The State Department announced a "comprehensive" reorganization Tuesday to cut out what Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued was stopping the department from "performing its essential diplomatic mission."
The plan includes eliminating 132 offices and 700 positions for civil service and foreign service employees, according to the Free Press. In many instances, offices were merged to consolidate overlapping mandates, reducing the number of offices from 734 to 602, a reduction of 17%.
Officials released an organizational hierarchy chart for the department showing that the cuts don't go as far as some reports said, including in light of the administration's decision to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development and fold the little it didn't cut into the State Department. USAID will reportedly cease to exist on July 1, according to the Free Press.
"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," Rubio said in a statement. "That is why today I am announcing a comprehensive reorganization plan."
The department's top spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, said "things beyond this road map will also happen" in the future. However, the current reorganization is specifically related to "this department here, right in Washington, D.C.," and is unrelated to the possible closing of embassies and consulates abroad.
She also noted that simply because an office closes during this process does not mean the department is no longer working on the issue.
"There are going to be certain offices and certain bureaus that are going to be gone or folded into other bureaus," Bruce explained. "I would say this is one of the most important aspects of this for everyone in the building and everyone watching at home, because you might have had a specific bureau that dealt with a discrete issue doesn't mean because it's now folded into another larger bureau doesn't mean that it's gone or we don't care."
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In a post on Substack, Rubio said the offices and bureaus in the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Human Rights, and Democracy, which is known in the department as the "J Family" and "leads global diplomatic efforts to advance universal human rights, democratic renewal, and human-centered security," according to its website, will be restructured and placed under the new Coordinator for Foreign Assistance and Humanitarian Affairs.
Rubio said the previous undersecretary role "provided a fertile environment for activists to redefine 'human rights' and 'Democracy' and to pursue their projects at taxpayer expense."