the two senior State Department officials told reporters Thursday.
A current State Department employee told CBS News there are people who were in these positions six weeks ago, but have since moved on to new assignments. “So why would you punish them for previously having held a job that they’re no longer in?” they said. “It makes absolutely no sense.”
The second senior State Department official told reporters, “we’ve tried to do this in an anonymized functional way,” with cuts based on department.
“Some of these are positions that are being eliminated, not people,” Rubio said Thursday.
The first senior department official also said, “We’re going to work to handle this in a manner that preserves, to the maximum extent possible, the dignity of federal employees.”
contributed to this report.
