Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sweeping changes to the State Department that aim to put “America and Americans first.”
Rubio said the State Department’s current form is “bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission.”
“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,” he said. “The sprawling bureaucracy created a system more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America’s core national interests.”
Rubio’s plan for the Department will bring it “into the 21st Century,” he explained, empowering it from the “ground up.”
“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,” he described.
According to documents obtained by The Free Press, the State Department will close 132 offices, reducing its total number by 17%. Personnel is also expected to be cut by 15%.
Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State during the first Trump administration, shared his support for the effort with The Free Press, stating that the Department is “desperately in need of significant reorganization, and there’s much efficiency that can be gained there.”
The State Department’s reorganization is a part of a partnership with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Rubio’s announcement of widespread reorganization follows the Department shutting down what was considered its hub for censorship activities, the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI), formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC).
“It is the responsibility of every government official to continuously work to preserve and protect the freedom for Americans to exercise their free speech,” Rubio said at the time, adding that the office “spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.” He called the activity “antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding.”
