WASHINGTON — The State Department on Thursday notified Congress of an updated reorganization of the massive agency, proposing cuts to programs beyond what had previously been revealed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a steeper 18% reduction of staff in the U.S.
The planned changes, detailed in a notification letter obtained by The Associated Press, reflect the Trump administration's push to reshape American diplomacy and scale back the size of the federal government. The restructuring has been driven in part by the need to find a new home for the remaining functions of the U.S. Agency for International Development, an agency that Trump administration officials and billionaire ally Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency have dismantled.
The proposal includes an even higher reduction of domestic staff than the 15% initially floated in April. The department is also planning to eliminate some divisions tasked with oversight of America's two-decade involvement in Afghanistan, including an office focused on resettling Afghan nationals who worked alongside the U.S. military.
The letter sent to Congress by the State Department notes that the reorganization will affect more than 300 bureaus and offices, saying it's eliminating divisions it describes as doing unclear or overlapping work and that Rubio believes ''effective modern diplomacy requires streamlining this bloated bureaucracy.''
The document is clear that the reorganization is also intended to eliminate programs — particularly those related to refugees and immigration, as well as human rights and democracy promotion — that the Trump administration believes have become ideologically driven in a way that is incompatible with its priorities and policies.
''These offices, which have proven themselves prone to ideological capture and radicalism, will be either eliminated, with their statutory functions realigned elsewhere in the department, or restructured to better reflect their appropriate scope and the administration's foreign policy priorities,'' the notification says.
The reorganization notes USAID's dismantlement and the shifting of some of its work to the State Department, particularly under a vastly restructured Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. PRM, as it is known, will have under its responsibility U.S. international disaster relief operations that had previously been tasked to USAID.
Under the new scheme, PRM also will shift from facilitating migration into the United States to focusing on migrants targeted for deportation and "supporting the administration's efforts to return illegal aliens to their country of origin or legal status,'' the notification said.
