State Department starts firing more than 1,350 workers in Trump’s shake-up of diplomatic corps

WASHINGTON: The State Department will start firing more than 1,350 U.S-based employees on Friday as the administration of President Donald Trump presses ahead with an unprecedented overhaul of its diplomatic corps, a move critics say will undermine U.S. ability to defend and promote U.S. interests abroad.

The layoffs will cover 1,107 civil service and 246 foreign service officers based in the United States, according to an internal State Department notice sent to the workforce and seen by Reuters.

“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,” it added.

The move is the first step of a restructuring that Trump has sought to ensure U.S. foreign policy is aligned with his “America First” agenda. Former diplomats and critics say the firing of foreign service officers risks America’s ability to counter the growing assertiveness from adversaries such as China and Russia.

Trump in February ordered Secretary of State Marco Rubio to revamp the foreign service to ensure that the Republican president’s foreign policy is “faithfully” implemented. He has also repeatedly pledged to “clean out the deep state” by firing bureaucrats that he deems disloyal.

The shake-up is part of an unprecedented push by Trump to shrink the federal bureaucracy and cut what he says is wasteful spending of taxpayer money.

The reorganization had been expected to be largely concluded by July 1 but did not proceed as planned amid ongoing litigation, as the State Department waited for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the Trump administration’s bid to halt a judicial order blocking mass job cuts.

On Tuesday, the Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to pursue the job cuts and the sweeping downsizing of numerous agencies, a decision that could lead to tens of thousands of layoffs while dramatically reshaping the federal bureaucracy.