The State Division plans to launch a letter to all staff Thursday night informing them that the division is formally transferring to implement a “focused discount in home workforce.”
“Quickly, the Division can be speaking to people affected by the discount in power. Initially, we wish to thank them for his or her dedication and repair to the United States,” the letter, signed by Deputy Secretary for Administration and Assets Michael Rigas, reads.
The letter advises that after these notifications have taken place, the division will go into the “ultimate stage” of reorganization, the place the brand new organizational chart unveiled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier within the yr will totally take impact.
Senior State Division officers described the modifications as “probably the most sophisticated reorganization in authorities historical past,” emphasizing that the cuts had been largely made to remove Chilly Battle-era redundancies in addition to eliminating features that had been “now not aligned with the president’s international coverage priorities.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a signing ceremony for a peace settlement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the State Division, June 27, 2025, in Washington.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
“On the finish of the day, we’ve to do what’s proper for the mission,” one senior official mentioned.
“There’s an amazing quantity of kind of pointless paperwork,” the second official asserted.
The State Division beforehand reported to Congress that it will purpose to scale back its home workforce by round 15% as a part of the reorganization. Nevertheless, the senior officers specified that greater than half of that objective could be met via “voluntary reductions” — individuals who elected to take the deferred resignation plan supplied via the “Fork within the Street” emails earlier this yr.
The officers additionally mentioned the division didn’t have present plans to scale back its power abroad.
“The secretary needs to take this one step at a time,” one official mentioned.
The officers additionally defended the division’s resolution to chop some extremely educated international service officers slightly than reassign them.
